The 2013 Lord Stanley Cup Playoffs Round 2: Semifinals

Yeah, yeah, I'm a little late to the game again. I have a life and am not getting paid like so many other bloggers out there, so screw me. Round 1 was fun and had some intensity, Round 2 promises no less.

MY PICKS
Western Conference

• #1 Chicago Blackhawks vs. #7 Detroit Red Wings - Detroit made a major upset, *ahem* as I predicted they would, in beating the Ducks in Round 1, but they will be little match for Chicago, especially if their defense keeps lagging.
• #5 Los Angeles Kings vs. #6 San Jose Sharks - Beating the Canuckleheads was one thing, but taking on the Kings will be a whole different game for the Sharks. Kings will take this one.

Eastern Conference

• #1 Pittsburgh Penguins vs. #7 Ottawa Senators - Ottawa has more fire power and the better goalie. They also don't have a complete d-bag in the form of Crysby. That's just win-win really. Senators will take it.
• #4 Boston Bruins vs. #6 New York Rangers - New York's defense shut down Washington's Ovechkin in Round 1; that is saying a LOT right there, however they lack the power up front. Boston is more balanced, has sharper lines and the higher rated defense. Sing Loud, Sing Proud for Boston.

Standings as of 5/16

The 2013 Lord Stanley's Cup Playoffs: Quarter Finals

It has to be admitted that I am not a huge sports fan. My parents were/are not very in to sports, so I had not influence there. Being on the chubbier side most of my life, gym class was more a source of embarrassment than enjoyment for me. Sure, I went to a couple homecoming games in high school to try and be in with the in crowd, but I was more focused on the guys than the game and, ultimately, I was, am and will always be a nerd, so that just wasn't my scene.

Flash forward to a few years ago and I discover hockey. I mean, I previously was vaguely aware of its existence; The Mighty Ducks was a good movie series, right? At least it had the talented eye-candy that is Joshua Jackson, but I digress. A now good friend of mine is a die hard hockey fan; like, has played since he was a kid, continues to play recreationally, has three kids playing (one of whom is a total rock star goalie) and even keeps up on the international teams. Thus, as tends to happen in friendship, his passion began to rub off on me. Now, it's not a huge hobby for me and I'm still learning the different calls, rules, players and trying to remember what all the stats mean, but I really do enjoy it even without that knowledge. Ultimately I've come to determine that hockey is one of the more challenging among sports that requires a multitude of skills, focus and endurance on the part of the players. That, in addition to my observation that hockey seems to be the only major league sport played in the U.S. that A) didn't "originate" here and B) is not only played internationally, but also actively welcomes players from around the world to play in the league, combine to make hockey, IMHO, the most bad-ass of sports. The action, the rivalries, the fights, its just exciting!

So. Here we are and, after a disgustingly long lock out, we finally had a (very) short season and are now into playoffs of Lord Stanley's Cup! W00t! Yeah, yeah I'm a little late coming in here, but A) I have a life and B) the inspiration for this blog/design project came after the playoffs had already started, thus requiring some time to complete. Below is the bitchin' bracket that I've fashioned up in Photoshop (thanks to sportslogos.net for most of the team logos). The little puck under each team shows how many playoff games they've won - notice the Vancouver Canucks (or Canuckleheads as my friend calls them) has no puck because they have not won a game. I'll update this each day as the quarter finals progress. I've also circled the teams I'm rooting for to win, which were of course chosen based on my own odd favoring system and some trace knowledge of team prowess.

Final scores of the 2013 Stanley Cup Conference Quarterfinals!

MY PICKS
In the Western Conference we have:

• #1 Chicago Blackhawks vs. #8 Minnesota Wild - Totes going with the Blackhawks here. I do try to root for the home team, and the Wild did pick up some great payers this year, but they just don't have it this time around, especially not to beat out the 'hawks.
• #2 Anaheim Ducks vs. #7 Detroit Red Wings - I have no legit reason for choosing the Wings here other than they are the older team with a better, more classic logo. Yep, there's my design nerd coming out.
• #3 Vancouver Canucks vs. #6 San Jose Sharks - Sharks. By and large, they have just bee playing better than the Canucks this year, even if they didn't have the points to make the higher conference ranking. I also have to admit some credit to my friend's preference in this match up.
• #4 St Louis Blues vs. #5 Los Angeles Kings - I'm going with the Kings on this one. My first reason is that they took the Cup last year. My second reason is that Wil Wheaton is a hockey fan, who lives in LA and thus roots for the Kings. Yep, I'm a nerd like that. I also recognize that this reasoning likely puts me on Sheldon Cooper's hit list.

And in the Eastern Conference:

• #1 Pittsburgh Penguins vs. #8 New York Islanders - Islanders. Why? Because Cindy Crysby is a schmuck. Period. And I will root for any team opposing him. I would root for the Austrian Hitlers if it was a team opposing that tool. Go Islanders!
• #2 Montreal Canadiens vs. #7 Ottawa Senators - I'm going with the Senators here purely on the basis of they have a cooler name and logo. Oh, and 7 is my lucky number, I think that played into the initial selection too.
• #3 Washington Capitals vs. #6 New York Rangers - I went with the Rangers on this one. I genuinely dislike that the Caps don't have much in the way of a logo and while Ovechkin is a very solid player, he's always struck me as a bit of an egotistical tool. No Crysby, mind you, but just rubs me wrong.
• #4 Boston Bruins vs. #5 Toronto Maple Leafs - I have to go Boston here. It is a town I've always wanted, full of awesome history and significance for the U.S. It's a team that stands out in my mind for its history in the sport and clout in the league. I also totally prefer the black and yellow color combo to blue and white...maybe its a bit of Hufflepuff in me.

* Update 5/7 * - Okay, so I fell asleep last night before updating the bracket. Oops. Good news is, all my boys came up golden last night! The Blackhawks and Senators are both up to 3 games; Islanders are tied 2-2 with the Pens now; and even after the Canucks finally began to make a showing and put some fight into it, it was too little too late and the Sharks chomped 'em, making a 4 game sweep of the quarter finals series. Good night indeed. I promise to update the bracket after tonight's games.

*Update 5/8* - Life got busy and I didn't get to watch much of the games tonight. Thankfully I discovered the handy NHL app last week and could keep up on all the goals and such while I was out running errands.   My boys in Boston pulled off another win bringing them up to 3-1 over the Maple Leafs - mmm, mapley delicious victory; LA Kings also boost up with a third game win over St Louis; The Rangers evened up the score with Washington; finally, in the can't-win-'em-all category, the Red Wings fell to the Ducks in OT...fowl I cry! It was still a good hat trick of wins for my bracket though.

*Update 5/9* - Bummer of the evening is that the Penguins took game 5, setting them at 3-2 against the Islanders. That said, Tomas Vokoun stepped into the net for the Pens tonight (instead of their usual Marc-Andre Fleury) and completely shutout the Islanders clearly lending to their win tonight. Pretty damn impressive. Crysby can still suck eggs. In better news, Chicago Blackhawks beat out MN Wild and took game 5 advancing them to the conference semifinals. I'm a bit bummed to have the home team out of the running, but I expected it all along. Next year boys. Also, it was so awesome to have Harding starting even after being taken out so early in the last game. Finally the Ottawa Senators also advanced to the semis, beating out the Canadiens in their game 5. So a pretty decent night, even if my picks didn't take a hat-trick of wins.

*Update 5/11* - Well assballs. After an intense game, the Islanders fell to the Pens in OT, sending the Pens (along with Crysby) into the semifinals.  I wanted fish sticks dammit! I missed the games yesterday as I had plans, but was both happy and disappointed with the results. On the the down side, The Maple Leafs beat the Bruins, ruining what cold have been Boston's advancement to the semis. Also bummed that Washington took a win over the Rangers. On the upside, the Kings advanced to the semis. Also, I'm optimistic for tomorrow's games; Boston has won both of the previous games while in Toronto, meaning they could likely take over Toronto tomorrow. The Rangers, meantime, do better when as home, which is where tomorrow's action will happen meaning we could very likely see this match-up pushed to a game 7 on Monday eve. The more (hockey) the merrier :)

*Update 5/12* - Happy Mother's Day hockey fans! Well, Boston lost in Toronto, but that means a game 7 tomorrow night - w00t! Also, the Rangers proved me right, beating the Capitals and pushing a game 7 tomorrow night in D.C. Lastly, I called it bitches! Detroit defeated the Ducks, completing the line-up of the Western Conference Semifinalss; Red Wings will play the Blackhawks (an original 6 match-up no less!) and, last year's cup winners, the LA Kings will square off against the San Jose Sharks. This is going to be exciting!

*Update 5/13* - DAMN did Boston rock it! Coming from behind like that was brilliant! I'm playing some Dropkick Murphies for them right not :) It should be noted that the Rangers overpowered the Capitals as well. This means that all but one of my picks moved forward to the semifinals. Friggin Penguins stole my perfect score, but they'll get theirs in the semis, and then there will be fish sticks for all!!! Mwahahahaaaa! See you in the semis lovlies!

John Green and Other Awesome, Nerdy Things

My always awesome friend C-Monster introduced me to The VlogBrothers, an amazingly entertaining, clever, smart and nerdy video blog by brothers Hank and John Green. Hank is the founder of EcoGeek.org. John is an award-winning YA* author. Upon learning that last bit, I realized I had to read one of his books... if not all of them. So, being kinda broke, I hit up my local library's website and requested one of his titles (yes, at random. I'm not picky). A few days later, in came An Abundance of Katherines for my reading delight.  And a delight is has been thus far. Yes, "thus far", because I'm enjoying the book and the author's style so much that I'm writing about it before I've even finished it!

Here's how it went down. On page 1 the main character (Colin) is thinking about Archimedes shouting "Eureka!" There was also a footnote explaining the Greek translation of "eureka". My thought was something like, "I already knew that, but an informative footnote in a novel colors me impressed".  By page 10, there had been a few more footnotes that were informative, witty (sometimes both) or simply said, "More on that later." It was on this page that I was fairly sure I was going to want to own this book. By 'fairly sure' I mean I had made the majority of the climb up the mountain and was within sight of the summit, but not quite there because at only page 10 out of 215, there is a lot of room for disappointment.  Page 30 sealed the deal by containing a joke about sodomy and a footnote containing a Venn diagram! I laughed myself to tears. While I will likely finish the library's edition, I will be venturing to buy my own copy in the very near future.

On that note, to the right of the previous paragraph is a picture of the cover of the book I'm currently reading. See that? Right there? The one with all the heads on it? Well, while searching for that image to put on here, I also found THIS image of an alternate (?) cover for the book!



I have to say that I like this cover much more. It's my inner design nerd coming out. The color use is more appealing, I don't have some soulless-eyed chick(s) staring out at me and I dig the title-as-a-math-equation relation to the story. Now, I have not done a great deal of searching at this point, but if someone can help me find a copy with this kickin' cover, I would be verrry grateful. Like cookies-for-you grateful.**



Moving right along to other awesome nerdery, I'm getting hooked on The Nerdist podcast. I discovered it in a bass ackwards kinda fashion in that I was watching The Walking Dead on AMC and suddenly there was this fun after-show called The Talking Dead hosted by Chris Hardwick (hot!). I mentioned The Talking Dead in class the following Thursday and a classmate got all excited and told me to check out The Nerdist, which is also hosted by Chris Hardwick, usually with Jonah Ray and Matt Mira, is just freaking hilarious! They have awesome guests (like Wil Wheaton*** (heart) Adam Savage (boom) and Neil Gaiman (brilliant) or when they don't have guests still manage to give my funny bone a hander. Go. Listen. Good times will be had. The podcast was recently turned into a TV show on BBC America and I aim to start watching that regularly... or as regularly one can for a show that's been ordered as "specials" by the channel. In this same vein, my bestie J-bot snagged us tickets to go see them live when the tour comes to town in March. You can't see it, but I'm doing my happy dance.

In the food realm, my instructor A mentioned this thing called Cookie Butter.  I'll type that again for your comprehension, because if you're like me, your eyes just bugged out of your head. Cookie Butter. I made a jaunt to Trader Joe's yesterday and procured some. It's a spread made with crushed biscuits and tastes a bit like gingerbread. It has definite nom factor. I've had it on celery, on chunky cinnamon toast, on matzo (yep, we eat Jew-food in this house) and now...cookie butter on a cookie! Just because I could.

That's all for awesome, nerdy things today folks. DFTBA****


*YA is book industry speak for the "Young Adult" genre. Special, nerdy terms? Yep. Get used to it.
** I was going to go dirty there and say 'blowjobs-for-you grateful', but I realized that A) that's a bit extreme, even for an awesome book and B) if you're a chic who helps me get the book, you're kinda left out of that reward system and that's not fair.
***I'm currently listening to the Wil Wheaton Nerdist podcast and learned that Chris and Wil are long-time friends and used to be roommates. This made me realize that that would make for an awesome, nerdy threesome! HOW have I never come to that idea before?!
**** An initialism (not an acronym because acronyms are pronounceable) used by the VlogBrothers that stands for Don't Forget To Be Awesome.

Random Post #1

Hello. Been awhile, I know. Fall quarter had me going crazy and my "break" was not really due to the holidays and work and such. C'est la vie.

My holidays were nice. For the family portion I made mini cherry pies using a muffin tin. Lessons were learned about using a proper-sized biscuit cutter. The best gift I got from fam has to be a tie between the first two volumes of Good Eats by Alton Brown and a killer fashion ring. I got some awesome gifts from my friends. Jo, Dawn and Heather all did great on our crafting-only gifts for each other. However I do have to say that the best gift by far goes to Chris for the TARDIS mug and Green Day Blue Grass CD. Sorry gals, but it's hard to beat the TARDIS... literally.

I've also been very distracted by YouTube lately.  Here are some of the awesome things I've been watching:

My Drunk Kitchen - Cookery, booze and one seriously funny lady! In her case, I feel it's best to begin at the beginning.


C.G.P. Gray - Smart and entertaining explanations of things. This guy is like the Alton Brown of everything. This is his most recent and I completely agree with him. Fuck pennies.


Vlog Brothers - Two brothers. One channel. Copious amounts of fun nerdery that will leave you smarter than before you watched. Bonus point: John is the John Green of YA literature fame; I haven't read his books, but after viewing this channel, I am definitely going to.


MukPuddy - Some hilarious animations that make me want to be an animator.


Chap-hop - Unquestionably the most entertaining and awesome music genre to arise in some time.


In fact I've been so distracted by YouTube that I've had two discs from Netflix since October. Shit. Gotta get on that this weekend.

Back on the 7th I went to my first viewing of the musical Les Miserables! That was pretty fucking sweet. Big thanks you my friend J for just randomly buying the tickets and telling me we were going. It was pretty sweet. The sets and lighting effects were great. The main men and Eponine we fantastic. Fantine was really warbly though, so I wasn't too disappointed when she died 10 minutes in.  I'm not sure if it was costumer choice or error that Marius blended in with most of the other revolutionary students in the battle scene. Personally, I found that annoying. High point of the night was the pre-show visit to Candyland and getting some sponge candy and key lime kisses (they're like butterscotch buttons, but lime! I never knew those existed!).

Quick Update

Because I'm a busy little beaver. This post is for my friend H.  She asked if I had any blogs.  I said, 'yes'.  She then called me out for not posting in over a month.  *shame face* Between a full class load, work, and the general weather making me rather lazy I have not gotten around to it.  So here's a quick update.

School is going alright.  My online class, Digital Photography, does not motivate me enough.  I like taking pictures, but when I'm forced to do topics that don't interest me, it's difficult.  I don't want to take family portraits and discuss the difficulties faced during the session. I work retail, that alone has given me enough varying people experience that my brain can go wild with all the issues that could come up in a situation where I am making people sit down so I can take their pictures... peoples be crazy!

Work-wise... it's retail. Same ol' bollocks.

Friends. I have awesome friends. I suck at reaching out when I'm in a down mood. I figure that these people have enough going on in their respective lives, they don't need to drop everything just to listen to my, admittedly sometimes silly and irrational, negativity. And there's the rub for me; typically I can assess what is making me feel a certain way, what the cause is, but that doesn't necessarily alleviate the problem. Anyhoozles, my friends always make me feel great, even if they don't know it. Here's a ginormous 'Thank you!' going out to each of you. Upon request I will give you a giant hug next time I see you, but I know touchy-feely not everybody's "thing" so I'm with-holding the urge to simply throw one at you.

Car.  My happy little car, Vinnie, has not been as happy for a few months now. He was making all sorts of loud, grindy noises.  When a front light finally went out, I took him in.  Mister Mechanic Dude noticed the noise.  One problem snowballed into 4 and $390 later, Vinnie is once again happy. In all honesty, if I won the lottery, I'd pay him off, fix him up, and use him as a turn in on what I really want; a RAV 4... who may or may not also get named Vinnie, depends on his 'tude.

Family. Oy. I want out. Like I'd give $20 handers behind a liquor store to make the money to get out. I'm not though... possibly only because of the illegality of prostitution and the fact that I'd have to touch people I don't want to. If I was a hooker, I'd totally up my charges for ugly people. And it's not discrimination because attractiveness is subjective (well, mostly).

OK, now I should really get back to the homework that has me sitting in a cafe on this, the first snowy day of Minnesota's 2011 autumn.

Fish Sticks and Custard - er, Mango Sherbet

I finally got into the kitchen.  School is nearing the end of the quarter, work is - well, work - and life... it's all just a juggling act and I only ever learned to juggle two balls at once, so it's been a show for sure.

So happy kitchen time this night consisted of "fancy" fish sticks - they're fancy for a couple reasons, we'll get to that later - and mango-coconut sherbet.  I was excited for this!  Not only because both sounded über tasty from the recipes, but because it'd been a while since I'd had the time to play in the kitchen (last week's chipotlé flank steak with Gorgonzola sauce doesn't count, I was hurried).

Fancy Fish Sticks & Sauce...and beer.

The fish sticks I cut from a fillet of cod mum had picked up late last week.  Yep, that's right, cut them myself - see, fancy.  Then they were dredged first in a flour and black pepper mix, then into an wet mixture (best ingredient of which was lager) and then coated in a mix of Panko bread crumbs, pumpkin kernels and spices.  See, fancy!  Then I faux-fried them - aka put 'em on a heated, oiled sheet in the oven - and voila! Delicious, better-for-you-than-the-originals, "fancy" fish sticks!  Served those babies up with a dip concocted from low-fat mayo and sour cream, spicy brown mustard, fresh lime juice and a Cajun seasoning mix I'd already made myself and I had a great, proud-of-myself dinner.


But what is dinner without dessert? Blasphemy I say!  So I through the whopping 4 ingredients for mango-coconut sherbet into the blender and hit "liquify".  After all was happily blended I flipped the "on" switch on my Cuisinart Pure and poured all that sweet orange goo into the awaiting, frozen tub that was rotating almost as much giddy fervor as I was feeling. 30 or so minutes later the deliciousness was done. Well, sort of; you see it has to be put into a container and then in the freezer to solidify more, so I did that.  While I waited, I toasted up some shredded coconut I had.  Even though it wasn't solid yet, I could wait no longer; so I dished it up, topped it with the now golden  and nutty coconut sprinkles that I'd freed from the oven and spooned my taste buds up some tropical tastiness.

Mango-coconut awesome! I mean sherbet.

Note: I don't have the best camera for this sorta thing, but I do what I can with what I have :)

Music Awesomeness

Chris recently hooked himself up with a Logitech Revue and that thing is sweet.  It's an adapter that turns your existing tele set into an internet/smart tele. It comes with Google TV and is expected to have access to the Android app market by years end. In the meantime, it works great with Netflix and surfs the web very well. Needless to say, I'm hoping our deal to move in together next year is still on, so that I will  this piece of technologic fun.

The Logitech revue

So last night we were hanging and via boingboing.net discovered a music genre that is definitely becoming my new favorite.  Ladies and gentlemen I present to you, Chap-hop!

Professor Elemental - "Fighting Trousers"