Heat Wave Saturday

It just got really hot here today. Yuck. But despite that, Amy and I are hard at work shooting pucks for our hockey team challenge - 1000 shots in the month of June.

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We’ve got a pretty nifty setup this year. On the ground is a sheet of plywood, and clipped onto the top of it is a piece of plexiglass. We have 21 pucks. On the chain-link fence you’ll see part of my Christmas present from Amy - puck targets. We keep all that stuff in our front porch and simply drag it across the street when we want to shoot. I had to mow the grass between the “ice” and the “net” today, but it works!

Our garden is coming along nicely. I think we’ll be able to transplant the tomatoes and peppers by the middle of next week. Here are our Amish Snap Peas (all veggies other than our okra are from Seed Savers Exchange):

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Our purple clematis is taking over the front porch. I don’t mind because frankly, it’s gorgeous. I hope it keeps blooming for a long time.

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And Maggie guards the house while I sit and take photos of Amy shooting pucks (and myself…)

Hope you all are staying cool. We’re off to do a little more yardwork, and then I think we may try to go see a movie in a cool, cool theater.

Final (almost) Updates

Alrighty. I think I’m nearly ready to call this done. I’ve changed a lot of things today.

• Upgraded WP from 2.2 to 2.5
• Deleted multiple plugins which WP 2.5 made obsolete
• Found a new theme (Greenery)
• Added several new plugins (Admin Dropdown Menu, Flickr Manager, FlickrRSS, and WP-Highslide)

This is a photo inserted using Flickr Manager:

This is a photo inserted using WP-Highslide (click on it - it’s pretty cool!)

The photos on the right side of the page are managed using FlickrRSS.

The one thing I need to do is to update the header/banner image at the top of the page, but I can’t do that until I have access to a better image editor than I have at home. That’s okay, though. I can wait.

So. What do you think?

Hockey Notes

My regular hockey season ended back at the end of March. We had a couple of tournaments in April. In May one of my two summer leagues started, and last Sunday, the other began. That means I’m back to playing twice a week again - thank goodness! Being on the ice is so therapeutic for me in so many ways (and not just because sometimes I get to hit people, although that’s kind of fun too…) On Sunday my regular team’s June 1000 shooting challenge began too. And for my birthday, Amy made/is making me a slide board.

Last night in my WAWHL game (our team is Raising Kane) I finally scored from the point! I’ve scored in other games, while playing wing, but never while playing defense. There was kind of a mess of people in front of the net on the right side of the ice, and my winger popped the puck up to me. The goalie (hi Lynn!) was completely screened and I saw a sliver of open net on the left side. Somehow the shot went through all the people and cleanly in the net. Needless to say, I was pretty excited. We ended up winning the game 5-1.

Our CWSHL team is Purple - thank GOD we aren’t the pink team. Their jerseys hurt my eyes. We lost our first game 5-6; total barnburner and lots of fun. Our team seems evenly balanced with a few rec/instructional players, a couple of D players, a few C players, and one or two B players. Should be a fun summer.

Some pictures -

April Showers: puck handling (note to self: keep head up when handling the puck), looking thoughtful, passing, Amy,  blogless Libby, headshot, Black Ice between periods

Champlain Shootout (whole games, can’t link to individual pics): Black Ice vs. Van Kleek Hill Griffins, Black Ice vs. West Chester Wildcats

I’ll be posting updates for future games, and will see if blogless Libby will let me post selections from her post-game writeups.

Dog Drama

Sometimes Otter is a punk.

Otter with rope toy, Maggie with big stick.

Maggie enjoying the big stick in embarrassingly blissful ways.

Otter stealing the stick.

Maggie, sad. Otter, ecstatic.

Triumphant punk of a big dog.

FWIW, Maggie did get over it, and pretty quickly.

I love you this much!

The most awesome Jessica just gave me a blog award! I have never been given a blog award before, so I am pretty excited. Maybe even unreasonably so… but wouldn’t you be if you got this award?

The thing I really like about this award is that I get to MUST pass it on to 10 people who I also love THIS MUCH! To display the love, just save the badge and re-post it on your awesome blog. And then pass it on.

Of course I’m going to cheat, since there’s at least one awesome person out there who doesn’t actually have a blog (but totally should and I’m not even lying.)

Without further ado, in no particular order, here are 10 fantastic folks who I love THIS MUCH:

Lori - the “i love you this much because you inspired me to hockey blog” award winner.

Jessica - the “i love you this much because you never give up and it’s finally paying off” award winner

Namastemama - the “i love you this much because you are my soul sister” award winner.

Star - the “i love you this much because you live a beautiful life and an honest life” award winner.

Katie - the “i love you this much because you’re a great writer and newly happily married” award winner.

Anj - the “i love you this much for being my entertaining role model” award winner.

(Blogless) Libby - the “i love you this much for your notes which make me laugh, your weekly hockey writeups which make me laugh, and your true-blue friendship” award winner.

(Password-protected) Jen - the “i love you this much for sharing a birthday with me and for being the first person I ever met after knowing each other online” award winner.

Rebecca - the “i love you this much for being so incredibly well-rounded” award winner.

Daddy Democrat - the “i love you this much for being a sane voice in an insane world and for sharing really funny stories about your boy” award winner.

Obviously there is a lot more that each of these fantastic people bring to the world than the small pieces I highlighted in their award nominations, and I encourage you to go and read their blogs to find out for yourself. And even MORE obviously, limiting myself to 10 people means that a bunch of you aren’t on that list above. Which is rather unfair. You are: Christy and Heather and Davey and Jody and Adam/Tiffy and Laura and Stella and Paula and Polly and Dana and Jen and you and you and YOU. I love you all this much!