librarygrrrl.net

Another summer has come and gone, and with it, I’ve finished playing in two more leagues.

First league was Concord Women’s Summer Hockey League, a mixed-level league. Amy and I played on the purple team this summer, and while we didn’t win a lot of games, it certainly wasn’t for lack of scoring! We went 2-7-1 in the games Amy and I played with them (we ended up missing a couple of games due to vacation) and the combined total scores in those games was 32-42. So on average, the score for each game was about 3-4! I only ended up with one assist in the purple games we played, but did get a goal (against ELAINE!) when we subbed for the pink team. Not bad, for someone who doesn’t really score at all…

Funny story about our last game: we won even though we only had one of our B-level players (and her both hungover and showing up for the second two periods of the game) against a team with a wicked awesome goalie. (Yes, the afore-mentioned ELAINE.) As we were getting ready to play, one of our regular subs, Carol from the maroon team, was talking about how to score on Elaine. The upshot was: we can’t, so get in front of her and block her view. Me, being the alternative theory girl, thought maybe Carol was being a little pessimistic and reframed her statement as: one of the more effective ways to score against her is to block her view.  And wouldn’t you know it, but one of our two goals was because she was screened and couldn’t see where the puck had gone!

And then after the game some woman walked into the locker room wanting to buy a couple of purple jerseys. Not needing purple jerseys any longer, Amy and I practically threw ours at her and used the cash for a quick meal on the way home.

Our second league was the Walpole Adult Women’s Hockey League. We played with Raising Kane this summer and had a total blast! We ended up at 6-7, and had the same number of goals for and goals against (38). I scored a goal against my former goalie Lynn and her team, the Mustang Sallies, and picked up several assists over the course of the summer. We got the chance to sub for a few other teams too, including the team we’re going to play with this coming season.

The best part of playing on Raising Kane wasn’t getting better at hockey (although that was good). No, the best part was playing with a great group of women, most of whom I’d not met before. Shastin, Lynne, Karen, Annie, Maura, Kristen, Libby, Pam, Donna, Fran, Nancy, Joni, AmyN, and AmyB - what fun it was! I’d play with any of them at any point, even if sometimes I try to score goals on some of them (sorry Joni!) and other times I throw some of them to the ice (sorry Pam!) and then on very rare occasions I make a bad decision on the ice (sorry Sarge….)

The league hired a photographer to shoot some of our games, and for some reason he ended up shooting us a few times: 6/25 agains the Raiders, 7/23 against the Mustang Sallies, and 7/30 against the Pumas. The photos are un-downloadable and copyright the photographer, so I’ll just link you to a few of my favorite pics:

• Skating with the puck
• Pam, bowing to Sarge
• Hanging in front of Joni
• Laughing with Shastin
• Making a move past Deroda (while subbing for the Sallies)
• Amy making a strong pass (while subbing for the Sallies)

But the best photos of Raising Kane were taken by our very own Karen Winger, who was sadly injured for the second half of the summer. (Side note one: Karen also played in the Concord league on the pink team. I think she faked her injury so she wouldn’t have to wear the eye-searingly-bright pink jersey.) (Side note two: Karen plays with many of the Pumas during the regular season; that’s the team in black in these photos.) This was a quarterfinal game for the playoffs; we won and ended up losing in the next round to Lugano. (Side note three: Amy, Libby, and I are all going to be playing with most of the players on Lugano during the upcoming regular hockey season.) (Side note four: If you are vaguely social and you hang around CWSHL, WAWHL, and SSWHL long enough, you’ll end up knowing a LOT of hockey players.)

Go check out Karen’s awesome photos of our playoff game against the Pumas! There are a bunch of really funny pictures in that set, mostly of AmyB and LynneM.

AmyB:

• Do we get a goal if I’m in the net?
• Yo! Where’s the puck?
• The Patented Human Zamboni Poke-Check

LynneM:

• It’s hard to make that gesture while wearing hockey gloves. (And yet she can!)
• Get away from my goalie!
• Aaaaaahhhhhh!
• May the force be with you…

And then there is photographic evidence of Joni’s Awesome Game!

• She’s got the post
• Blocking Bridget (she who makes goalies cry)
• And blocking Bridet again
• Ready...
• And ready again…

My favorite of me (and my new Facebook profile photo) is this one, where I swear I’m leaving Pamie in my dust!

Like I said, it was a great summer playing with this team and I’ll miss playing with them. But the regular season is getting underway already - we’ve had two practices with our new team (more on that in the next post) and have a tournament coming up in a couple of weeks. Good times, this playing of hockey.

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!

Apparently I need the specter of NaBloPoMo over my head to get me blogging every day. Or every week. Whatever. Kind of like Otter needs me to put treats on his nose so he’ll behave. (He hates me for this trick.)

Some small nothings for your entertainment this fine weekend:

Work: This semester has been a doozy - lots of stuff going on at work (mostly good) and lots of stuff going on at home (hockey, mostly). It’s kept me busy and exhausted most nights. I’m looking forward to the December break and January’s wintersession on campus. Our group has a bunch of mini-workshops lined up, the first time we’ve taught most of them. Wintersession gives us some time to test-run courses to see if they should go into regular rotation. We’ll see - I’m hopeful.

Married life: Amy and I have been horribly lazy last night and tonight. The sofa has buttprints in it.

Food: On Thursday night we went to eat at Ka Carlos, a Cape Verdean restaurant in Dorchester with our friends Lib and Steph!TP. The service was definitely on island time, but the food was good. We all shared sauteed octopus and friend yuca. Lib got a spicy shrimp and veggie dinner, Amy got a spicy cajun-like chicken dinner, Steph!TP got conch, and I somehow managed to order a Denny’s Grand Slam (without pancakes). It claimed to be Portuguese beef with eggs. I guess I didn’t read the menu very carefully because there were some words next to the English description which apparently meant “with a heart-attack sauce and french fries too.” Ah well, it was still pretty tasty, my arteries notwithstanding.

Dogs: Maggie and Otter are funny. Ever since their Thanksgiving kennel trip, Maggie’s been all chow-houndy. Normally she’s happy to sit back while Otter inhales his meals, eating only when she’s good and ready. He probably snarfed up all her food in the kennel, causing this backlash on her part. Whatever it is, I love watching the two of them eating at the same time. Otter’s so tall that when his tail wags it completely clears Maggie’s back.

Knitting: I started knitting again, on my Janda sweater. Finally did some frogging on the front piece, which I made too long. Finished that and cast on for both sleeves last night. The easiest way to make sure your sleeves are the same length? Knit them at the same time. No photos this time - alas - but perhaps in the morning when the light is better.

Speaking of knitting, I’d like to get back to it, maybe finish the cuffs tonight and start in on the actual sleeves themselves. It would be nice to finish this before 2008, given that I started it in 2006… Ack!

It’s no big secret that I share my life with an amazing woman. What I’ve never blogged (although goodness knows we’ve both told the story countless times in person) is how I met Amy.

So I used to work at a really great place. At said great place, I was in the middle of three offices; to one side was the humanities librarian and to the other was the digital services librarian. The digital services librarian (a most wonderful human being and one of my most favorite people in the world) sadly left her job so that she and her husband could begin life on the tenure-track. So that office sat open for a while. And I was sad.

(If this all seems like a lot, bear with me. It’s important to me.)

Well, the job was finally advertised and some people came and interviewed and none of them (for various reasons) were quite the right people for the job. So some more people came in and finally they found The Right Candidate. That right candidate started working in the no-longer-empty office in January of 2004.

Then my friend Geoff entered the scene. For those of you who have never met Geoff, you’re missing out. He’s the consummate connector. He’s Mr. Wry and Dry Sense of Humor. He’s fascinated by people. He’s got great kids and is the kind of dad every kid dreams about.

And Geoff wanted my newest colleague to meet people on campus - specifically, he wanted her to meet LGBT people. So he introduced her to this soccer coach. One day in March or so, this soccer coach came up to my colleague’s office so they could go get lunch together. At work that week, the entire staff had done the Myers-Briggs Test Inventory and we were all a-flutter with the experience. I’d popped into my office when this soccer coach came up and my colleague started telling her about it.

I should mention at this point that our office walls didn’t go all the way to the ceilings, so we would often hold conversations while at our computers typing away.

Anyway, my colleague and this soccer coach (and our resident flaming gay man) were talking about the MBTI. Nosy person that I am, I had to go back over and horn into the conversation. My colleague introduced me to the soccer coach.

And all of a sudden I remembered.

I’d emailed this same person when I started working there because she was responsible for intramurals. I wanted to play volleyball. She claims she emailed me back and told me that IM volleyball was simply pickup. I contend that I never heard back from her.

At any rate, I cut her some slack right then because she was really funny and charming and cute. A few months later - after some shenanigans by my colleague and her then-girlfriend (they were introduced by Amy) - Amy and I went out on the first of many dates.

Tammy, thank you. John, thank you. Kelly, thank you. Geoff, thank you. Rebekah, thank you. All of you were necessary components in this story. You helped me find Amy, and for that I’m incredibly grateful.

From Amanda and others: here are 5 non-library blogs I read. These are all blogs by people I actually know in real life.

Life in the Pink by Cyn. She’s a wicked smart computer genius in a PhD program at UCSD. I met her through Phillyknitters. She knits, cooks vegan food (she’s got a blog for that), programs, builds robots, and makes really funny observations on the life she leads.

GeekyMom by Laura. In her non-GM life, she’s an instructional design professional at at small college in the Philadelphia area. Interestingly enough, she’s in a PhD program too. She blogs off and on about her family (GeekyBoy and GeekyGirl, along with Mr. Geeky), work/life balance, how she does what she does (with a tendency towards Allen’s GTD system), and life in higher education.

Bostonbeerman by Jim Olson, who not only does amazingly cool things with the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, but also runs a couple of really cool beer appreciation courses throughout the year. Who wouldn’t like a blog about beer?

Bekka by Rebecca who I know from the ACRL Women’s Studies Section. One of the things I love about her blog is that she actually does all the kinds of things I think about doing - both craft-related and otherwise.

The Ice Hockey Escapades by Lori Hylan-Cho (who I don’t really know in real life, but I do know about half of the team she played with this year, so that’s got to count for something.) Are you at all surprised that I read the blog of a woman who is out of college who plays hockey on a team that I used to play on? No, no, you are not surprised by that one bit. I love that she takes tons of photos and videos at games (someday I’ll be that in shape, that I can not DIE on the bench after my shift and can instead take photos) but even more than that, I love that she has documented all of her experiences playing hockey to date. One day last fall I think I read the whole blog from start to finish. Yes, I do love me some hockey, and I particularly like reading about people kind of like me who play hockey.

What about you who are librarians? What five non-library blogs do you read? And you who aren’t librarians - what are your five?