Retirement 2.0

Retirement 2.0 -- powered by livestrong.com

Well ... it's official.  Lance Armstrong has retired from professional cycling, for good this time.  This is also officially the second time I've cried when someone in sports has retired.  Wayne Gretzky was first.  I still remember that day in 1999.  A little bit younger, yes, but no less knowledgeable about how much Gretzky meant to the growth of hockey in the United States ... how much Gretzky meant to the growth of hockey in my life.  Lance Armstrong is now the second.

Super Sunday lives up to it's name

The highlight of Super Bowl Sunday was supposed to be hanging out with my new friend from Georgia, and taking her to her first hockey game.  Capitals vs Penguins, sitting 2 rows into the upper deck ... on one of the louder regular season days for the Verizon Center faithful.  Long story short, the day didn't start off as planned, and it was for a reason that was completely out of my control.  But hey ... the game must go on, and go on it did. The Caps played a great game ...



... all over the ice.  Fighting for loose change in front of Fleury, killing off penalties, scoring goals however they'll get in there, and ultimately shutting out the Pens.  Marcus Johansson was absolutely fantastic throughout this whole game.  Flying up and down the ice, killing penalties, and scoring short handed to put the Caps up 2-0.  This was one of the best games I've seen Marcus play all season long.  All in all, the Pens fans in the house were quiet throughout the whole game, and one even went as far to say (after the Caps were dominating play and already winning 2-0) that "the Caps/Pens game didn't matter too much because Pittsburgh fans were already planning the parade for the Super Bowl win."  I've never heard of a fan base that turns so quickly to some clichéd response to get over their teams losing a game than the Pittsburgh fans.  If you remember in the Winter Classic write-up, Pens fans first response, after losing in their home Winter Classic, was "well, how many Cups do you have?" ... and today was no different, as the Caps/Pens game wasn't even over before the Pens fans had already moved to the next thing they could feel empowered as a fan base about.   As you've seen above, the Caps added a goal of the EN variety to close out a 3-0 shutout and begin what's going to end up being an amazing Super Bowl Sunday.

Herman ends up going to the game with me, rocking out his USA Ryan Miller jersey, and then him and his wife are hosting a Super Bowl party at their house.  A quick stop off at the Lansdownne Inn for a couple beers, a round of Golden Tee (which I won again), and picking up some wings for the party before heading back to the party.  By the time we get there, people have already filtered into the house to watch the Packers take on the Steelers.  The game ends up being pretty boring, the halftime show was forced and somewhat awful, the party was a bit of a drunken mess, but at the end of the game green and yellow confetti was flying everywhere.  The Packers just won the Super Bowl.  I don't really care much about football, so this win doesn't mean much to me.  I just like seeing the Pittsburgh fans eating their own words.  I hope they still have their parade, I mean ... it's obviously been planned already.

Thoughts: In Random

Well ... it's been about a month since I last wrote something on this blog.  I sure hope people don't show up here every day in order to see if I've written anything.  If that was the case, I would feel like a shitbum for not doing anything.

Ironically, it's not even like I've been lazy or not writing anything.  It's just that things I've been writing recently wouldn't make sense to anyone here, you wouldn't want to read about it anyway, it doesn't make sense to me, or it's thoughts and feelings that should only be distributed to close friends.  Everything that I've written recently will probably be used at some point, in the future, to show myself how insane I was at this point of my life or how much things have changed.  I'm really hoping I can look back on this and realize that what I was going through was a normal beginning to a great relationship.

I'm quite sorry if I'm writing in vagueness.  To put it bluntly, I've found a really cute girl that I'm quite interested in.  This doesn't happen very often to me, hell I think the last time was close to 5 years ago.  I don't even mean that I rarely find girls that I'm interested in because that would show some kind of narcissistic tendency, like I feel I'm better than most girls.  That's not it.  It's just that I rarely find a girl that I'm interested in who will actually give me an opportunity to take her out and find out more about her.  This has gone on for about a month now, but I just don't know what's going on anymore.  At some points I think things are going well, and at others I feel like there's no reason to keep trying or that I'm honestly annoying her.

To switch up gears a bit, I've been trying to learn Italian.  It's one of My 101 List that really needs to happen.  The language seems to be close to French, which I find interesting that I still remember at all.  Madame Powers, at Mt. St. Joe, would be proud that I've retained any French at all.  Some words in Italian are close enough the French that I remember what they mean, and some words are not really close at all.  I'm just in the stage 1 vocabulary section, so we'll see how much of this language I can actually learn.  I'm going to give it a real try though and see what comes from it.  Maybe I'll head back to Italy at some point.  I've also been looking at houses that I could buy.  After getting the remaining money from refereeing season, I finally feel like I'm financially set to make this jump.  I know this is going to be a long process, but I'm hoping that within 3 months or so I'll be a first time home buyer and living on my own for the first time in my life.  It'll be life changing and I'm looking forward to creating something for myself.  I think I've narrowed thoughts down to what I'm looking for, but it'll just be whenever I can find something that'll suit my needs.  I'm in a good spot though, even with Danny and Jaime getting married come May, I can stay there for a bit longer if needed.  I'd rather not be there too long after that's done, but I fully understand this house buying process will not be short.

Outside of that, I don't have much more going on.  So, now we're caught up on what's gone on for the past month or so.  I honestly hope that you're not showing up on a daily basis to see what I write.

PS:  Is it wrong that I would rock out 3/4th length pants?