GodsendJen

In case you missed it the Thrashers have made 2 deals over the last 24 hours.  The first deal sent Braydon Coburn to the Flyers for Zhitnik, a puck-moving defenseman.  The second deal sent Glen Metropolit and a boat load of draft picks to St. Louis for Tkachuk. I sat next to Glen Metropolit and Dennis Hamel in the press box last night and I told the Star 94 guy I was chatting with that I thought it meant Glen would be on the next ship out via trade.  Its a shame really as I liked the guy and I really liked giving JP a hard time about Metro's success here.  That said he wasn't the key to the Thrahsers making a playoff run...

The scoop on these deals is over at Southeast Shootout.  The Falconer is treating us to some very fine breakdowns of what these players can do.  Read and comment on it over there :)

You might have noticed some issues with the site this week. On Monday I decided to upgrade my blogging software. This is a simple task.  Download files from Source Forge.  Change some configuration settings.  Upload the files to my website.  Unfortunately I discovered some problems with my FTP access during the upload.  It allowed just enough FTP wizardry to break the old version of the site, but not enough to install the new version. It has taken a couple of days for the hosting provider to work this out.  But we are back up and running.  Unfortunately I've lost the visual modifications I'd made to the old site, the blogroll and some other links I'd included.  I hope to have them all back by the end of the weekend.  Until then you are stuck with this skinable site.  Just be aware that not all of the themes in that drop down list will work with my content.

In my experience the bathroom is a place where the unexpected is not welcome.  I remember back in the 80s when my family first encountered automatically flushing toilets in Cherry Creek Mall during a trip to Denver.  My mother and grandmother found it disturbing.  I thought it was funny to wave my hand and try to make the toilets flush. A new experiment to curb Drunk Driving in New Mexico will take this to a whole new level.

Imagine for a moment you've enjoyed several adult beverages while out watching a game with some friends.  The game ends and the joint is clearing out.  The laws of nature dictate you make one last drunken trip to the restroom before heading home.  You do whatever it is men do when approaching the urinal and then, when you are ready to "take care of business," you hear a voice asking if you really should be driving.  You look around and see no one, but the voice continues. It is then that you realize how truely drunk you are.  You think the urinal is speaking to you.  Little do you know that New Mexico spent over $10,000 so that urinal can talk you out of driving home drunk.  This might actually work.  After all, if you think the porcelain is speaking to you then someone must of slipped something nasty in your drink, right?

There is one fatal flaw in this plan.  The urinal cake speaks to you in a flirty women's voice and says "Hey, big guy. Having a few drinks? Think you had one too many? Then it's time to call a cab or call a sober friend for a ride home. Remember, your future is in your hand."  Drunk men are usually ready to hook up and susceptible to flattery.  A flirty woman just called him and his goods "Big guy" and told him his future is in his [probably not empty] hand. 

All I can say is New Mexico should prepare for a baby boom in 9 months.

MSNBCs take on the cake.

One of Google's cute little quirks is how they dress up the company logo for each and every holiday (even if its a holiday you haven't heard of).  In honor of Valentine's day they turned the second "g" into a chocolate treat. As good as it looks, they must have turned the "l" into something truely looked good enough to eat...because as you'll notice, it went missing--unless you buy that argument that the stem is an "l." Personally I just don't see it.

When I was 24 and bought my first house I was a novelty amongst my friends.  The only ones with homes were older and married. It never occurred to many of my single women friends that they could buy a house. If they did think about buying a house they quickly changed their mind.  A single woman couldn't really take care of a house alone, right?

Three houses later I'm no longer alone.  A new article on CNN Money reports that single women now account for 22% of the home buyers.  In fact, single women account for twice the home purchases of single men.

I am not, and will never be, a bra-burning feminist.  But  these numbers make me smile--and I'm very happy to not be an oddity anymore.

As A Nation Changes, So Do Homebuyers

My strange obsession with hockey has led me to a new endeavor.  I started watching hockey when I lived in Richmond.  I didn't understand anything beyond icing and fights, but it looked fun.  They had a local women's team that needed players, but I couldn't skate.  At that time the city had a single sheet of ice, and that didn't leave any time for adult lessons.  I dismissed the crazy notion and went on with life...until this fall.  In September I hauled myself out to Thrashers' Training Camp and was shocked to see a banner hanging at the Forum announcing How to Skate classes for adults. I signed up and started taking classes in October.  These classes are filled with adults who have been watching figure skating for years and want to learn how to twirl and jump.  I go to class in hockey skates, am appalled at the concept of jumping over the cold bone-shattering ice, and for the most part just wanted to skate really fast and try not to slam into things. The aspiring figure skaters must think I'm a strange novelty.  It has made for good exercise and a fine appreciation the comforts of normal street shoes, but it's not hockey.

Skating lessons also come with passes to public skating sessions.  A girl has to practice so I grabbed Dorothy and hit the ice last Sunday before the Super Bowl.  The rink was packed, but there in the middle was a mom in the midst of a hockey lesson. I watched and waited for my opportunity to ask....How did you manage to get a hockey lesson? This is what I'd been waiting for.  Someone who knew something about a beginner's path to learning the game. A short conversation, handful of emails and three days later I find myself dressed in borrowed gear trying not to fall on my keister during a hockey practice.  Covered in awkward bulkiness, struggling to hold onto a stick that feels just too long, everything is awkward. My first coherent thought--This must be how the Michelin man feels...big, bulky and out of control.  24 hours later my legs ache and my ankles hurt. I have a lot to learn, like stopping and skating backwards and stopping.  But it was about as much fun as you can have stink'n up some stranger's already stinky gear. 

The new highlight of my rather short blogging career comes from The Hockey News.  On February 1st they published a column called How the New NHL Looks to a Soccer Mom (And Why You Should Care). Number five on this list included yours truly:

5. The NHL Blogosphere Has Zest. CasonBlog is stylishly witty, and Battle of Alberta’s “Beard Talk” post had me LOL during the playoffs. But the Acid Queen and God Send Jen show that female fans can hold their own.

For the most part I think of this site as my personal soap box. My impassioned speeches about what was wrong or right with my teams amused my friends. When one of them pushed on why I didn't have a site of my own (given that I make my living from professional web endeavors) I caved and started this site. I never expected people who didn't already know me to find this site, and I certainly didn't expect the random emails I get from women who love hockey that thank me for "showing the world that not all female hockey fans are puck bunnies".  To Marsha Bryant and The Hockey News, thanks for the compliment.  I'm beyond flattered and I promise the check is in the mail as soon as I get your address.

JP and Cason, two of my nemeses over at Southeast Shootout have harassed me into doing this.  They say its the cool thing for hockey bloggers to do, that all the hockey bloggers are doing it.  This sounds kinda like how I ended up spending that day in In School Suspension back in 9th grade...guess I never learn.

If I Were a Hockey Player

Team: Mudville 9

Uniform Number: 30 (age when I started skating :) )

Position: Healthy Scratch

Nickname: That Girl

Linemates: Barney Fife and Inspector Gadget

Rounding out the PP: Yosemite Sam and Captain Caveman (Hey, if I can play hockey anyone can.)

Job: Helping keep peace in the locker room by telling all the guys what to buy their wives/girlfriends for holidays. Troubleshooting everyone's home network.

Signature Move: The Oops. While trying to turn around and skate backwards I inadvertently kick the puck into the other team's goal.

Strengths: Makes everyone on the ice feel like they are a better player. Gets along well with the opposition.

Weaknesses: Guys with big sticks.

Equipment: Charmin. Its fluffy goodness cushions my falls and makes up for not owning breezers.

Nemeses: Tom Dickson

Scandal Involvement: see "Weaknesses," use imagination

Who I'd face in the Stanley Cup Finals: Two Dancing Princesses. This is how they will fare.

What I'd do with the Stanley Cup after our victory: Fill it with sweet tea.

Would the media love me or hate me? The media always loves a clumsy oaf with a good scandal.

And yes, I do realize the Mudville 9 is a baseball team.  A baseball GM would be far more willing to sign me up to play hockey than any hockey guy ever would.

Some of the great Center Ice entertainment comes from the commercials you can watch during the game.  Typically this means seeing the Sidney Crosby Timbits commercial for the 10,245,123rd time.  Tonight it meant watching commercials targeted at residents of the Columbus Ohio area.  I grew up on a farm and always considered myself a farm girl...but after watching this commercial I'm rechristening myself as a born-again ubanite.

This year I'm slowly working my way around Philip's Arena.  Watching hockey from everywhere...the 400s, the 300s, the 200s and even from a few rows behind the sin-bin in some swank club seats at center ice. Blog night gave me my first opportunity to to watch from the Philip's Arena press box.

It's hard to explain the allure of this to someone who hasn't experienced it.  Logic and marketing dictate that the normal sports fan want to sit as cost to the action as possibe.  It's true in baseball.  It's true is football. It's true in basketball with it's coveted courtside seats.  Most fans think its true in hockey as well.  Why else would someone pay $250 to sit next to the glass.  That has to be the best seat, right?  I'm here to tell you that isn't so. Yes, it's nice sit next to the action on occasion.  Few things convey the spead of the game like sitting next to the boards when the players crash into them.  When the puck rebounds off the glass you understand just how fast it's flying.  You can hear the game from that location, but you can't see it.  You can't see what is happening when players are battling for a puck near you seat. You can't see the puck or the sticks.  From these seats I'm frustrated when players are in the corner near me.  I actually long for action to move to the other side of the ice so that I might once again watch the game.

From seats high in the press box you can see everything.  It takes a few minutes to adjust to the height, to looking at players from above.  When the adjustment is complete you realize you can really see the game from this perspective. Not players speeding after the puck, but a team executing a game plan. On top of all that you get to sit and watch the game without being surrounded with some dillusional idiot who thinks Steve is doing him a personal favor every time he speaks into the microphone.