GodsendJen

Some of you know I've spent the last year taking up a just about every sport that crosses my path. First there was tennis. Then the company volleyball team, ice skating lessons, hockey, and now Skiing. I'm sure no one is surprised that when I'm not in design mode at work my cubicle white-board often features some horrible and crazy sketch of my recent exploits.  While I was away in Colorado learning to ski my coworkers took over the white board.  Something tells me they weren't sure I'd make it back to see their handy-work. 

For the record, I did part of a run infested with large pine trees (Frenchman). And no, I didn't run into a single tree. (Note, my coworkers drew what appears to be a deciduous tree full of leaves in the middle of the ski run.  When is the last time you saw a snow covered mountain with leaving deciduous trees?) The only battle injury I have to show for the trip is a black bruised that is remarkably shaped like the boot latch on my rental skis.  The truely bored can check out the trail map. I skied Schoolmarm, Toads, Silver Spoon, Last Chance, Incubator, Ina's Way, Jack Straw, Bear Tree, Spring Dipper, Dercum's Dash and the upper part of Frenchman.

I do have pictures of me dressed in a friend's funny spiky ski hat.  I'll post them in the next few days.

I watched tonight's Thrashers vs. Bruins game at the hockey viewing party the Interactive Squad hosted at our suburban Up the Creek.  If the team wants to evangelize in my neighborhood I want to support it. 

The good news is the turnout surpassed my expectations.  The parking lot was full, no small accomplishment for a Monday night.  The bar area and about half of the dining room was awash in blue jerseys. Most tables were filled with families.  Everyone had a chance to spin the prize wheel, and to do so without waiting in line for 20 minutes as you do at games. School age children dressed in their Blueland best sat coloring their children's menu and cheering when appropriate.  The crowd was quiet at first.  I expected more of a party atmosphere with fans mingling and discussing the recent trades.  Instead most tables kept to themselves but shared collective cheers and gasps as the game played out on the plasma TVs overhead. Cheering a television is always more fun in a crowd. Families watching the game together on a Monday night is great, but you have to wonder if some felt they were a victim of false advertising.  The fliers posted online and at the restaurant promised that Thrash himself would host this party.  Instead the hosts were two women from the Interactive squad and a couple of people in charge of the prize wheel.  Thrash's presence might have encouraged mingling and would certainly have added something extra for all the kids. 

Another negative is that Up the Creek isn't the ideal place for a viewing party of any sort.  The staff was pleasant and worked to meet any dining request, but the game wasn't visible from most of the dining room tables.  A variety of decorative metal plants blocked the view of televisions from half the dining room entirely.  Even the tables with a view of the TV only provided that view to patrons on one side of the table.  Also perplexing was the staff's insistence on vacuuming the dining area during the game.  Nothing quite helps you enjoy a hockey game like the feeling that your hosts are just watching the clock waiting for you to exit. I don't blame this on the Thrashers.  I think it was a side effect of Up The Creek trying too hard.  They even had the regional manager on hand.  Too bad she didn't have ask them to stop vacuuming or suggest they offer some specials to the folks who turned out. 

These factors make me think that other venues could be the difference between what was a nice viewing party and what could have been a great viewing party.  The northern suburbs have no shortage of family friendly sports bar. (Yes, you out of town folks heard that right.  Here in Atlanta we have family friendly sports bars.  I think its a side effect of confusing an SEC football game with holiday mass. But that is another post.) Across the street was Indigo Joe's.  The food isn't spectacular, but not really worse than Up the Creek.  As a sports bar they have far more TVs in proximity to all of their seats.  Any one of the Taco Macs  in the area would work. As would the very nice Barnacles on 141 in Norcross. At last count Barnacles had somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 televisions.  (Up the Creek had 7.)  And don't forget the largest Jock's and Jill's in the area is just a few miles away in Alpharetta.  A happy plus to gathering at a traditional sports watching venue is an increased likelihood of drawing in a few more casual sports fans.  I dream of a day when I'm not the only person in Jock's and Jill's who speaks up to complain when someone asks to have the single hockey TV changed so they can have yet another view of the SEC game that is on 3 other TVs.  Getting hockey folks into one of these bars might help raise their awareness that hockey fans do exist in the south.

Overall I'd give the event a B with the potential of turning into a B+ of A- next time out if they choose a better venue.  The team has sponsored at least 2 of these events so far and I expect more in the future.  If a viewing party comes to a place near you, do yourself a favor and check it out.

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.