This may make me a nerd, but I just bought two tickets to be part of the live TV audience for the Dec. 14th Bell Making the Cut show! =P I think there's something funny going on with Ticketmaster.ca though, since 10 minutes after I bought my tickets, I checked again and there were 2 tickets in the same section but in a better row, i.e. closer to the front, than mine!! I'm going to check again tomorrow or Thursday and try calling Ticketmaster if there are still better seats available.
Thank goodness for Steph!! I almost gave into temporary insanity and bought tickets to the Binghampton Senators @ St. John Maple Leafs game on this Wed. Dec 1st! Not that attending the game itself is a bad thing, but unfortunately it would be a very stupid thing for me to do at this time. *sigh*
Sadly I have neither the time nor the funds to go (even though it's really cheap--only $70 for section 109!!). Next week is going to be death week for me:
Mon. Dec. 6st:
- Native North American Literature term test
- Chaucer paper
Wed. Dec. 8th:
- Native North American Literature final assignment
- Chaucer term test
- 18th Century Literature in-class test
- History of Modern China term test
@_@ So yes, I really need to be studying like mad this week, and therefore don't have time to go watch a hockey game--as fun as it would be. Besides, I just paid off a mega Visa bill (remember all the MoDo stuff?), and I don't want to fall back into the big credit card bill trap again.
Anyway, if anyone's interested in going, I can forward you the Leafs' Insider special offer, so just email me.
It wasn't until I watched the St. John's Maple Leafs @ Manitoba Moose game last night that I realized just how much I miss hockey, NHL hockey. I mean, it was great to be watching the Baby Leafs and all (go Tellqvist!) but I guess I've been spoiled by NHL and international calibre level play, because, apart from a few bright spots, the game looked pretty messy to me.
Again, I enjoyed watching it and it was a good game, but even the relatively high number of goals (the final score was 5-3, Baby Leafs) couldn't fully satisfy my desire to see a really well-played game. *sigh* I've always said I would be happy with a 0-0 tie so long as there were lots of chances and good plays on both sides, and I guess this supports that idea.
Anyway, what I really appreciated about the game, though, was the instant icing and the wider blue lines. I saw quite a number of turnovers at the blueline that wouldn't have been possible with thinner lines (of course some of them wouldn't have happened with NHL players anyway).
So basically what I've discovered is that AHL hockey is fun to watch, but I still want the NHL!
If I help out at the Induction again next year, I'm definitely going to have to invest in a good pair of dressy black FLAT shoes!!! The only good black shoes I had were the black heels I usually wear to (teach) school, and even though I'm usually okay wearing them for a couple of hours, I quickly discovered that it's quite masochistic to plan on wearing them for fours straight hours of standing and walking around. @_@
Anyway, in spite of my feet, and the fact that my face felt frozen from trying to smile all the time, I really enjoyed helping out at the Induction. I was pretty lucky in that I got to do a variety of things. For the first three hours or so I was a "runner." As runners we got to escort guests with tickets to the Great Hall and Molson Theatre (the VIPs, basically). Oh, and it was funny because Val was also a runner, and she's the one who recognizes me from my frequent visits to the store! =P
Unfortunately I wasn't in the right spot in the lines to escort Scotty Bowman, Lanny McDonald, Gerry Cheevers, Brian Burke or Borje Salming, but I did get to escort Jim Kelley (the Elmer Ferguson Memorial Award recipient for this year), and Peter Stastny!!! That was VERY cool, even though I didn't really talk to them, apart from saying "have a good evening" when I handed them off to the guys at the Hall and Theatre entrances. Oh, and I was there when Gary Bettman arrived too, but I didn't really mind that I missed out on escorting him. =P
Running back and forth, of course I got to see quite a few other people, like Pierre McGuire, Walter Gretzky and Gino Reda.
Oh, and how could I forget? Kevin introduced me to Bill Hay, and I was really dumb and didn't realize who exactly he was until much later, when I was watching the Induction ceremony stuff on the tv. He's the chairman and CEO of the HHOF!!! I shook his hand and I didn't even realize who he was!!! *dies*
So yeah, after the running, I went to join the human chain that blocked off a pathway for the people from the Great Hall to go to the Molson Theatre. That was cool, since I got to see Ray Bourque and everyone follow a bagpiper down the stairs and go into the Theatre. I was like 3 feet away!!! *dies again, but in a good way* Oh, and Pat Quinn, whom I didn't see enter, passed by, through the path too, and that was pretty neat. ^_^
Then I went and helped out in the coatcheck--mostly just organizing the gift bags and bringing them from the back to the front so the people in charge of the coatcheck could hand them out. Man, I was SO envious!!! I think those gift bags also had the prints!!! But anyway, I got another shirt from the night and a bunch of good memories, and that was more than enough.
Here's a pic of the shirt (originally I had a picture of me wearing the shirt, but I looked really awful, so I decided to post the photo of just the shirt):
And closeups of the detailing on the right sleeve and breast logo:
Had to skip church to volunteer at the Hall, but I enjoyed it, so it was worth it!! The only sad thing was that I learned that the first 500 paid full price admissions received prints signed by the Inductees!!! Ahhhhh!!! I was SO envious of all those people!!! Of course, I wouldn't have known about it, and I probably wouldn't have skipped church just to come down for that anyway, so it's not like it was a loss or anything.
We spent quite a bit of time in the staff lounge, getting introduced and organized. Actually, it was kind of funny/sad/horrifying, but when Dave asked one of the other girls there if she could name one of the Inductees (without looking at the paper he'd given us, or the Toronto Star article on the table in front of her), she couldn't name a single one! *gasp* =P
So yes, I also found out that most of the other Induction weekend volunteers are from Durham...College(?), and that they're part of some sort of sports...management(?) program or something. There was, however, one other guy named Howie who, like me, wasn't from Durham. Apparently he's helped out with a lot of NHL events, like the Awards ceremonies, the draft, the All-Star game, etc. Pretty cool.
Anyway, I spent the first part of the day shadowing this guy named Andrew. At first he was in the Great Hall, so I was there too. Quite a few people were lined up to take pictures with the Cup, so I tried to make myself useful by answering questions like whether or not they could use their own cameras for the picture (yes, you can), if you have to pay first (no, you take it down to the store to pay for and pick up the picture), and once I even got asked where Wayne Gretzky's was (99 Blue Jay Way--thank goodness I remembered the address from when I saw it on my way to watch Hairspray!!!). ^_^ Plus I directed quite a few people to the vault to see the original bowl presented by Lord Stanley. So even though I wasn't taking the pictures or anything, hopefully I was somewhat useful.
Oh, and I learned something new too!! I either didn't know, or forgot that there were some names inscribed inside the bowl--the 1906 winners, I believe. Also I got one of the things I'd heard about how you can tell the traveling Cup apart from the Hall Cup. See, on the original cup, one of the players from the 1983-84 Oilers managed to sneak his father's name onto the real (traveling) Cup, so when they figured it out, they x'd it out. On the Hall Cup, the name was simply omitted. Oh, and by the way, the real Cup is currently on display in the Hall, since the Hall one is in Montreal getting engraved.
So after that I followed Andrew to do door duty, i.e. watching the doors between the store and the Hall. Basically all you have to do is check that people coming in have their hands stamped. Oh, and you're supposed to ask if they saw the Cup when they're leaving, but I think most people don't really bother with that part. =P So Andrew and I talked, and I found out that he's in his last year at Central Tech high school, which was interesting since I know someone who teaches there. Then he went on his lunch break and Simon replaced him.
Again, the door isn't usually all that busy, so I got to talk to Simon for a bit. That was neat since he's going to Japan to teach English--something I've considered doing. He just graduated from the kinesiology program in Western, and he wanted to take a break from school and do some traveling--so Japan. Pretty cool.
Then we went to the Rink Zone to do crowd control in the fan forum. That was a pretty relaxing job, since the crowd didn't really need any controlling, and we got to listen to the fan forum. Bourque, Coffey, Murray and Fletcher were all really good speakers. They answered questions very well, and often in a witty/humourous manner. Also, they managed to adroitly talk around those sticky lockout questions.
When they finished, all the volunteers made a sort of human wall and tried to prevent/hinder fans from rushing after them (the Inductees) as they left. And that was basically my day. It probably sounds boring, but I found it quite fun. I especially enjoyed being able to answer guests' questions and to provide information and suggestions. Man, I really should be working there!! =P
Anyway, here's a pic of me in my snazzy HHOF t-shirt (*gasp* NOT tucked in for this photo--that was a big thing, tucking in our shirts! ^_~):
Woohoo! Induction weekend is off to a very good start with the Legends Game! It was quite a lot more entertaining than I thought it would be. Sure, it wasn't exactly edge-of-your-seat hockey, but it was pretty fun. One of the refs doubled as the emcee, and he was basically all jokes. I mean, he gave Napier 2 minutes for "being old", and would've given him another 2 minutes later on, except that Napier said "I promise I won't do it again", so he let him off! =P
Legends
Bourque!!
Kalan Porter (woo hoo) was there during the first intermission, singing "Awake in a Dream", with a whole crew of figure skaters as a sort of accompaniment. Steph and I were having a ball. Everytime they announced that he would be performing during the first break, we'd be like "woo hoo! That's what I'm here for!" and just crack up.
Porter Performing
Porter and Lanny McDonald
The coolest part was that after the game, Steph and I got to attend the autograph session in the Air Canada Club section!! My friend Karvin works for Upper Deck (he used to run the place where I buy my comics, but now he's left it all to his parents), and he had some extra tickets to the session, so we got to go!! It was extremely nice of him to think of me, and I'm definitely going to have to bake him some cookies or something as a thank you!!
Anyway, they were only supposed to be autographing the Legends jerseys, but we managed to catch some of them before they sat down for the formal signing stuff: Doug Gilmour and Darryl Sittler. We almost got Lanny McDonald too, but before he could get to us, he had to go for the signing stuff. Then just as we were about to leave, Steph noticed Grant Fuhr was just kind of standing around, so we got his autograph and pictures with him!!
Gilmour, Sittler
McDonald, Fuhr
Oh, and we also saw John Liu doing some taping in the lower bowl while we just sitting around waiting:
All in all, it was a most excellent experience, and I can't wait until tomorrow when I get to actually help out!!
Okay, with the Induction this weekend, I thought it'd be cool to make some baked goods in honour of the inductees, Ray Bourque, Paul Coffey, and Larry Murphy. Since I always make cupcakes, I wanted to try something different this time, and settled on sugar cookies.
So I decorated a third of the cookies with the Bruins' logo (for Bourque), another third with the Oilers' logo (for Coffey), and left the final third plain so I could use my decorating pen for the Red Wings' logo (for Murphy).
Now, usually the icing remains wet, but according to the instructions on the back of the gel, if you decorate before baking, it should "bake to a shiny finish and dry when completely cool." I figured this would be a good thing since (theoretically) this dry, shiny finish would also make the cookies, unlike the cupcakes, stackable.
Anyway, from the title of my post, I'm sure you can figure out what happened. Yup, I learned the hard way that the cookies actually weren't stackable! =P The worst part is that I actually tested one of cookies first, and it seemed okay! I took one of the plain ones and put it on top of the most demented looking Oilers cookie--I even pressed it down pretty hard--and when I pulled the plain one off, the logo was fine. So a bit later I figured I'd put the coookies away in a container, and of course, it was only AFTER I'd stacked them all up that I discovered my initial test had provided a false-positive result--they were all stuck together!! ^^;;
Well, not all, actually. Even though most of the cookies turned out badly, and therefore I wouldn't be able to give them to the HHOF staff, I had thought that I might be able to at least give Kevin and Phil one of each of the different cookies. According I put aside two sets of the cookies on styrofoam plates. Since I had to leave for small group, I asked my brother to just cover the plates with plastic wrap, and that turned out to be a bad idea. The plastic sagged while he was wrapping the plates, and--you guessed it!--got stuck to the icing, totally messing up the Boston logo on one of the plates!!
So yeah, basically this experiment was quite the disaster. Oh well. At least I got pictures of the best looking cookies before they got messed up!
Woohoo!! It was exactly one week from the time my credit card was charged to the arrival of my stuff from Sweden (Modo gear)!!!! I'm very impressed with Swedish shipping/efficiency! Even stuff from within Canada doesn't get here much faster than that!
The cap actually looks a lot better in reality than it did in the photo, and the scarf is great! I can't wait until it's cold enough to start wearing it!! The Forsberg t-shirt is officially my new favourite!! It's beautiful, and (the material is) oh so soft! If the length was just a bit shorter, it'd be a perfect fit too!
Unfortunately they sent me the wrong jersey (I ordered the Forsberg customized one, but I received a plain one), but since it's their mistake, I don't have to pay for the shipping, so it's not that bad. The worst part of it is that the return/claim form they included with the waybill was in Swedish, so I couldn't read it; plus the guy who handles the online store emails is on vacation until Nov. 8th, so it's going to be a while before I can get this straightened out. >_<
Ah well. Did I mention how the packaged the stuff? Pretty shady! They just put it in (what I'm presuming is) their regular Modo thick paper bag, stapled the sides and the opening up, folded it over and taped it! Definitely not the most secure packaging! At any rate, it got to me all in one piece, so I guess I can't complain. Anyway, I'll post pics of my new gear once I find out where my dad put the memory card for my digicam! =P
