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The Men's Choir (aka, the male half of the Sanctuary Choir) got to do an ensemble piece of our own this morning, which was the highlight of my week, because when we do an ensemble piece there's a 99% chance we get to act like complete dorks in front of the congregation.

The hockey gods are clearly angry with me: the train was late, I got bowled over by a player who lost their edge, and I had an asthma attack during the clinic. On the other hand time put in at the gym has resulted in a pleasantly pretzel-ish sense of flexibility and range of motion while playing.

Yesterday, the driving instructor got the wrong street, and called me from five miles away on the wrong side of two highways. Today, I get home from work expecting to grab some lunch and chill before my driving time at 4, only to find I'm apparently scheduled for 2. I know full well I scheduled for 4pm, I wrote it down while talking to the driving school when I initially scheduled the sessions. Argh.

Immensely frustrated that my mom (who is currently physically incapable of driving) won't let my dad take me and the car to a nice, isolated parking lot to practice getting used to controlling a 2,000lb death machine the controls. She's driven that car maybe once since she bought it a year-ish ago, and no one's driven it at all in the past two or three months. It's not even a scary-fancy-fast car either, it's a nice, sedate little honda accord. Currently, I'm paying for driving lessons myself, but even yesterday the instructor was like yeah, you need some time in a parking lot, because you're not used to this machine and you're going to get hurt or hurt someone else. Faster I get good at driving, faster I get my license, faster I get that nice EMT job and get out of here. Argh. (I mean I get her being protective of the car, but the car has been rotting in a snowbank since the end of January)

Drove a car today for the first time in something like 8 years. Instructor was patient. My technique is horrendous but I didn't destroy anything and it was a lot less traumatic than anticipated.

Isolation is no good. Is where you are walkable at all? Even just get outside and commune with the trees, or something. Try to get a little time for yourself, something fun - run, walk, shoot pucks, bird watch, walk to the drugstore, listen to good tunes - every day. Something to look forward to and clear your brain. Sorry to hear you're in a rough patch.

I played once in Saugus (1st year playing) and twice in Newton a few years ago. The novice league in Newton was a bit of a crapshoot, they'd gotten rid of the B/C "primetime" level and so a bunch of B players dropped down to D. I could walk to the rink, though, so I was willing to deal with it.

It just... hasn't come out of the chrysalis yet. Yeah, that's it. Still pupating. I skate Saturdays in Somerville before the clinic, nowhere else so far. I tried StinkySocks but I think I'll hold off on that until I have goalie skates so I don't end up with a broken foot.

A couple of pics of me today - guy who runs the clinic will take some "after" photos when the spring session is done. Oh god my butterfly is a shameful thing to behold. Can I pretend that some of it is because I don't have goalie skates yet? No? Okay.

I'm probably going to be referred to some other specialist with lots of letters after their name, but no one seems urgently concerned, so that's good. Have you ever seen that cheesy scifi/horror movie "The Stuff"? Imagine having to eat that while having x-rays taken.

Hockeytown Saugus is where we play when the Hockey Gods are angered and we are being punished. And to make it legit, here's a photo of me (albeit in my first year playing) at Saugus:

Had a barium swallow study today. 0/10, do not recommend. There is not enough ginger ale in the known universe to erase the taste from my mouth. On the other hand, watching video x-rays of myself swallowing is actually pretty cool.

That's Hockeytown in Saugus. The photo makes it look a lot nicer than Hockeytown looks in person.

Thinking about it, it might be a space constraint issue. A lot of the rinks here are your basic quonset hut over an ice sheet design (or, a box over an ice sheet). Players/scorekeeps on one side, spectators on the other. Or, in at least one rink, players/scorekeeps/spectators on one side, and a wall on the other:

Admittedly I don't spend a great deal of time in the box, but off the top of my head, most of the rinks I've skated at go like this: bench 1 - penalty box - scorekeeper's box - penalty box - bench 2. There is one rink nearby where the visitor's bench, box penalty boxes, and the scorekeeper's box are on one side, and the home bench is on the other.

I can't think of any of the rinks I've played at around here that have glassed-in penalty boxes. Some of them don't even have partitions between bench and box. Penalized players in So-Cal can't behave themselves?

The Mozart (Requiem) went beautifully this morning, although there's still some hiccups to be ironed out before next week. The choir and the congregation had a wonderful musical "Moment" at the end of service, singing Amazing Grace acapella as the final hymn. I'm reminded why I love singing so much. Our director was so pleased with us as we ran through everything in the morning, she said, "You sound great, I could've had call 15 minutes later." (cue rumblings from the choir - call was at 8:30am for a 10am service.)

Oh, I happily watch many of them, and try to take notes so I can remember what to try at the gym. Some of the exercises are stuff I incorporate from past physical therapy as well, for balance and the like. I'm actually really flexible to begin with, but for me there's a very fine line between "I don't feel any stretch" and "oh jesus I think I dislocated something". I can sprawl and flare and do the splits all day, but I need to build up the strength to go with that more than the initial flexibility. Hm, that does sound weird/uncomfortable. I try to get up the same way I do as a skater. Do you have the same problem there?

I mean, I'm not bounding up and down like Carey Price or anything, for sure, but I'm also not taking five minutes to convince myself to get up, and then to actually do it. Some of my problems with getting up were (and are) balance-related (i.e., getting over the fear I would topple), some are strength. I think what helped most was this modified version of an exercise I saw on InGoal - this one - except instead of using a resistance band and pulling across, I get in that same position and toss a 2lb medicine ball from one hand to the other. A different version is holding the medicine ball straight out in one hand and kind of leaning forward and back while still in the same kneeling position. Another goalie also suggested doing squats with a kettlebell.

I took about 4 pucks to the insides of my knees today. Getting a bit tired of that nonsense. Resolved: go to the LHS and get some knee pads to fix up the gap between my pants and the way-too-small thigh wraps that came with my pads. Hopefully also get some skates while I'm at it. (that's going to be a fun learning curve). After a couple of weeks of balance and core exercises at the gym, getting back up is noticeably easier.

It was such a nice day today. The snow's been melting nicely, and I unearthed my bike to ride to work for the first time in almost two months. People at workplace were even (mostly) friendly.

Well, to clarify: after pickup on Saturdays, I attend a clinic in the next time slot. Goalies are usually free but you can pay $20 for a semi-private practice. Three of the coaches in general have played goal, and two of them are specifically goalie coaches. It's a fantastic deal and I'm incredibly grateful it's available. The other guy did get lit up! Not quite as efficiently as I did, but he still did. The teams were really lopsided, and I think I would've been a little angry as a player to be skating against a team that was, on the whole, probably closer to upper intermediate than novice or D. Bender - I would not have minded facing a few more shots than I did after we swapped ends, but the other team would've had to get past the blueline, and that wasn't really happening. (see also: lopsided.) At least not til the end.

Nothing like letting in 5 goals in 10 minutes to flatten your self-confidence. First time playing 5 on 5 full ice, and it's a lot different than the smaller rink. Teams were pretty lopsided - it wasn't just me, because the ref switched us goalies after the 5th goal I let in, and he got lit up. Poor guy. And this was supposed to be a novice pickup? But I did feel like I was doing better in the latter 15-20 minutes of the game. Slightly different angles to read and, of course, in a new situation, everything the goalie coach has been beating into your head for a month flies out the window.

So my phone is my alarm clock, and being a phone, it automatically updates the time to/from daylight savings. Unfortunately, I discovered that its feeble little electronic mind also thinks that setting my alarm forward an hour is also a good idea. No, you wretched little device, I needed to get up at 5, not 6. Luckily I'm high strung and tend to wake up in advance of my alarms, so I managed to get up at 5:30 when my internal clock pinged at me that something was awry and I should not doze off again.

The softball league I play in has ratings like that - in the lowest division, you can't have more than I think 3 players on the roster with a rating higher than [x], and so on and so forth. As teams/players improve they can get bumped up to another division, or can drop down with attrition. But it's a big league and I'm not sure most hockey leagues around here could handle putting in the effort to create a proper litmus. Optimus - that's great, congrats on the win. My partner in crime at pickup says mixed-skill and novice games are always the hardest for goalies, since you can't predict the players' actions as well.