badger_14

Made such a strong impression at my interview yesterday that the woman I met with said, essentially, that as soon as I get my driver's license a job with them is as good as mine. (now to practice driving with 12 feet of snow piled on every corner.) Then came home to find I won a new pair of skates in a contest. Sweet.

I have an interview scheduled with a local ambulance company! I know it's just an interview, but hey, it's something.

Now that's worth celebrating.

Clients at workplace were surprisingly even-tempered today, and no one yelled at me or my boss for things that aren't under our control.

The other goalie at pickup very kindly gave me one of his extra sticks to try out and keep, since mine was too small and I don't really have the resources to spend on a new one just now. I can't begin to describe how grateful I am.

Oh, cold weather is fine and dandy. Snow is nice, even. Three major snowstorms in as many weeks (with one forecast on Sat/Sun and one next week sometime) dumping nearly a Zdeno Chara's worth of snow on us ... not so much. Especially when it's pounding the daylights out of our already-in-dire-shape transit system, which some of us rely on.

As soon as people figure out how to clear their $!@%&^ sidewalks, we can have more snow.

Oh god, agreed, I love winter, but I think we need to just cancel Massachusetts for a couple of weeks to sort this out.

Thought I had to open at work today (6:30am), turns out my boss gave the shift to another employee (he forgot I was already scheduled - which is ridiculous because I am still listed on the most recent schedule), and I wound up trudging through the darkness to workplace for nothing. Ugh.

If you could maybe take on the next storm or two until we have somewhere to put the additional snow, that'd be fantastic.

People who do not clear their sidewalks, even if fiscally and/or physically able to do so, should be punished.

Did much better at pickup today (in goal), and actually made some intentional saves (vs. "the puck happens to hit me and not go in").

That's awful to hear. Best wishes for a good recovery.

Never said I liked having oblongball on the speakers, but it kept attrition rates low and meant I got to play more hockey.

At college intramurals, whenever an important sporting event was happening, we'd hook the radio into the PA and fire it up. No need to even leave the ice.

Hey, they've got a certain je ne sais quoi, and if he can rock them, by all means.

I don't have to go in to work tomorrow! (note: I live in the blizzard zone. And work is still open, for some mysterious and unfathomable reason. I work at a gym, for pete's sake. Not an essential service.)

I'll trade you the ability to T-push like a boss for the ability to shuffle more than 10 times without my thigh muscles being on fire. Deal?

It's not so much she has influence, and it's a little more complicated than differences in, say, politics, it's that when she's faced with reminders that I am not the child she anticipated having, she throws a dramatic tantrum. In this case, tore up a piece of employment-related mail of mine. Sooner I pick up work as an EMT (I'll take ER tech at this point) the better. Hah! Thanks for that video. Maybe if I suggest to the music director we can replace the movement in the Requiem with that...

Haha our rehearsal room is usually the children's chapel which is, uh, well, child-size. I figure that even if I can't sing (speaking is difficult at the moment), I can still get familiar with the Mozart, because it is vast and terrifying. Beautiful, yes, but also vast and terrifying. (Last week I literally got lost at least once, and the only words in the section were 'kyrie' 'christe' and 'eleison'.) And also get out of the house.

Getting sick at the worst time: rehearsals are beginning in earnest for Mozart's Requiem, and my brother, SIL, and nephews are coming for a visit. On top of that, my mother is having a royal sh*tfit over a piece of my identity that she disagrees with, and I may have to go infect the choir and ruin my vocal cords just to avoid her for the evening.

Davetronz has good advice - pick one small thing to work on. Hell, I still do that as a forward. And I know that, when I was first learning to skate & play, I definitely had spells where I would plateau and then be terrible for a few weeks, even worse than I was before. I tend to chalk it up to thinking too hard and needing a break to let knowledge percolate. When I went to an adult camp a couple of years ago, I felt like about midway through 12 hours of ice I was just awful and a shame to the game of hockey, but things improved, and after a week off after camp things seemed to click and I started doing better again. Small goals - "I will work on [x] today" and maybe a break to let your brain parse all this weird goalie stuff.

Finally got a chance to try the on-ice version of goaltending. Had intended to go to an clinic followed by a novice scrimmage, but got there well in advance of the clinic and stumbled onto a pick-up session, and was asked to play. (I gave fair warning beforehand, and apologized afterward for being awful). It was very hard to get used to using the pads with skates, especially with player skates. Very different sensation. I could blame a lot of my being terrible on not having a lot of time to stretch or warm up (it's tricky to move when your back seizes up and you can't feel your legs properly), but mostly I think it was just unused muscles and not being used to the skating part. I did get a little better/more comfortable by the end of the pick-up. New pants work just fine - the only bruise I got was on an unprotected patch that could be solved by a little tinkering with the fit of my pads. Also different is the way the puck feels on the stick and pads (blocker, in particular) vs. the ball I'm used to. I thought, though, that with the puck I felt like I knew where it was more, with the ball sometimes it goes bouncing and you think you have it but you don't, and it's somewhere near the blueline. The clinic is a general novice/adult clinic - goalies are welcome to come down for free for target practice, and for an extra fee they can have some goalie-specific lessons. I paid the fee and it ended up being just me and one coach, and I got a chance to work on some basic movement, get the puck bounced off me, shuffle, angling. Aside from the friendly neighborhood back spasming, I felt really good for it being my first time as an ice goalie, and I'm looking forward to trying it again.

Played goalie on-ice for the first time, after accidentally stumbling onto a pickup game on my way to a goalie clinic this morning. Was spectacularly bad and thoroughly enjoyed it. It's going to take me a few rounds to get used to skates + pads. That plus the clinic is two hours in pads on ice this morning, which means I will totally regret this decision tomorrow, but right now I'm in that nice buzzed 'I wish I could do this all day' phase. (eta: yes, I apologized for being terrible.)

It happens so much less these days, but I hate when I wander (with no external influence) into a swath of despair. I haven't been a very good human the past few days. At least it was of short duration.