Big game tonight

Here we are, game 7 of the stanley cup playoffs... doesn't get much bigger than this. Time for Kevyn Adams to get his first Stanley Cup of the playoffs... I predict Carolina to win 3-1, crushing the surgeing Oil... nice try though...

It's pretty much my favourite animal...

New House, New Haircut... Half the time I think she's the perfect Liger, but the other half I think she looks like a fat furry iguana...You make the call.

There is a place in this world for diet pop...

The youth at our church tried this with success last week... adding mentos to diet pop to make it shoot way up in the air... I was looking for videos and found this variation... sweet

Fresh off a stay on exile island...

He's back folks... the former nhl coach of the year, Ted Nolan is back in the NHL this year with the Islanders. It was puzzling why Nolan hadn't been thrown a bone after a great couple seasons in Buffalo about 8 years ago. The Islanders desperately need someone good to turn their crappy team around, so Nolan could be good. Nolan coached the Moncton Wildcats in the QMJHL (The Quebec Major Junior Hockey League or LHJMQ in francais) to the Memorial Cup Final, unfortunately defeated by the Quebec Ramparts (Coached by Patrick Roy himself). Best of luck Mr Nolan, you'll probably need it.

You really think the Quebecois could think of some better name for the league than inverting and translating the english version... League du Hockey Junior Major du Quebec...

Carolina in 7...

I'd love to go for the underdogs again and pick the oil for the cup, but I have to go with the ol' heart and root for the wonderdog, Kevyn Adams, to hoist the cup! Kevyn leads the Hurricanes in faceoff win % at a little over 60% success... Although, he hasn't had a point yet in this playoff, I think he'll come up with some clutch shot blocks this series to help the Canes defeat the Oilers in 7 games...

I can't purely make my decision on the Canadian team vs the American team... it's a flawed argument as most of the players, who make up the team, are Canadian on either side, with a bunch of Euros and the odd American (ie Adams) mixed in. With the same reasoning, if it were Ottawa vs Carolina in the finals, I could never pick the Sens to win, regardless of whether they're Canadian or not...

I expect a lot of good battles with more grit from Brind'amour and Adams, and expect to see Stillman keep rolling along on another stellar playoff... It'll be fun to watch Pronger wallpaper more people and Ryan Smith grind his share of goals in, but I think the victory will ultimately go to the Canes. Keep on trucking...

mIND sUCCESSFULLY bLOWN...

for the second year in a row... Man, the creators of LOST know what they're doing... I'm more hooked... Did you see it? What do you think? If you haven't seen it, watch the finale... Crazy.

Wow... this is funny

I couldn't help but watch this video multiple times... not sure what they were arguing about... but funny.

click HERE

oh, then watch this... not the other way around...

right HERE

Then, confronted with new evidence... try a bit of this...

HERE

Three for Four aint bad...

Apart from my oversight in the Colorado/Anaheim series, I picked 'em all right. It was fun watching Edmonton turn it on to overcome the 2-0 and win the series in 6. It was more fun to watch the demise of the Ottawa Senators and hear the yearly "We're not going to make any major changes to our team this offseason..." Glad to hear it. Carolina rolled over probably the hottest team in the NHL... cudos.

Here they are folks, ROUND 3 Predictions...

Carolina (2) vs Buffalo (4)

Well, carolina's my team this year, so here they go to the Cup finals by beating the Sabres in 6 games... it'll be a tough one, but the Wonderdog will light the lamp this series...


Anaheim (6) vs Edmonton (8)

Aside from being the only Canadian team left, they have some good work ethic, an insane Home crowd and some pretty hot players (meow...) They're facing the hottest current team in the playoffs, but they're still the Mighty Ducks. Even if they pull out the flying V and the knucklepuck, I dont think they'll manage to change their fate of losing to Edmonton in 7 games. Sure, the ducks are flying, but the Oilers are greasing... go oil!

3 minutes... later

I've been listening to the official LOST podcast on my iPod lately, which is giving me some bits of information to keep me rabid for the show... for instance, tonight's episode is entitled "3 minutes" and is supposedly about wha' happen'd to Michael in the woods the last while. I'm getting pretty ramped for next weeks 2 hour finale with Desmond returning into the mix... gotta love those back-stories filling in those bits of info we all love and crave.

>:4 8 15 16 23 42 EXECUTE

Closest I've ever gotten...

Finally, I have picked someone who's done well in Survivor... Danielle got 2nd place... I picked her and Dan to do well, and neither got voted off first. Booyah.. Congratuations Aras, your ok in my books. Too bad for terry, he's cool. One more thing... faking always is the hardest instument slowly portrayed really exactly greatly not always nicely there.

LOST tonight...

can YOU dig it?

Playoff Predictions

Well, the leafs are gone with the wind, so I figured I'd try my hand at predicting the outcome of other teams... I've decided to root for Carolina because they have Kevyn "the wonderdog" Adams on their team... Anyways, here's my predictions for the 2nd round.

Sanjose(5) vs Edmonton (8)

Edmonton in 6 games... I like edmonton this year, and Chris Pronger has been huge this playoff... they'll have trouble with Cheechoo and Marleau, but squeak it out in 6 games.

Anaheim (6) vs Colorado (7)

Colorado in 5... for no other reason than the fact that my Church league hockey team is the Avalanche...

Ottawa (1) vs Buffalo (4)

Ottawa sucks... so does buffalo... Nobody wins this series, they'll all have season ending injuries when their planes crash head on... Buffalo in 6

Carolina (2) vs New Jersey (3)

Carolina of course... the leadership of Adams is too much for the Devils... they lament not signing Satan in the off season and they pay for it now...
Carolina in 5

Winding Down.... and up...

So, LOST is finally back to a new episode... I don't know about you, but I look forward to my Wednesday night LOST experience and am thrown off a bit whence it is cancelled or re-runned. There's probably 4 episodes left, in which they'll probably fill in some of the storyline to tie off some loose ends, while at the same time, showing us enough of the big picture to keep us hopelessly hooked until september, When they'll give us a bunch of information, then slow-play us until next May...

I wish I were patient enough to wait a couple years and get the dvd sets to get all the answers. Or I could just re-invent the time machine...

Here's our new baby...

This is our new cat, Moggy... she's real small and cute and she doesn't really like me yet... It's kinda like we cloned Amerylis, but over cooked the clone cause she's got a darker face. She's pretty funny when she wants to be. This picture is of her reading by association and preparing for next christmas... she'll also know everything there is to know about our new house. I wanted to name her Chewbakka, but Faith thought she was too attractive for that. We almost compromised by naming her Mongo, but figured that'd be in poor taste... Good luck Moggy, hopefully Jooje won't hate you forever.

Boy, were you way off...

the new thing in the house is a new CAT!!! what were you thinking... silly people.

and then there were three...

so there's something different at the Grace homestead... the balance has been thrown off and there is something new in the home. I can't tell you exactly what it is, but it does have something to do with chocolate. I like chocolate... Jooje hasn't given her comment yet, but she isn't too sure about it either.

That's all I can say right now... I think they're listening... the others... watch LOST on wednesday... it's getting freakin good.

My name is Henry Gale, I'm from Minnesota

wow, I'm glad they finally gave us some information to chew on this week on LOST. I was searching google to find out what the black light brings out on the blast door in the hatch, and found a site with some interpretation and magnification of the images. check it out... can't wait to see what they do with Henry and if Hurley's gonna plummet... what ever happened to Michael? Good show...

So, we bought a house...

I'd like to say that we've been too busy buying a house to post anything for the past few weeks, but I'm just too lazy. We bought a house in Kitchener. I wanted to wait to post a picture of the sold sign, but now I'm the opposite of lazy. It's really exciting. Everything will be sorted out by the end of the week, by which time I will be poorer than I've ever been. So long as the inspection on Friday doesn't go horribly wrong, this beauty will be ours... so there.

Much Ado about NOTHING...

... but am I really surprised?

Today was the holiday that should be a Statuatory one, NHL Trade Deadline Day! I couldn't help but check every few hours/minutes to see if there were any new surprising trades reported. Sure, as a Leaf fan, I don't have much to be excited about on these days, it's true... the Leafs typically suck on these occasions, and didn't dissappoint in that regard this year, but there's always hope that this will be the day that Antropov, Hoglund, Kristich, Renberg, (Insert scapegoat's name here) will be dealt away never to be seen again. However, the Leafs have a bad habit of giving crap players too much of a chance... their problem is that they're too nice...

oh well

Farewell Mr Klee... you were cool in your early days, but more of a chump recently... So long Mr Czerkawski, I never liked you anyways... And goodbye mr conditional draft-pick... you probably wouldn't crack the nhl lineup anyways.

In with the old...

Welcome Mr Richardson, I hope your stay is short and more Leetch-esque than Housley-esque. Good Day Mr Suglobov, I hope your tenure with the Marlies is fruitful.

Anne of Green Gables is playing a victim on CSI Miami tonight...

Here's to hope... that the Leafs will get their collective heads out of their collective keesters and make the playoffs...

Booyah

We're Baaacck

Well, that was quick. We just got back from a 9 day mission trip to the Czech Republic. It was both long and short and a lot of fun and work. The following are a few examples of things we did, if you want to see or hear more, come over... I filled our new digi-cam with 450 pictures and videos...

A big part of our time there was playing hockey. Playing hockey used to be the good excuse to get a visa to enter the country, but now it's more of a good way to get people's attention. We've noticed that if we play better against a Czech team, they are more likely to listen to what we have to say and will likely respect us more for our game. It's strange playing hockey against them cause we've been taught the Canadian style of hockey, safe plays and crashing the net. They've learned that a long pass up the middle that will result in a breakaway 1 out of 15 times is the way to go and they really enjoy the drop pass inside the blue line. We found that the breakaways didn're really bother us playing against them, but I got the rare chance to play with a Czech team against a Czech team and boy, did I feel out of place. This photo was taken on Monday when we played the HC Skulls, featuring a bar-code instead of a name on the back of the jersey. We won 18-11, but found that there were a couple players on their team that I had met 4 years ago in the same town. They invited me to play for them on Wednesday, so I donned the HC Skulls jersey for a game. It was a lot of fun, but me being a Canadian, I crashed the net waiting for the puck to arrive and the rest of the players were still farting around inside the blue line. I felt a bit out of place, but I did score a goal, which made me feel better. We won 6-5. It was funny to me that some of the Czechs on the other team hit me a few times, spotting me as the outsider... I laughed because I never get hit in the non-contact league I play in so it's funny to me when I get rocked. This photo was taken with a guy who rocked me late in the game when I had my head down. I lifted my head only to see orange and then I was on my can... he's a good guy. On the week, we won 3 games and lost one in a shootout. After the game we won 18-11, we had a shootout for fun with everyone from both teams, so I scored my patent pending goal with my stick between my legs... it was priceless. Hockey was good.

Another really cool opportunity we had was to go into local public school classes and talk for a class. Some classes were English classes so we helped them practice, some were classes in Grography so we told them about Canada. The class in the picture was a lot of fun, we shared about Canada, they shared some of their culture and I made balloon animals for everyone. I'll never forget when the teacher (the one in the red turtle-neck with the whie poodle on his head) showed us the Czech version of the hokey pokey song and did the "put your bum in... put your bum out... shake it all about...." Very hot.... It was a lot of fun talking to kids, telling a bit about why we were there and entertaining. This was the first trip in Hlinsko that got to go into the schools and the Principal gave us an open invitation to come back anytime, a big door opened to the missionaries in the town. Very cool.

Prague was very cool, we had a day to experience the city, do the tourist thing and have fun. My feet still hurt from all the walking, but it was a good day. We saw the castle, ate lunch at the patio of the Lubkowicz Palace Cafe in the Castle. That was very cool, with a very nice view of Prague, and very good food. We saw a girl get her foot smashed by the Castle Guard's rifle because she got too close during a photo. Very funny, I mean, where's her head... you just don't get too close. One thing I found weird, especially during the olympics, was that I could not find a single good quality Czech Hockey Jersey for a reasonable price. There were lots of cheap cheap ones and there was only 1 place I found that had Nike Jerseys with no name or number for about $200 cdn... crazy.

Woke up at 4:30 am in Prague to catch our flight at 7am and ended up in Kitchener at 8:30 pm (2:30am Monday in Prague). Such a long day, with a 6 hour layover in the mostly forgettable Amsterdam. I mean, the red light district was gross, the uncooked big mac's were gross and all the nice buildings had construction blocking any good pictures... blech... We're home now, and I'm sick and tired of being jet-lagged, sick and tired... good trip though. Want to do it again.