Last Night’s Canucks Game

Only two days into my 1001 days and already I get to cross something off my list!

43. take Tod to a Vancouver Canucks game

Last night I took Tod to his first ever Vancouver Canucks game.  Shocking, I know.  He has lived¹ his whole life in BC, most of it in and around Vancouver, without ever having gone to a Canucks game.  Mercifully, this has now been rectified.

You’ll note, however, that I didn’t specify on my list that I would take him to a good hockey game.  You know, like a game in which we wouldn’t have to give our goalie the hook at 3.5 minutes into the game because he had already been scored on TWICE!  Sanford came into replace LaBarbera and soon was inexplicably behind the net with Gionta (a Devils player) putting the puck into the net².  Combine those with the fact that the Canucks let the Devils win every battle for the puck and let the Devils skate around them as if they were a bunch of pylons and it was so bad that the whole stadium booed the Canucks off the ice at the end of the first period!  A little kid a few rows back was heard asking, quite loudly, “Why do they suck so much?”

Thankfully, the ‘nucks came out much better in the second and third periods.  They managed to make a game of it and there was some entertaining hockey to be watched.  Surprisingly, though, there wasn’t a single fight.  I think I’ll have to accomplish #44 on my 101 list (take Tod to a Vancouver Giants game) to see the fighting action. Who knows, maybe we’ll even get to see another full team brawl!

In somewhat related news, when I was telling a friend of mine at work that I’d been at the game last night and mentioned that the Canucks were playing the New Jersey Devils, my friend said, “Oh really? I met a bunch of NFL players from New Jersey on Sunday.”  She meant NHL (but that’s an indication of just how much she’s interested in pro sports) and after a quick look at the Devils’ website, we discovered that she was partying with Dainius Zubrus and Zach Parise that night.  Parise, as it happens, is on my hockey hotties list and it looks like Zubrus needs to be added to my roster!

¹Although whether one can say they’ve truly lived without having been to see a Canucks game is up for debate.
²I miss you Roberto. Please say the rumors that you are coming back tomorrow are true!

Photo credit: Tod Maffin on Flickr.

Canucks Sign Mats Sundin

Only 27,852 days after he last played a game, Mats Sundin has signed with the Canucks.  Just like me, he decided to move from the freezing cold that is the GTA to the warm loveliness that is Vancouver¹

My dad is a life long Leafs fan², so he’s been quite interested in where old Mats would finally end up.  And the possibility that he³ might sign with the Canucks, along with the fact that we already have the Sedin twins, provides my dad with no end of amusement. In pretty much every phone conversation I’ve had with him this year, my dad has done his impression of a play-by-play guy for a Canucks game with Mats on the team. It goes something like this:

“It’s Sedin to Sundin, back to Sedin over to Sedin… no wait, that was Sundin.. to Sedin, he shoots…  rebound picked up by Sundin and he scores!!!!!!!!”

So glad I’m not a Canucks play-by-play guy right now!

¹Our current subzero temperatures are an anomoly, Mats, I promise!
²Which is almost unforgivable, really. But at least he’s not a Flames fan.
³“He” being Mats, not my dad. My dad was actually property of the Montreal Canadiens in his youth. Seriously.

Happy Trevor Linden Day!

Tonight, the Vancouver Canucks will retire the jersey of Trevor Linden.  Couldn’t happen to a more worthy person!

Skate For A Cure

When I saw Rebecca’s posting today about Skate For A Cure, I jumped on the chance to join her “Bloggers for a Cause” team.

Skate For A Cure is an event that raises funds for the Michael Cuccione Laboratory for Childhood Cancer Research at BC Children’s Hospital. As an incentive to fund raise, they offer a few perks:

• if you raise $150, you get to skate at GM Place!
• if you raise $300, you get to skate at GM Place AND get your picture taken with a Vancouver Canuck player!

OMG! I *totally* want to skate at GM Place!  And have my picture taken with a Canuck!  But, it’s first come, first serve, as space is limited!  So I quickly joined Rebecca’s team and sent an email to family & friends saying “please donate to this cause because it’s really important. And so I can meet a Canuck.  Space is limited, act now already!!!”  I mean, I don’t want to be scooped right?

So, did I ever tell you that my friends rock?  Almost instantly, I had raised $445! In fact, I appear to be the very first person to have raised the $300 required to get a pic taken with a Canuck:

I wonder if this means that I get my choice of Canuck?

Anyway.  I’m telling you all about this because even though I’ve met my initial goal of $300, that’s just a drop in the bucket for what research costs these days (trust me, I’ve done lab research. It ain’t cheap!), so I encourage you to donate to this really important cause.  You can sponsor me here, or you can check out the Bloggers For A Cause team page and sponsor one of the other bloggers to help them reach their goal of getting on the GM Place ice.  Or you can join the fun and register to fundraise yourself!

And thanks again to my amazing friends who have sponsored me already. You guys rock my world!

About the Michael Cuccione Foundation:

Michael Cuccione was a pretty incredible kid. He was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma at age 9 and he decided he wanted to make a difference. Which he did by writing songs and producing a CD (appropriatley named “Make A Difference”), which he sold to raise money for childhood cancer research. By the age of eleven, his CD had raised $130,000! Sadly, he passed away at 16 due to respiratory complications, but his dream of finding a cure for childhood cancers lives on through his foundation.

The Rick DiPietro Report

My recent investigation on hotness levels of NHL players¹ has opened my eyes to the fact that there are apparently hot NHL hockey players that *aren’t* on the Vancouver Canucks². (Who knew?)  Through that research, I became especially enamoured with His Hotness, Rick DiPetro of the New York Islanders³. So, I’ve decided that I will institute a semi-regular⁴ Rick DiPetro update, wherein I’ll check in on how His Hotness is doing this season.

In this inaugural Rick DiPetro Report, I am pleased for first bring you two videos. First, I give you a clip of His Hotness talking at the 2008 All Star game:

You can pretty much watch it with the sound off – he’s just yammering about how it’s good to be here and blah blah blah – but isn’t he adorable?

Second, a video of His Hotness punching⁵ Sean Avery:

And now the actual hockey part.  As it turns out, DiPietro sat the first four games of the season with a bad knee, as he had knee surgery in June and just wasn’t ready for prime time yet.  His first game of the season on Oct 18 – which was also his first game since March when he had to have hip surgery – was a 2-0 loss, despite his valiant effort making 34 saves. Hmm… perhaps I should just go back to my ogling of Ricky D and reserve my actual hockey fanship for my beloved Canucks.

¹This reminds me – the last I mentioned here on NTBTWK, there was going to be a virtual hockey pool draft in which I was going to use my hottie hockey player research to draft a team of super hotties. And then I left y’all hanging. As it turned out, the virtual draft was canceled due to unforeseen circumstances that caused the draft organizer to be unavailable. Which may be for the best, as now I can love all the hotties on my list and not just the ones I managed to get in the draft.
²Canucks GM Mike Gillis, if you are reading^a, I highly suggest you consult my list when it comes time to consider trades.
^aI know you are reading.
³Fortunately, he plays in the East, so I don’t need to be worried about being conflicted when the Canucks play his team, given that we only play each Eastern team once per decade.
⁴by which I mean “whenever I remember to” and/or “when I’m suffering from blogger’s block and can’t think of anything else to write about.”
⁵I would like to state that I take exception to this video being titled “Rick DiPietro slaps Sean Avery.” I mean, he’s pretty clearly punching Sean Avery. Yeesh.

Third Tuesday

Went to Third Tuesday tonight!  I’ve missed the last few due to having other events that I was committed to on those nights, but I managed to get out to tonight’s 3T at Republic¹.  Which was good, ‘cuz I was quite interested in the topic: Marketing New Media to Traditional Decision Makers: Overcoming the Challenges.  I work a lot with what you might call “traditional decision makers” – people who aren’t overly familiar with social media and I was eager to hear more about ways of convincing them that engaging in social media would actually help them meet their goals!

The speaker, Mhairi Petrovic, gave a list of 10 common barriers she runs up against when trying to convince “traditional decision makers” to use social media and some of them totally related to what I’ve seen.  Stuff like people saying “I already use social media” and really they just have a static website with their email address on it. I’ve talked with a few people recently who have asked for my advice on what it would take to “set up a podcast”² and when I dig for future details, it turns out that they want to record one audio file and then put that on their website and figure that their target audience will find it there.  So I find I’m often having to explain that podcasts are not one-offs and that if you are trying to reach a new audience, you have to get out and engage with them over time – people won’t just randomly show up at your website on the off chance that there will be an audio file to listen to.  It seems that because I’m pretty involved in social media – even though it’s for fun, not work – I forget that many other people I work with aren’t and so it was cool to hear about some of the barriers that the less tech-savy perceive, as well as some ammo with which to address these concerns.

For more, check out the liveblog of the event over on Raul’s blog.

Thanks to Tanya & Monica for organizing the event. Also, props to Miss604 who collected donations for the Food Bank and arranged for prizes to encourage people to donate to the Food Bank.  She collected a lot of food and also is still collecting money in the form of a raffle for Canucks tickets for Saturday night’s game”³.  Good work, Rebecca!

¹I’ve only been to Republic once before and I have to say I like this venue much more for a Third Tuesday event than I did for a night of clubbing. It’s too small for clubbing and has a feel like you are in someone’s basement. For 3T, it felt cosy! Also, I liked being in Republic without having to pay $18 cover.
²Which is kind of funny, because I’ve never done a podcast in my life. Not even as a guest. But I’ve listened to podcasts, which makes me the resident expert in podcasting at my work.
³Ooooh, I hope I win! They are lower bowl tickets and the ‘nucks are playing the Oilers. Fingers crossed!!

Hockey Updates

Well, sports fans, hockey season is upon us. The Canucks are undefeated, with two glorious victories against the Calgary Evil Flames. Thursday’s game was a 6-0 thrashing, which came after a beautiful tribute to the late Luc Bourdon, who died in motorcycle accident over the summer. Luc’s best friend on the team, Alex Burrows, scored 2 of the 6 goals. Saturday’s game was closer, but ended in an OT win for the good guys. It’s kind of funny now to remember all the naysayers over the summer and their “The Canucks have no players! Who is going to score the goals?” naysaying. By the looks of the pre-season and the first 2 games of the regular season, the answer to that question is “everyone.” Hell, even Rick Rypien scored a short-handed goal! Seriously!

Also started is the Blazing Blades season. The arena where we play got enough teams to make three divisions instead of the two we had last year. As you may recall, last year we won Div 2 quite easily. We were easily the top of Div 2, but properly would have been slaughtered in Div 1. This year, most of the Div 2 teams are in Div 3, and we are in Div 2 with the bottom team from last’s year’s Div 1 and a couple of new teams. It’s totally more fun, because the games are competitive and we really have to skate hard, have our heads up and really think about what we are doing to stay in the game. Our record so far is 1-2-1-1, including tonight’s tie game. And tonight’s game was quite a physical one – I got *totally* flattened in front of the net. After the whistle, I might add. I was doing what I do best – sitting in my office¹, getting in the goalie’s face and trying to pick up a rebound and, after the goalie covered up and the ref blew the whistle, this chick on the other team punched me in the chest. Like hard enough that I went *flying*. Nice. And later on, a fight broke out! Chaos!! They are lucky I wasn’t on the ice at the time, because I may be little but I am fierce².

NOT started up³ is the UBC Rec hockey league. Well, more accurately, started up and then stopped. UBC Rec only managed to scrounge up 3 women’s teams, and then one of them dropped out. Then, not wanting to play the exact same opponent every single week, the other team bailed too. Sooo lame! I was really looking forward to playing some Aggie hockey. I’m really, really hoping they can get their act together to put together a women’s division for January³, because I just recently picked a class⁴ to teach at UBC next term, meaning I’ll be allowed to play in Rec, if there’s enough teams to put together a division. So, keep your fingers crossed fo rme, k?

¹That’s what we call it when I get all up in the goalie’s face, waiting for a rebound – being “in the doctor’s office.”
²25 points to the first person who correctly identifies the source of that (modified) quotation.
³If you happen to be a woman who goes to, or works at, UBC – or if you know a women who goes to, or works at, UBC – you should totally recruit a bunch of peeps to play hockey next term. I’m just sayin’.
⁴A research methods course. I’m so stoked!

I was saddened to read that Canuck defenceman Luc Bourdon died in a motorcycle accident yesterday. He was just 21.

I remember being quite excited when we drafted him (10th overall) three years ago, because he was quite a talented hockey player. My condolences to his family and friends.

People from all around the world have been sending donations to Canuck Place Children’s Hospice in his name, many for $28 or $28.28 to honour his jersey number (28) and the person who won his jersey at the “Jerseys Off Our Backs” event (where people win the jerseys that each of the Canucks were wearing during the last game of the season) contacted the Canucks to give Bourdon’s last jersey back to his family, which I think is a very generous and thoughtful thing to do. (Canucks.com)

Tweet 800

Yesterday I hit my 800th Tweet. In commemoration of this momentous occasion, and because I am putting all my mad writing skillz into writing this big ole report from my recent work in Yellowknife and thus have none left for blogging so I decided to steal my previous writing from Twitterland, and besides, everyone loves a list, don’t they?, I give you a list of my favourite Tweets:

• Nutrition pop quiz: What would be worse for me to get for a lunch: a Tim Horton’s cheese scone or a Häagen Daaz ice cream bar?
• Had a meeting this morning, followed by a post-meeting debrief meeting. Now, to change things up a bit, I’m going to go run a meeting.
• Rest in peace, green pen I was using to mark exams. You will be missed.
• Just knocked half a cup of coffee onto the floor, on top of a pile of papers. Awesome.
• Summarizing a 500 page Senate report. You know you are jealous.
• Parts of me that hurt: groin injury, neck, left triceps.
• My amount-of-work-to-do to motivation-to-do-work ratio is waaay out of whack.
• Flickr search for photos to use in my nutrition lecture reveals a surprising number of cats are named “Scurvy”
• Best line from the meeting I was at tonight: If there’s one thing that this group needs to do, it’s… something.
• @touchyoulast When is the movie marathon? What movies are you watching? Crimetime? Crimetime? Have you thought about watching Crimetime?
• Not enough hours in the day. And my thigh highs are being less than cooperative.
• I dropped my earring in my coffee this morning. And my very first thought was “I need to Twitter this.”
• The Canucks *finally* listened to my advice to use a Sedin in the shootout. And by “advice,” I mean “yelling at the radio.”
• Drowning Canuck-related sorrows with chocolate chip cookie dough.
• Feeling pressure to Twitter something now that I’ve joined. I have Twitter block!

In an attempt to prove that I’m only partially, and not completed, ego-centric, here are the three Tweets written by other people that I’ve favourited:

• touchyoulast Currently taking care of business. Every day, every way, it’s all mine, and working overtime. Also: work out.
• todmaffin BREAKING: Parliament recommends funding increase for CBC. In related news, pigs have been reported flying and a cold snap in hell begins.
• audihertz Aww… Adam Foote hurt his arme

Also, I just wanted to show y’all that I have 69 followers. Tee hee… 69.

Rejoice, for the exams are marked!

In case you were wondering, I haven’t actually dropped off the face of the earth. The lack of blogging around here has been due to me spending the last several days marking exams. But I am finally, finally, finally done with the marking! Rejoice!

And now that all the students, some of whom apparently read this blog occasionally, have written the exam, I would like to share with you one of my exam questions:

Estimate the daily total energy expenditure of a 38 year old, 220 lb, 6’4” Vancouver Canucks centreman during the hockey season

25 points to the first person who can tell me who the player in that question is!

Somehow, I don’t think Nonis is really “relieved”

This media release just appeared in my inbox:

NONIS RELIEVED OF GENERAL MANAGER & SR VICE-PRESIDENT DUTIES BY VANCOUVER CANUCKS

The Canucks didn’t make the playoffs and now the heads must roll, and it looks like Nonis was at the top of the head-rolling list.

It will be interesting to see what other moves the Canucks make in the next few months in response to this lackluster season. Over on Darren’s blog he mentions a prospect that is being looked at as a potential linemate for the Sedin twins – Fabian Brunnström. Darren mentions Brunnström’s recently career history and stats, as well as the suitability of Vancouver as a place for this young Swede.  But he neglects one important piece of the analysis that must be undertaken on all new Canucks prospects, especially one that will be playing with the Twins.  Hottie or non-hottie?

My extensive research into the topic comes to the following conclusion: Hottie.

Trevor Linden for Prime Minister!

When I was in Vegas last weekend, as we drove by “Wayne Newton Blvd.” on the way to the airport, I said, “I wonder if they will name a street in Vancouver after Trevor Linden?” You see, this season was Trevor’s last in the NHL and with the Canucks not making the playoffs, Vancouver had seen his last game on Saturday night.

Trevor is well recognized for being a great hockey player, an inspirational leader and a humanitarian. I even forgive him for being born in Alberta because although, like me, he may have been born and grew up elsewhere, he is truly a Vancouverite.

I have no doubt that his number will be retired by the Canucks and I hope that he will stay on with the team in some capacity now that his playing days are over. And, as both Darren and Rebecca suggest, I’d love to see a Trevor Linden street here in our city!

Sign the petition to name a street after Trev. You know you want to.

Welcome Gabriela Luongo

Word on the street is that Roberto Luongo and his wife Gina have had a baby girl, who they have named Gabriella. So congrats to them.

And thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster that we will no longer have to hear the jackasses on the sports radio and TV shows saying: “Will Luongo miss a critical game to be with his wife when she gives birth?” and “Should Luongo miss a critical game to be with his wife when she gives birth?” and “Why didn’t they plan to have their kid in the off season so that it wouldn’t interfere with the playoff run?” and, my personal fav, “This is the most important birth since Jesus.”

Update (5:35 p.m.): Apparently young Gabby weighs 7 lbs, 6 oz.  Which just so happens to be what *I* weighed when I was born.  So, clearly, she is destined for greatest.

P.M. #4

The trailer for this week’s installment of “Who Wants to Learn About a Canadian Prime Minister” was brought to you courtesy of Sarah, who I told you was going to have much to say on this series once she returned from Down Under.

Name	Sir John Sparrow David Thompson
Born:	November 10, 1845 in Halifax, Nova Scotia
Died:	December 12, 1894
Party:	Conservative
Held Office:	December 5, 1892 – December 12, 1894
Best known for:	-being the first Catholic P.M.-being the Justice Minister when Louis Riel was hanged (although he was off sick with kidney stones when the execution happened, afterwards he gave a speech in support of it) -dying at lunch with the Queen, right after she had sworn him into the Privy Council
Some Things I Didn’t Know About This P.M.	-he converted to Catholicism about a year after marrying Annie Affleck (no relation to Ben… probably)

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If you are just dying to read more about Sir J.S.D.T? Check out:

• Official Office of the Prime Minister JT bio
• Wikipedia entry
• Library & Archives of Canada
  

Image credit: From from the Library and Archives Canada, copyright is expired.

Back at the start of the season, I downloaded the Canucks schedule into my Palm Pilot calendar. I’ve done this for previous seasons, but this year as an added bonus instead of just offering a download of the dates & times of the games like they did last year, the Canucks set up their schedule through Infuzer, a program that not only puts all the games into your calendar, but downloads updates after the date passes. So, after a game has been played, the next time I synch my Palm, the calendar item will tell me what the score was and, if I read the attached notes, I get a little game summary as well. Which was pretty freaking cool. I say “was” because something went awry with this system while I was in Ontario for the holidays.

The system was working fine at first – it even updated the times of the games to reflect that I was in a different time zone. But after that, it just stopped updating. The last game it updated was the Canucks 5-0 win over the Devils on Dec 18. Since then, no updates. When I returned to Vancouver, it didn’t even update to reflect that I was back in my beloved Pacific time zone, saying instead that home games started at 10 p.m. I just uninstalled and reinstalled Infuzer, and it has now at least fixed the the time zone thing, but updates on game scores are nowhere to be found.

Has anyone out there ever used Infuzer for Canucks (or any other) schedule? Had any problems with it? And suggestions on how to make it work. With the whole uninstall/reinstall thing, I’ve pretty much exhausted all my computer-fixing skills.