Gonzai Gallery

I know it wasn't entirely Bruins fans, but it was the majority. They know who they are.


( Racist Tweets Greet Joel Ward Goal )

PS - why do the OT goals always come a couple minutes after I give up and go to bed? I wasn't even asleep yet. I coulda had a living room party, dangnabbit.

OK, I somehow survived a weekend of full 8 hour days all week, not sleeping all week, WWDTM Thursday, gaming Friday, dog show/Capitals/Dr Who Saturday and Easter with the nephews. And oh yeah, got the cable system upgraded to include 6 months of free HBO (man, it'll be hard to give it up again) which grants unfettered access to Treme, but means I have to try once more to teach Mom the difference between SD and HD. Now that most of our channels are HD...

Something new to make me feel old. The retirement of NHL goaltender Olaf Kolzig.

Olie the goalie arrived as a backup in Washington right about the same time I discovered ice hockey and, by extension, the Capitals. We were six months apart in age and had similar interests, so we talked a lot at Caps practices. (We won't get into how many autographs I have from him.) I did a couple of portraits of him in various Caps gear and went to see him when he sent to the minors. When he became a 'star' player, he didn't always stop to give autographs after practice (too many people out there) but always had time to stop and talk to me. I haven't seen him since the Capitals moved their practice facility to Virginia, and last year he had a falling out with the Capitals and played last season with Tampa. Now he's retiring. Seventeen years of hockey, always with Olie the goalie in the picture.

It'll be way different watching hockey this season. I'm already greatly diminshed in my interest and the absence of Olie won't help.

OK...I decided to try reverse psychology on the Caps. It seemed to be working - when I watched they committed penalties and gave up goals. When I watched the DVR, the Caps would score. Then they went to OT and I'd finished my shows, but the DVR was about to start on Castle so I figured, I won't see the rest of the game, maybe the Caps will win. They won - and didn't wait for me to stop watching. The checking line scored off a faceoff.

So off to Game 7 we go, back in DC. Now I'm conundrumed - do I watch the game or not? And it's against the finale of Lost, which doesn't help!

But apparently the Caps didn't need me in red last night. Ovechkin and Varlamov handled everything just fine, thanks. And dueling hat tricks. Nice game.

Although, Crosby complaining about people throwing hats after a hat trick? Huh? Yo, traditionalists, your golden boy just trashed one of your most cherished traditions.

Game over. Caps win the game 2-1 and the series 4-3, in their first comeback from down 3-1 in over 20 years. The oldest guy on the team (Sergei Fedorov) scores with about 5 minutes left. I'm still trying to relax, without much success. Poor Cj was on my lap when Fedorov scored. I kinda bear hugged her. Hard. I don't think she'll be on my lap during hockey too much more!

Snurched from kradical / terri_osborne 

( 50 Things Meme )

Well, failed to reconcile the Vista vs ITunes situation, but at least I managed to convince ITunes to rip CDs again. Slowly but surely, my music collection goes digital. I was able to update my website for a change, and even posted the one new piece of art I've done in the last few months that worked out. That would be Pushing Daisies' Emerson Cod - usually I either go quick and use pencils, or do reverse drawing (white on black) but given the emphasis on color in 'Daisies' I decided to do Emerson in full color. So here goes my first attempt at a cut, Emerson's bottom right:
I screwed up the BSG tape, so I'll try again with the new ep today, I taped it again last night. Finally saw Revenge of the Sith for the first time. Yikes, but someone needs to not let Lucas write/direct. Better than 1 & 2, at least. Meanwhile I have got to stop watching the Capitals - they're terrible when I'm watching, but (apparently) quite good when I'm not.

The dog show was all right - they had something called 'Meet the Breeds', which rocked. 4-5 dogs of different breeds were in a small area and you just walked right in, met the dogs and talked to their owners. Lots of fun for everyone, good for photo-taking, just a great idea. And we found some orthopedic shoes that Mom is just loving, she'd better love 'em for $70 (I paid). But the place was so huge we really couldn't take in the whole thing, and the first people we met weren't very nice, so it cast a pall on the day. My run-in was with a woman who had a total hissy fit because I had a camera with me in the general vicinity of her and her dog. She felt I was there to photograph her dog, put the pic on the web and claim I owned the dog.(!) There's paranoid, and then there's her. Rule refresher: spectators are encouraged to bring cameras and take photos. And there's pros taking photos all over the place. Get used to it. Afterwards the restaurant we were going to turned out to be not open yet, but we found a nice Irish pub and had burgers while sitting on a couch watching rugby. Very cool.