computers suck.
no, really it's true.
so what if i am tied to one like ick on lice.
i didn't like begin even semi-down for the two and a half weeks or so that i was off. which ended up meaning no updates for almost a month.
and this was even though i still had my laptop which has most of my communications stuff.
on the other hand it doesn't have any of my image fiddling stuff, nor my printing stuff, nor my web publishing stuff. doesn't' really have the capacity for much of it either. silly laptop, outages are for kids.

anyways....on with my life...

I was at milestones tonight and was ordering.
I often get the beef burger with the American toppings (cheddar and bacon).
Tonight I said to my waitress, ‘could I have the beef burger, the one that comes with cheddar and bacon’
She said, ‘you mean the american’  and even before she finished saying that I was shaking my head and she was saying, ‘oh, right you are, cheddar and bacon.’

i don't hate america. but misguided sure seems like a kind enough term to use.

tonight i went to a Ravens game.  the Raven's are vancouver's professional Lacrosse team.  If you don't know, lacrosse is one of the most important games for Canada historically.  Hell, it's even the official canadian sport. Now i am not generally one for watching sports, especially not televised but not usually live either.  But when my buddy Shawn in from out of town said that they were going to go and check out a Lacrosse game i thought, 'It's not like i have much choice.  I used to like playing this game when i was in High School and it is Canada's sport. I have to at least check it out.  And they are barely even semi-pro so it might even be fun.  And most importantly, i can go to a game at GM Place without having to pay hockey prices."

   So i agreed to go. And we did.  And the prices were fine.  We got ok seats in the lower level for only $9.  Had to agree to not drink for that, as it was the non-drinking section, but that was ok, i hate beer anyways.  We didn't really realize at the time that this meant that he section would fill up with families but not too far into the game we began to realize what a boon this actually was. 
   Not to mention the fact that the rather boring and yet somehow kind of annoying 8 19 year olds that were in the row in front of us got ejected from the row by an actual police officer cause they were drinking beer.  HEY, i lead a sad, boring life and take what excitement i can get, leave me alone.

   Everything about this game was a hoot.  First start with the crowd.  the arena was not packed by any means, i think they said there was 8423 people there and capacity is like 30 000 or something like that. and they were not particularly raucous or anything like that but they were pretty genial and fairly young.  And then after the first couple of goals a strange phenomena began to take effect.  Every time a goal was scored, every boy between the ages of 6 and 12 in the arena would take off their shirt and whip it about their head while screaming.  Just them.  and they would be going insane. It was practically freakin' adorable to watch.  Even better, during one of the TV timeouts they actually took a couple of the kids from our section and made them have a muscleman competition.  Only they are 6.  It was great. 
   Down at the base of our section was the wettest seats in the house.  Right on the boards behind one of the nets they had set up a hot tub and 3 people had won the right to sit in the hot tub to watch the game.  The host for the game and the TV cams was named TJ Sky, a relatively cute younger woman who stumbled through most of her lines, wasn't very amusing but was still cute enough that when she winked once at the camera my heart did a tiny little jump.  Yes, i meant heart. 
   There were also the Raven Fly girls. about 12 women in very short shiny skirts who came out in the start and between quarters and did a little dance.  Being unpaid and about 16 years old each they weren't the best but they were a little fun to watch.  And the Raven mascot, was more sexy and muscular than oafish and funny looking as is normal which made it even funnier when he drove the scooter he had ridden in on into one of the fly girls and then into one of the nets.  I would say it had been planned if the scooter hadn't gotten stuck in the net and it took 3 people to get it back out again.

   The players.  Well, imagine a team of runners.  Young runners.  Young attractive, fit runners.  Imagine them wearing upper body pads for protection and shorts so you can see their lithe runner legs. They are not big, old bruiser types like in hockey because they have to run back and forth for the entire game.  So they were normal sized to small sexy guys. 
   Now imagine 6 of them per side with big long aluminum sticks.  Now imagine that there is absolutely no rule in this game against beating the hell out of each other with the stick.  In fact it seemed like it was encouraged.  You could also body check people with the stick, to the point where they would fly through the air to fall on their face.   Apparently the only rule around that sort of thing was putting your foot on them and holding them down once they were down there.  (oh, and the one time that one of the opposing teams got a little angry and cross checked 4 of the ravens over the boards on their bench that was frowned upon enough to give them a 5 minute penalty.  don't they know you are only allowed to wail on each other when you are on the Astroturf? 
   One of the high points was when one of Ravens came into my corner and three of the Attackers (this was their name, the Albany Attackers) came in after him and started wailing on him with their sticks.
    Another cool thing is that you are not allowed to step inside the crease with the ball and shoot but it is perfectly legal to dive through the air into the crease as long as you get your shot off before you hit the ground.  i am not sure whether or not the goalie is allowed to hit you with his stick while you are in the air, but hey, why not?
   With all of this physical aggression you'd think this would be a very violent game and, well, to be honest, it really is.  However, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of malice.  There only appeared to be two altercations and that was from the other team and near the end of a game that they had been losing since the beginning. 

   The game itself is pretty intense and fast paced.  About 1 in 3 shots on goal scores and thus the final score was fairly high.  16 to 15.   And although the Ravens led most of the game, by 5 points for one short period, by the last 2 minutes they had pulled ahead 14 to 13 and in that last 2 minutes enough happened to bring the score back to a 15 point tie.  Very intense.  And then the Ravens scored in sudden death overtime making it our game. 
   Probably the coolest thing about this goal was that it was down at the other end of the  arena and while we couldn't really see exactly what happened what we could see is every living body from the centre line down stand up screaming as one body and then our half following as we saw the replay as well as followed like sheep.

   So, in short, i mean long, it was a fair amount of fun. I wouldn't' say that i would go to every game in a season, or hell, even more than one or two but it was a good time.  and i happen to know one rather vicious little girl that would find these short wearing sexy young men beating the tar out of each other in the arena a very intriguing spectacle.

   it's good to be back. did you miss me?