Odds and Sods

So. We had ourselves a bit of a scare last evening in the form of a tornado warning…not a watch, but a real live “take shelter now!” warning…just after 1900 hrs or so. I was watching the WX Channel out of one eye and reading with the other when the “beep-beep-beep” noise of an alert coming from the teevee got my full attention. We had been under a severe t-storm watch most all of yesterday, and prudent people will keep an eye on the weather, if they’re smart (more about which, below). Ergo, I had the WX Channel on as background noise.

I immediately leapt to my feet, gathered up my cell phone and a couple of magazines and beat a hasty retreat out to the car and down the road to Roosevelt County General Hospital, which is the nearest shelter of any sort. As I left Beautiful La Hacienda Trailer Park I noticed that I seemed to be the only one leaving, and there had been about a five minute lag between the onset of the tornado warning and my departure. About which: less than smart. There’s a reason trailer parks are known as “tornado magnets,” and the reputation is well-deserved.

So… to make a long story much shorter: no tornado…at least not in our general vicinity. I spent a little over an hour at Roosevelt County General and then came on back home after the severe storm warning had expired. The National Weather Service never did cancel or otherwise rescind the tornado warning, which I thought a bit strange. But…oh, well. Sometimes it bees like that.

I also wish I had taken my camera with me last night. I’d forgotten all about daylight savings time and just assumed it was dark outside because it was, well, night. Wrong again, Bucko. It was dark because of the huge clouds roiling to the south and east of us… and the sky had taken on that greenish-black tint that’s often the harbinger of weather nastiness. But I wasn’t about to go back to El Casa Móvil De Pennington and retrieve the camera. Nope…I had someplace to BE. Someplace safe.

―:☺:―

I spent well over an hour at my dentist’s office today. We went through the work-up for my upcoming surgery, which consisted mostly of me signing and/or initialing a ream of disclaimers, acknowledgements, understandings, and releases. This, Gentle Reader, is a classic case of the very few poisoning the well for the great majority of us… our litigious society, and all that. I understand the need for all the paperwork, as one malpractice suit has the potential to wipe out a successful practice, be it medical or dental. So… medical professionals do the CYA thing, and I would, too. This IS America, after all. All that paperwork is still a right royal pain in the nether regions for all involved.

There were a couple of light moments, however. Micah (aka Mrs. Thompson), who handles the Good Doctor’s business-side, took my blood pressure and pulse at the beginning of the process… joking that she’d get a better reading before I wrote that big check, rather than after. She was right, too. I can’t recall the last time I wrote a check with five figures to the left of the decimal point but I’m quite sure it had something to do with buying a house. One thing I may suggest, though: use that nitrous oxide just before the patient writes the check. Laughing gas would help, considerably.

But we’re all done, except for getting my tired ass out to the base and getting a few prescriptions filled for drugs to be taken before we go under the knife. We’ll do that tomorrow, coz we don’t wanna go into task-overload, or anything like it. Heh.

―:☺:―

Yet another thing I didn’t mention over the course of the last few days… SN1 surprised me this past Saturday when he called directly after Philadelphia’s Umberger put a pretty goal in the net during the first period of the final (as it turned out) Flyers – Habs game. I was surprised because while SN1 rarely misses a Wings game, it’s rare for him to watch other teams play although it has been known to happen. So we chatted a bit, exchanged views on the chances of the respective teams and that was it. Until just after midway through the second period, that is. The phone rings and it’s SN1 again, asking “What the HELL happened? Montreal was up 3-1 when I walked away from the teevee to do something… I come back and Philly is up, 4-3!” “Well,” sez I, “Price just self-destructed. Imploded. Blew right the Hell up!” “I guess!”, sez he. And then we launched into a discussion about goalies being the keys to success in the playoffs, so on and so forth.

We also got off on a discussion about how different it is to watch hockey when you don’t care all that much about either team, one way or the other. “No dog in that fight,” and so on. I made a rather crude analogy concerning love and sex…which I won’t repeat verbatim in this space (PG-13, and all that)... to the effect of “it’s ALL good, but some experiences are waaay better than others…” We laughed, and that was the end of that.

But it’s true. I’m emotionally involved with the Wings. But I like to watch other teams play, as well, I'm just not invested...so to speak. As for that love and sex analogy...I never had that attitude about or towards women. Not all that much, anyway. And not that I’d tell you if it were that much, Gentle Reader. I have something of an image to uphold.

Such as it is.

(All images retrieved from these here inter-tubes using generic google searches. And that's not ME, to the left. You could be excused for thinking so, however.)

"You've Got Mail!"

In the “Wish You Were Here” Dept... or rather the “Wish I was THERE” Dept… Gentle Reader Ashley is off gallivanting around Hawaii and was gracious enough to send us a post card. Is that conical object in the palms yet another example of aliens amongst us? Or just mishandling by the folks at the USPS? Not that that would ever happen, ya know.

And Ash… you really don’t have a lot of catching up to do… especially if ya skip the hockey posts. In which case: you’re nearly caught up right now.

Life sorta intrudes today and I have a bit of running around to do. Back later. Maybe.

I'm Seeing Stars

Well. The match-ups for the conference finals are decided. It’ll be an “All-PA” final in the east, and Deetroit gets the Stars. The conference finals begin Thursday. I said I wanted the Stars - Sharks series to go seven games and I got my wish, after a fashion. I just didn’t think Game Six would run on into Game Seven, and continue nine minutes into Game Eight. From the Dallas Morning News:

The new leadership of the Dallas Stars planted a stake in the ice at American Airlines Center early Monday morning.

Marty Turco came up with a career-best 61 saves, and Brenden Morrow scored his third career postseason overtime goal as Dallas survived the third-longest game in franchise history and defeated the San Jose Sharks, 2-1, to end their best-of-7 Western Conference semifinal in six games.

"Tonight was as fitting as anything I’ve ever seen in sports that Brenden got that winning goal,’’ Stars coach Dave Tippett said of a game that ended at 1:24 a.m. and started five hours and 14 minutes before.

Morrow redirected in a Stephane Robidas pass on the power play to score at 69:03 of overtime. It was his seventh goal in the playoffs this season and underscored what he has meant to a Stars team that is advancing to the Western Conference finals for the first time since 2000.

I was there for the whole thing (and I stayed awake, too), which ended at 0024 hrs, my time. You know there were some tired-ass folks dragging in to work all over Dallas this morning…tired, but happy. For a while, anyway. Also from the Dallas Morning News:

Expect the early spotlight to be on Stars goaltender Marty Turco and the Red Wings' skilled young forwards.

“We saw the last series was tough,” Turco said. “This is going to be even tougher.”

Turco is 2-10-5 against the Red Wings and hasn’t won at Joe Louis Arena since his college days, when he was wearing Michigan’s maize-and-blue.

One of Turco’s two wins came this season, a 1-0 shutout at the American Airlines Center.

“That's one team that's had my number,” Turco said at the time. “It's going to take a while to catch up, but that's my goal.”

Two of the reasons why Turco – and for that matter nearly the entire NHL – has struggled against the Red Wings are forwards Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg. The two have combined for 74 goals and 189 points this season.

Their skill and puck possession will present an extreme matchup for the Stars' young defensemen. Detroit won three of the four head-to-head meetings this season, outscoring the Stars, 12-5.

Zetterberg has three goals and 21 point in 18 career games against the Stars. Datsyuk has been similarly productive, with nine goals and 19 points in 19 games.

"When you watch Zetterberg and Datsyuk go out there and dominate the game, that's frustrating," Tippett said after a 5-3 loss in Detroit on March 13. "These guys are setting the bar for the Western Conference, so we better raise our bar. We better raise our bar, or we're in trouble."

If the Stars didn’t have enough to worry about, 6-3, 220-pound Johan Franzen had nine goals in four games against Colorado, breaking a long-standing record held by Gordie Howe.

The Stars have three full days and part of another to recover from their grueling win before they face the buzz-saw that is Detroit. They’re tired, you can be sure of that. You can also be sure they’re somewhat beat-up, coz this was a very physical series. Yet Big D has Big Mo going into Hockeytown…and a goalie who’s both confident and playing his best game in years. This ain’t gonna be a cake-walk for the Wings, even though some folks are predicting the Wings in five. I’m thinking more like Wings in six, and the great majority of the 7,500+ people taking ESPN.com’s poll agree with me:

8) Which team will win this series?

45.5%Red Wings 4-2
20.9%Stars 4-3
13.8%Red Wings 4-1
9.3%Stars 4-2
7.3%Red Wings 4-3
2.2%Red Wings 4-0
0.5%Stars 4-0
0.5%Stars 4-1

Total Votes: 7,531

Other polls… This early NHL.com poll is interesting, innit? And I love the mouse-over map you get when you take the ESPN poll at the top of this post (ya gotta take the poll at ESPN’s NHL page to see the map, though). Here are a couple of screen caps of the results I got this morning from the respective polls (click for larger):

These polls mean nothing, other than counting up how many fans of the respective teams took the time to vote. But I see some truth in the results — I think we’ll see Sidney Crosby and Co. journey to Deetroit for the first game of the 2008 Stanley Cup Finals. Your mileage most certainly may vary, Gentle Reader.

But first: Dallas. This will be a good, if not great, series.

More Kewlness

Some more technological magic commissioned by Festo, that German company that gave us the Air Jelly featured in yesterday’s post. This is a musical composition titled “Fast Blue Air.”

How it’s done:

The music program played by "The Sound Machines" is saved in midi files, and the sound is generated in three steps. For the first “digital” step, the sound machines are controlled by a PLC (programmable logic controller). In the second step, pneumatic components cause the strings to vibrate by either plucking them like a guitarist or stroking them like a string musician. In the third step, the sound is received and amplified by electronic pick-ups, similarly to an electric guitar. The sound machines offer a variety of options for generating very different musical effects.

You can find a more complete overview of the sound machines here. There’s a link to more detail than you could possibly want (unless you happen to be a pneumatic engineer) at that link, as well.

I love this stuff… or: Geeks ‘R’ Us!

Kewlness

I want one. I wonder if Festo makes a smaller version…say, ten inches in diameter? Wouldn’t that just amaze and mystify your friends to see this thingie floating around the house? You know it would…

Wow. Just Wow!

Goalies Chris Osgood and Colorado's Peter Budaj shake hands at the end of the game. (Caption and Photo: Detroit News)

From the Detroit News:

DENVER -- This time there was no Patrick Roy in net, and it was Denver rather than Joe Louis Arena.

This wasn't a Game 7, either, but a rather anticlimactic Game 4.

But the Red Wings hammered the Colorado Avalanche in a series-clinching game again, this time 8-2, to sweep the Western Conference semifinal series in four games.

And it was every bit the rout the final score indicated.

Johan Franzen led the way, scoring three goals, giving him nine for the series (Franzen has 11 in the playoffs).

The nine goals are a Red Wings record for a four-game series, breaking Gordie Howe's eight goals in seven games in 1949.

Franzen's 11 goals also set a Wings record for a playoff year. Peter Klima (1988, 10 goals), Sergei Fedorov (10 goals in 22 games, 1998) and Brett Hull (10 goals in 23 games, 2002) were the previous record-holders.

"Every time you get mentioned with him (Gordie Howe), it's a great honor," Franzen said. "I don't know what to say. I feel real lucky right now."

How good was Franzen in this series, and how ineffective were the Avalanche? The Avs also finished the series with nine goals.

"It's not often you see a player score like this, it's fun to be part of it," said Henrik Zetterberg, who had two goals and two assists Thursday. "I'm real happy for him. He's been working hard."

The Wings flew back to Detroit on Friday morning and await the winner of the Dallas-San Jose series. Dallas leads the series 3-1.

Further… from NHL.com:

Though two of the games ended 4-3, the series was rarely competitive — unlike the teams’ five meetings between 1996 and 2002, which were some of the hardest-fought pre-Final series in NHL history. This time, Detroit led after every period, trailed for less than eight minutes in the four games, and drove Avs starter Jose Theodore from the net in three of the four games, including this one.

[…]

Theodore gave up a bad goal 4:33 into the game to give the Red Wings an early lead. Mikael Samuelsson’s nothing-special slap shot from the top of right circle should have been stopped easily — but it went through Theodore’s pads and trickled into the net.

Colorado got a break when Holmstrom’s penalty for tripping in the offensive zone 84 seconds after Samuelsson’s goal gave the Avalanche a power play, and they wasted little time getting even. Joe Sakic’s passout from behind the net to the left of Osgood found Tyler Arnason, whose quick one-timer at 6:51 tied the score at 1-1 on the Avs’ first shot of the game. It was Colorado’s third power-play goal in its last five opportunities.

Then the bottom fell out amid a blizzard of highlight-film goals.

You can see those highlights here, and they’re MOST definitely worth watching, especially Zetterberg’s goal at 14:15 of the second period. You’ll not see a prettier goal for as long as you live... and I’ll guarantee that. (Note: I’m not going to post anymore NHL video, coz I think the clips are doing wonky things to the blog. We’ve had complaints…)

Last night’s game will be remembered in Deetroit for a long, long time. It’s a rare thing to see that much talent on the ice at one time, and even rarer to see one team exhibit such complete, utter domination over another in the NHL today. The Game 7 and Patrick Roy references in the DetNews article quoted above are all about the game I talked about here… and which I mentioned to SN1 on the phone last evening after the Wings scored their fifth goal. Which, apropos of nothing, leads me to believe I might have a future as a hockey color announcer, after a couple more seasons… mainly coz the Versus guys mentioned the same thing, albeit several minutes later.

Speaking of SN1 and the phone… it’s our habit to exchange phone calls as the games progress, usually after each goal…by either team. So, it’s a good thing both of us have the same carrier, with the “talk all ya want” option on our contracts, coz we certainly burnt up the airwaves last night. And the both of us were in the same sort of mood, too… that mood being “giddy.” Great good fun, that was. We ran out of superlatives by the start of the third period and were reduced to simply saying “wow” whenever the Wings did something remarkable, which, in case ya didn’t notice, Gentle Reader, was often.

So. The Wings are half-way there. It looks like Dallas is next, and the Stars just have to be wondering how they’re gonna deal with these Wings. The next series is gonna be a lot tougher than the Avs were. Dallas is healthy and Turco is, as noted day before yesterday, hotter than hot. Hot goalies have sent the Red Wings off to the golf course more than once in the playoffs in recent years, Jean-Sebastien Giguere being the most recent. But this year?

I don’t think so.

―:☺:―

Today’s Pics: SN1 sends along some cell-phone photos (I think... given the pics' small size) taken at his graduation from USAF’s Advanced Maintenance and Munitions Officers School (AMMOS). Pictured above are daughter-in-law Erma, grandson Sean (looking quite spiffy in his suit, nu?), The First Mrs. Pennington, and The Captain looking spiffy hissownself, in mess dress.

Taken a couple of weeks ago, on or near Nellis AFB in Lost Wages, NV.

Taking a Mental Health Day, of Sorts

Dunno exactly why, but I feel semi-compelled to apologize for the lack of meaningful content around these parts, of late. Long-time readers (both of you) know the tone of EIP has changed radically over the course of the last two months or so. Whereas we used to be something like “all politics, all the time,” these days it’s seemingly all hockey, all the time. But that’s just because of the season, Gentle Reader, and like Christmas, it comes but once a year. And you’re probably glad for it, too.

There’s a reason for the lack of political content… more than one, actually. To begin with, I’m finding politics supremely boring of late. Nothing much has changed over the course of the last month, perhaps two. The Obamanon and Hillary are still at it, and I, for one, am MUCH more than capable of looking away from this particular train-wreck. I find the situation neither amusing nor interesting at the moment, but I will admit I feel more than a certain amount of schadenfreude. It’s good to see your ideological opponents beat themselves senseless (not that either had a whole helluva lot of sense, to begin with), and we on the Right can only benefit from the excessive behavior of both of these Useful Idiots.

And what can be said about The Right, while we’re on about such things? Not much. McCain is enjoying the calm before the general election storm and is, for all intents and purposes, quiescent at the moment. I’m OK… much MORE than OK, actually… with that. Keep flying under the radar, John, build your org, and collect lotsa money. I’m here for ya, come November.

There are no lack of “outrages du jour” lately (and there never is, what with Outrage! being the stock and trade of our illustrious media), but I’m tiring of those, as well. I’m conserving my outrage for the Fall (read that: general election), when I intend to let it blossom and flower to its fullest extent. And there ya go: fair warning.

Nope…these days I’m ALL about the odd and the whimsical, but ya gotta have a certain amount of motivation to go out and seek it. Sometimes I get lucky and it finds me... by way of my in-box, or else in the blogs of my more-motivated blog-buddies.

So. All of the above is a sort of left-handed way of saying I have nothing to say. Sometimes it bees like that.

One note: wishes do come true. San Jose won last night… so that series goes to a Game Five, at the very least. And Philly looks like they’re gonna put Montreal away, going up 3-1 in their series last evening. Not that I actually care about that series, what with having no dog in that particular fight. But it IS hockey, and a good hockey game beats the Hell out of just about anything and everything else that’s out there, at the moment.

We’ll resume normal programming at some point in the near future. In the meantime, please accept my apologies for the rampant mediocrity on display around here of late.

(post script: about the mood images I’ve used these last two days. I’ve stolen them from here, and quite useful they are.)