Pain in the a, ah, neck

I'm having to post without moving my head this morning. A little sore from last night's hockey game, which we lost 10-2 (we had the shitty goalie again but we still didn't play very well).

It's my 2nd shift of the night and I'm fighting for a loose puck along the boards in our zone when some jackass decides to kick the back of my skates and with the way I happened to be standing at the time, it sent me flying backwards landing on my elbows and whipping the back of my head into the ice. I was pretty sore and had a good headache for the rest of the night but I got that sonofabitch back...

You see, this is one of those guys nobody likes. He's a glory hound and a horrible cherry picker. For those who don't know, a cherry picker is a player who disdains the defensive zone to hover out at center ice hoping someone will send him a pass so he can get a breakaway. He is one of those guys... constantly standing out at center ice waiting for that lucky pass so he can maybe score on a crappy goalie and celebrate for 20 minutes.

Anyway, it's now towards the end of the 3rd period and even though they are up 7 or 8 goals he's still floating out at center ice looking for breakaways. It's been grating on me the whole game and I've built up a certain amount of animosity towards the guy. So, I see him coming around the boards in the corner and had a perfect bead on him so I decided to send a message and crushed him against the boards and he crumpled to the ice weakly swinging his stick towards me. Luckily the refs don't like him either and turned a cheek to it (it's a no-check league and that was definitely a check).

I expected some retaliation and kept an eye on him as we finished the shift but I think since they were on the offensive he didn't want to pass up a chance to shoot the puck. So he waited for the next shift and while we were in their zone he skated up behind me and put his stick between my legs trying to trip me. I just coasted it out and he didn't do anything and they blew the whistle. I circled around behind him and he stopped quick to initiate contact. I gave him a two handed shove and he went crazy, spit flying out from his facemask as he's hurling obscenity after obscenity in my direction. He gets close again and I punched him in the chest, letting him know how much I enjoyed his cherry picking. That pretty much ended it as we both got sent off the ice.

Oh, and I did score a goal though I never saw it go in. 2 on 1 with my centerman going down the right side and I was flying in from the left. He dropped a pass to me and I one timed it into the upper left side but all I saw was it hit the post and crossbar and thought for sure it wouldn't go in. They called it a goal and he told me that it went up into the top part of the next and then back out. Ok, I didn't see that but I'll take it.

I played in golf league twice this week. Monday I subbed and shot a 45 but played much better than that. Got my driver back working nicely. Wednesday I shot 44. Kept driving the ball well and I'm hitting my irons pretty clean. I just can't putt. I can't even count how many 3-putt bogies I've had over the last 2 weeks. It's sick. After work today I'm going to Nevada Bob's to look at belly putters. If it works for Fred Couples it just might work for me. Something's gotta help me turn it around. Besides, on Monday I played with a god-awful golfer but he had a belly putter and the SOB made everything.

Tomorrow I play in a charity golf tournament to benefit the Epilepsy foundation. The ex-VP of the company I sub contract through had epilepsy and passed away a couple years ago at the age of 33. This tournament was started on his behalf.

Anyway, it's going to be in the mid-90's all weekend. I'm taking my nephew to the Brewers game on Sunday (day game, seats in the sun, ouch). I couldn't get anyone else to go so I figured I'd give him another chance... Cdubya said I was nuts for even going with that kind of heat (the other ticket used to be hers). I figure I'll just drink plenty of water and eat lots of ice cream.

Have a good weekend!