Maple Leafs @ Penguins 11/27/2013

Pittsburgh 6  Toronto 5  SO

Evgeni Malkin - 2 G, A

Pittsburgh came back from being down 4-1, in pat by not allowing Toronto to register a shot in the 3rd period or overtime

Penguins @ Bruins 11/25/2013

Boston 4  Pittsburgh 3  OT

James Neal  2 G, A

Pittsburgh lost despite having a 31-23 advantage in shots for the game

Christmas list 2013 edition

It is that time of year again, after a I have some traditions around here that I wish to maintain, one of which is ye olde annual Christmas list. Must like previous years you will find some things repeating themselves, either because I did not receive them the previous year (to which I say get on the ball already), or because I received them but I have since run out (food will only keep for so long after all). The list is incomplete, I am sure there are things out there which I probably want and haven't even realized I want them yet, so feel free to go off the reservation as it were when thinking of what to buy.

Penguins @ Canadiens 11/23/2013

Montreal 3  Pittsburgh 2

James Neal - 2 G

With 2 assists Evgeni Makin is tied for the NHL lead with 22

Thankful?

     4:55 pm, probably not the time to have breakfast, but Sunday is my day off and let's be honest, it is just a tad cold outside.  There is something to be said for not getting out from under the covers on a day where I real didn't have to.  But I am tired of not doing anything on my days off, it is time I do something even if I don't really have to do it.

Islanders @ Penguins 11/22/2013

Pittsburgh 4  NY Islanders 3

Chris Kunitz - 2 G, A

Sidney Crosby scored GW goal with 1:16 remaining, it was the 250th goal of his NHL career

Penguins @ Capitals 11/20/2013

Pittsburgh 4  Washington 0

Marc-Andre Fleury - 18 SV

With two assists, Evgeni Malkin has recorded 12 assists  in 9 games in November

Promises kept

    I think in a recent post I had mentioned something about the change meter and the fact that I really hadn't posted anything about it.  Well upon doing some research I realized that it had indeed been quite a while, I haven't mentioned it since all of January to be precise.  Back then the total was $367.67, but since then I have found a decent amount of money, another $88.47 to be precise so I guess there is a new total for the board, I am now up to $456.14.  Maybe I should throw a party or something once I get to $500.  But then I haven't been marking milestones of recent, if I had been I would have thrown a party the other day as well, as my 1300th post made the page.  Of course I did not write all of them here, some were imported from Yahoo 360, most were imported from Multiply, but nonetheless the total for this account is now over 1300.  And many of you are probably still waiting for me to say something of significance, to which I would say, don't hold your breath.

     I am just typing tonight, waiting for the Thursday Night Football game to kick off between Atlanta and New Orleans.  Not really sure why,  I am not a fan of either team.  It is barely of interest in my fantasy football matchup either, I have the kicker for New Orleans, my opponent has Atlanta's kicker.  Hardly what I would call compelling viewing.  Not that it isn't a big week for my fantasy football team, because it is.  I am currently in first place in my league where 4 teams sport identical 7-4 records, I hold the top spot because of the tiebreaker (points scored), my opponent this week is also 7-4 and he is in 2nd place.  So it is #1 versus #2.  Somehow the schedule worked out that the top 6 teams are all playing each other this weekend as #3 is playing #5 and #4 is playing #6, so at the end of the weekend there could be as many as 3 teams sporting 8-4 records or there could be just 1.  Likewise by the end of the weekend I could be anywhere from 1st to 4th place with two weeks remaining. 

     Tomorrow is Light Up Night in Pittsburgh, I haven't decided if I will stay downtown and take pictures after work or if I will just come home and avoid all of the bustle that comes with the holiday nonsense.  Not that I find the holiday nonsensical in and of itself, but Christmas is still better than a month away yet, not sure I am ready to have it crammed down my throat already.  Of course that means if I were a Fox News fan (and I am not, cable news as a rule sucks), it would be time to gear up the "War on Christmas" stories.  Trust me, if we can stretch a one day holiday into a two month spectacular, then those people that are apparently fighting against Christmas are seeing themselves get their asses kicked.  Argentina had a better chance in the Falkland Islands.

     Anyway, I best go see if my kicker has done anything yet.  Or bake a pie or something.

Ducks @ Penguins 11/18/2013

Pittsburgh 3  Anaheim 1

Brian Gibbons - G, A

Gibbons was playing his first NHL game, he was called up from the minors 12 hours earlier

Penguins @ Devils 11/16/2013

New Jersey 4  Pittsburgh 1

Chris Kunitz - G

Pittsburgh has lost 4 of 5, scoring a total of 4 goals in those losses

Reclaimed

Okay, so it has been two months now and I am slowly getting my house back in order.  Not in the literal sense, my apartment is still a mess, but at least in the figurative one.  Things are starting to fall back into more of a pre-relationship routine for me, though I am not sure whether that is any of my doing personally or if I have just went above and beyond the call when it comes to avoiding things.

Since the relationship ended work has been both a blessing and a curse, a blessing because I can always get myself lost in things that need to be done there, but a curse because the more I focus on work, the more I start to realize just how dysfunctional things can be there.  In the span of two months we have fired two people, another one quit and my hours have stacked up accordingly, 123 hours last pay period and 110 hours for the current one.  Plus tomorrow begins the process of replacing the existing register system with a brand new one.  Hopefully this one will work better than the last one did.  On the plus side the people who are providing the new system are also going to train us on it and stick around long enough to make sure everything is running properly, which in and of itself is more than what the last company did.

Socially my life is starting to get back on track as well.  I haven't started dating, not that I am against the idea just really haven't pursued it all that much, but I managed to get back into a routine of going out to breakfast on weekends with family and friends, I reconnected with two other friends whom I have not spoken to in years, Hope and Debbie.  Hope I have written about in the blog before, Debbie I may have written about, though if I did it would have been eons ago so I can't recall when I would have done so.  Debbie used to date one of my friends in high school, so at first we were probably more just acquaintances than anything else, but as time passed we developed a friendship independent of that.  We even shared rented a house for a while (along with two other people) but time and interests saw us drift apart, she would get married and move to Virginia, as for me, well most of you can read back and get an inkling as to what I have been up to for the last decade or so.   Anyway as luck and my curiosity would have it, I did manage to locate her on Facebook the other day and lo and behold, she again lives back in this area and on Thursday we are going to lunch to catch up.

As I am writing I am sitting at the Squirrel Cage again, I got here even before they opened the kitchen so I have had plenty of uninterrupted blogging time to this point.  Sitting here is also part of getting my life back on track, as much of what I have done here in Pittsburgh over the last two years had been touched by my previous relationship.  Just the other day I was at work and we needed some office supplies so I volunteered to go to Office Depot after work and pick up a few things.  Everything was fine until I got to the Waterfront to go shopping when I realized the last time I was there was with Ruth.  So each venture out is in some measure a reclamation project, taking back what is rightfully my home and once again making new memories for myself here.  Each day it gets a little easier, the proverbial one step at a time approach to life.

I have even started to venture back into my pontificating ways as it were.  While I haven't gotten to the point where I want to blog about anything political, I do find myself comment more on other people's posts in other forums, offering my own brand of insight that hopefully soon will go from just a couple of sentences elsewhere and blossom into full fledged arguments on this page.

Well it looks like they have opened the kitchen, which is good because I am starting to get hungry here.  I usually do not like to come to the Cage on Mondays, my regular bartender isn't here and while I am sure the guy behind the bar is more than capable, he never makes fresh brewed iced tea, so I am relegated to the raspberry iced tea syrupy concoction that they have on the soda gun behind the bar.  It's okay, but just not what I want when I am in the mood for iced tea.

I know that there are a few things that the blog is still missing, I haven't added to the change meter in quite some time.  I have been maintaining it, even if I haven't updated the total on the page in quite some time.  Rest assured that problem will be fixed in the very near future.  Nor have I done much as far as updating what my fantasy sports teams have been doing this year.  Like most years I have a fantasy football and a fantasy hockey team this year.  The fantasy football team has been doing okay, I am 6-4 so far and in second place with a shot tonight of taking over first place (via a tiebreaker) and a game next weekend with the guy currently residing in first place.  Fantasy hockey hasn't been as good, I fell asleep after work and missed the online draft to kick off the new season.  Then after a torrid start, my team has settled into a run of mediocrity that has me in fourth place out of five teams.  Yes, I know, that ain't so good.

Well lookie there, I just learned something.  As I was going to type in the last sentence of the previous paragraph, I was thinking about the word "ain't", knowing full well that on my iPad spell check has a was of screwing with me, so I was expecting to get some indication that I was using an improper word, instead the iPad was more than content with my using of "ain't", so perhaps it is proper English after all.

I am really not ready for this winter.  As I am sitting here eating it is just 5:10pm and already it is getting dark outside.  I want my warm and sunny days back, not these abbreviated days where I no more than get done with work and I am asking myself where all of the daylight went.  Nor am I all that ready for the coming holidays, in past years I would take time off so I could be with my family, I was far enough up the seniority ladder in what I was doing that I would have first dibs on getting time off, but now that I am, dare I say it, management, I have the least seniority.  While I am sure I could get holidays off if I demanded them, part of me feels that I still need to prove myself in this new role and that the store(s) should not be left completely unattended by management on holidays.  If we can ask our employees to be there then the least we can do is have a presence there also.  Since I am the manager with the least tenure, then that obligation falls to me.  I know that isn't how things were done in the past, on most holidays you would be lucky to see a manager there but I guess I just view things a little differently then past management regimes.  I will not ask anyone to do something that they don't see me doing myself, including working holidays if needed.

Well, I have just about finished my dinner and I really do not want to stick around for more of this raspberry tea so it is probably time for me to pack up the iPad, pay my check and drag myself back to work, I still have two lottery machines that need loaded at our Oakland store, as well as check in with the people working there.  Another of my bad management habits, I do make it a point to check in with all of our shift leaders as much as possible, sometimes to see how things are running, sometimes to get input from them in things that might make us run better and sometimes just to be a sounding board so they can vent if they need to.  Anyway, I better get moving, the lottery machines do not fill themselves.  Oh how I wish they did.

Predators @ Penguins 11/15/2013

Pittsburgh 4  Nashville 1

Evgeni Malkin - 2 A

Win snaps a three game losing streak for Pittsburgh

Flyers @ Penguins 11/13/2013

Philadelphia 2  Pittsburgh 1

Sidney Crosby - G

Pittsburgh is 0-4 when scoring 3 or fewer goals this season

Penguins @ Blues 11/09/2013

St Louis 2  Pittsburgh 1

Jussi Jokinen - G

St Louis is one of only 4 teams that Sidney Crosby has never scored a goal against (St Louis, San Jose, Edmonton, Chicago)

A thousand reasons to blog

Today started as pretty much every Saturday starts, okay maybe not quite every Saturday, I was a bit slower getting things underway than usual, not leaving my place until 12:30pm or so, but then the schedule pretty much fell into form.  I first went to Gus Miller's, checked to see which instant tickets I needed, emptied the bill collectors, then went to Smithfield News.  Once there I repeated the process with our instant ticket machine, none of the tickets were empty so I just had to empty the bill collector.  I counted the money from both stores, then grabbed the tickets to refill the machines at Gus Miller's and hopped a bus back to reload the machine.  Good thing I did because between the time I was first there and me coming back one of the bill collectors jammed, so I had to fix the machine as well.

Karaoke Friday - Simple as 1,2,3

Another stressful week at work, that is becoming the rule these days and not the exception.  I have an idea or three in my head of what direction the business needs to go in if it wishes to remain successful, or in some cases even viable, but to get to that point I am just smashing my head against a brick wall.  What a sad inspiration for this week's KF entry I know, but it seems to be appropraite, at least to me



Never been near a university,
Never took a paper or a learned degree,
And some of your friends think that's stupid of me,
But it's nothing that I care about.

Well I don't know how to tell the weight of the sun,
And of mathematics well I want none,
And I may be the Mayor of Simpleton,
But I know one thing,
And that's I love you.
When their logic grows cold and all thinking gets done,
You'll be warm in the arms of the Mayor of Simpleton.

I can't have been there when brains were handed round
(please be upstanding for the Mayor of Simpleton),
Or get past the cover of your books profound,
(please be upstanding for the Mayor of Simpleton),
And some of your friends thinks it's really unsound,
That you're ever seen talking to me.

Well I don't know how to write a big hit song,
And all crossword puzzles well I just shun,
And I may be the Mayor of Simpleton,
But I know one thing,
And that's I love you.

I'm not proud of the fact that I never learned much,
Just feel I should say,
What you get is all real,
I can't put on an act,
It takes brains to do that anyway. (And anyway...)

And I can't unravel riddles, problems and puns,
How the home computer has me on the run,
And I may be the Mayor of Simpleton,
But I know one thing,
And that's I love you (I love you).

If depth of feeling is a currency,
(please be upstanding for the Mayor of Simpleton),
Then I'm the man who grew the money tree,
(no Chain of Office and no hope of getting one).
Some of your friends are too brainy to see,
That they're paupers and that's how they'll stay.

Well I don't know how many pounds make up a ton,
Of all the Nobel prizes that I've never won,
And I may be the Mayor of Simpleton,
But I know one thing,
And that's I love you.

When all logic grows cold and all thinking gets done,
You'll be warm in the arms of the Mayor of Simpleton.
You'll be warm in the arms of the Mayor of Simpleton.
You'll be warm in the arms of the Mayor.
(Please be upstanding for the Mayor of Simpleton.)

Penguins @ NY Rangers 11/06/2013

NY Rangers 5  Pittsburgh 1

Kris Letang - G

Loss ends a 4 game winning streak for Pittsburgh

Penguins @ Blue Jackets 11/02/2013

Pittsburgh 3  Columbus 0

Jeff Zatkoff - 19 SV

Zatkoff records his first shutout and first win in the NHL

Blue Jackets @ Penguins 11/01/2013

Pittsburgh 4  Columbus 2

Evgeni Malkin - 2 A

Pittsburgh won despite being handily outshot by Columbus 39-27

Bruins @ Penguins 10/30/2013

Pittsburgh 3  Boston 2

Jussi Jokinen, Brandon Sutter, Chris Kunitz - G each




First meeting of the season for these two teams, Pittsburgh swept Boston last year during the regular season, Boston swept Pittsburgh in the playoffs