White Christmas

Our story starts not tonight, even though tonight is New Years Eve and it would be a good place for reflections of the past and thoughts of the future, but rather a couple of weeks back, before the whole holiday season got underway in earnest. It was during that time that I had realized that the two holidays that would be approaching, Christmas and New Years Day, would both be occurring on a Wednesday, smack dab in the middle of a week. Normally that would mean very little to me, I have usually accrued enough time from work that taking a few days off would not affect my schedule or my wallet one way or the other. The time off would be paid time for me, and whatever I missed out on at work would be somewhat tempered by the fact that the holiday season is usually pretty slow for us, both Point Park University and The Art Institute of Pittsburgh are on break and with them goes a significant amount of our business.

Penguins @ Blue Jackets 12/29/2013

Pittsburgh 5  Columbus 3

James Neal - 3 G (hat trick), 2 A

The 5 point game was a career high for Neal

Penguins @ Hurricanes 12/27/2013

Pittsburgh 4  Carolina 3  OT

James Neal - G, 2 A

Jussi Jokinen has 6 points (3 G, 3 A) in two games against his former team this year.

Penguins @ Senators 12/23/2013

Ottawa 5  Pittsburgh 0

Marc-Andre Fleury - 24 SV

Penguins lose Pascal Dupuis for the rest of the regular season with a ACL injury

Decembers to remember

12:30 am and here I am sitting outside the laundrymat typing away on the iPad again, if for no other reason than I have time to kill.  So, with a can of Pepsi beside me, and puffing on a cigarette, I guess I should come up with something clever to say.

It's not art and it's not entertainment

     I am finding myself almost compelled to write about that which has been spoken about far too much recently, Phil Robertson and the show he is on, "Duck Dynasty" on the A&E channel.  In a way I come into this somewhat unprepared, for no other reason than I wouldn't be caught dead watching a show like "Duck Dynasty" to begin with.  Perhaps there is some redeeming quality to that show that I am missing, but it comes across as more mindless reality show tripe from where I am sitting.  Reality television has reached the Mad Lib stage of development where the idea for a show can be boiled down to the following formula, pick a random occupation, lifestyle or hobby, find more than one person that does it, then follow them around with cameras and see what happens.  Yes Georgia, even you can be a television producer in this day and age.

     Robertson only fell on to my radar because he recently gave an interview with GQ magazine, and in the interview he made the all too sad argument of homosexuality being a sin, then goes on to suggest that it morphs out into, amongst other things, bestiality.  Of course there never has been a correlation between the two, and to make the leap of logic that he does would be like me suggesting that since some priests have molested young children, then Christianity must breed pedophilia.  However it is not my purpose here to get into a flawed logic debate, Phil Robertson believes what he believes and he has been pretty straightforward about it from the get go.  Which is why A&E suspending him after the GQ interview makes no sense.

     A&E knew exactly who they were putting on their air long ago, Robertson's faith and beliefs were not hidden, and the folks at A&E liked the demographic the Robertson's attracted, it was why they programmed for them.  Let's not kid anyone, the idea that a gay Christian man who believed he was living in sin and was also an avid duck hunter would be a subset of a subset of a subset of the "Duck Dynasty" audience, as would the black persons who believed things were better during the Jim Crow era (another of Phil's enlightened statements) and were also avid duck hunters would again be a subset of a subset of a subset of the total audience.

     Phil Robertson's grave sin in the eyes of A&E wasn't Phil's beliefs, but that he announced them in another media besides their own when he did the GQ interview. The interview led to a deeper scrutiny of A&E and "Duck Dynasty" by people who otherwise would have been blissfully ignorant of the show.  Phil, in essence, aired the dirty secret that A&E didn't want known, that being just what type of audience A&E was pandering to all along.

Flames @ Penguins 12/21/2013

Pittsburgh 4  Calgary 3

Sidney Crosby - G, 2 A

Pittsburgh has trailed for only 3 minutes and 12 seconds in total in their last 9 games

Karaoke Friday - This is how work should always go

So I am sitting at my desk today, Brian had already left, he was taking his kids to Florida to see Ed over Christmas break, Dee had left early because she was going to a school play or something for one of Brian's kids before they left, and I am alone in the office.  Mind you that is not a new thing, I am in the office by myself every Saturday when I go in, but today was just a little different.  Brian earlier had trained me on reloading the ATM machines, one of the few things that I do not know how to do, or didn't until the last couple of days.  For a moment or three I just sat at my desk and thought to myself that pretty soon this may very well be what things are always like, Dee has a potential buyer for her house so who knows how long she may or may not be there, Ed is in Florida where he escapes most every winter and Brian really isn't around all that much, even when he is around.  At some point in the future it will probably boil down to just me running the empire and nobody else.  Ed will still do what he does from Florida, things like the payroll and the schedule, but the day to day stuff will fall squarely on my shoulders.

Wild @ Penguins 12/19/2013

Pittsburgh 5  Minnesota 2

Chris Kunitz - 2 G

Olli Maatta became just the second defenseman in Penguins history to score on a penalty shot

Penguins @ NY Rangers 12/18/2013

Pittsburgh 4  NY Rangers 3  SO

Chris Kunitz - G, A

Pittsburgh is 10-1-1 in their last 12 games

Maple Leafs @ Penguins 12/16/2013

Pittsburgh 3  Toronto 1

Marc-Andre Fleury - 25 SV

Fleury is 27-3 in his last 30 starts on home ice

Penguins @ Red Wings 12/14/2013

Pittsburgh 4  Detroit 1

Evgeni Malkin - G, 2 A

Malkin, who left the game in the third period with a leg injury, recorded his 600th NHL point in the win

Devils @ Penguins 12/13/2013

Pittsburgh 3  New Jersey 2

Marc-Andre Fleury - 37 SV

Pittsburgh is 14-3 at home this season

Dream a little dream for me

     Just sitting here eating a little dinner and debating whether or not I want to go to sleep tonight.  Chances are I will at some point, it is still quite early yet, being only 8:30pm and all.  But still, anymore while my sleeping schedule has been a little more regular of late, I have been going to bed most nights before 1am after all, I find myself still waking up multiple times on any give night.  The thing is, when I do go to sleep my dreams have been more vivid and in a word, weird, then I am used to.

     I had one dream a few nights ago where I was babysitting someone.  The odd thing is this person that I was babysitting was a female who, in my dream anyway, was 20 years old, though I know in real life she is actually closer to 22.  So obviously there was no need for me to be a babysitter, yet there I was doing that very thing, and I remember us going out of a house that I do not recognize, though I believe it was a house that was made into apartments, broken down in part on floors.  I say this only because we went some place and then came back and the apartment she was staying in, which was on the top floor of this house, was on fire and I remember thinking to myself that this will be the last babysitting gig I ever get.  Not that I am worried about such a thing normally, but in my dream it was a big deal.

     A night or two later I am again enjoying what should be a peaceful slumber, when I find myself standing in a toppled cornfield alongside a highway back in my hometown.  I am not the only one standing there though, there are maybe 15-20 other people standing there as well, we are watching a spectacle of sorts, cars are drag racing on the highway.  The thing is, in my mind I put a tunnel there, where there never would be one, so we would see the cars start, then enter a long tunnel and then come out at the other end, where the finish line was so we are standing there watching races that we can't see because all of the actual racing is taking place in the tunnel.  During the last race that I watched one of the cars that was involved come out of the tunnel and ran off of the road into the cornfield and rolled over next to the people that were watching the races.  Rather than do anything helpful, I just say to myself that this is incredibly boring, and I walk back to my grandmother's house (which isn't her house anymore, my cousin owns it, but in my dream it was still hers) and go inside and fall asleep on the loveseat in the living room.  When I wake up in the dream, I think to myself that I am late for work, my job is 50 some odd miles away and I have no way to get there.

     The weirdest of the dreams was last night however.  I should begin the description of it with a disclaimer, to my knowledge I have never had what I would call a violent dream, or at least one where anything that I did that was violent amounted to anything positive for me.  In those dreams usually one of a few things happen; I am in a car and I either wreck the car or the breaks either refuse to work and the car just accelerates uncontrollably; I am in some type of war scene or battle scene and I either get stabbed or shot at some point; and lastly I am in a fight with someone and even if I punch the other person involved or fight back in any way, it is like I am the 98 lb. weakling who always gets sand kicked in his face, any punch I throw lands weakly or has absolutely no effect.  All of which makes last night's dream so odd.

     I am walking with someone who can best be described as an amalgam of the three worst relationships I ever had.  It is a little bit of a stretch to be sure, but they all were dark haired and while their body types aren't all the same, they would not be considered grossly different either, so this person wasn't necessarily any single one of them, but almost like all three of them at the same time.  We are walking along something that turns into a boat dock of some sort, and while we are walking the impression is that this person is going to be moving into my residence with me.  We get to the end of the dock and she climbs down a ladder of about 5 to 6 rungs and gets into a boat below, where she begins to start grabbing things from the boat that she wants to move into my place, including a stack of 45 records.  I am standing on the pier thinking how much I don't want to be there, when I reach into my pocket to grab my cigarettes, thinking I might as well smoke while I wait.  Except my cigarettes are missing, I remember that while we were walking I left them on the window sill of a building we passed and I decide I should go back and get them, so I kick the ladder into the boat so she can't follow me, then proceed back the way we came to get my cigarettes.  Just as I am getting to the window sill where I left them, another guy is also approaching them.  I yell that those are my cigarettes, but he doesn't care, he picks up the pack, takes one out and lights it for himself.  I ask again for my cigarettes and he just laughs at me, so I punch him in the face twice and his face swells up almost instantly.  Literally a third of his face is swollen when he lifts his head and looks at me.   He reaches into his pocket and pulls out something halfway between a switchblade and a knife and is holding it in front of me, but before he can do anything with it I grab him by the wrist that is holding the knife and bend it back until I hear the snapping of the bones in his hand and he drops the knife, then I reach into his shirt pocket and grab my cigarettes, light one up and walk away.

     So as I am sitting here writing I am wondering just what awaits me when I close my eyes for the evening.

Blue Jackets @ Penguins 12/09/2013

Pittsburgh 2  Columbus 1

Marc-Andre Fleury - 32 SV

Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin each scored a goal, remain #1 and #2 respectively in points in the NHL (Crosby 43, Malkin 38)

Penguins @ Bruins 12/07/2013

Boston 3  Pittsburgh 2

Matt Niskanen - 2 A

Brooks Orpik left the game on a stretcher with a concussion, James Neal suspended for 5 games for kneeing Brad Marchand in the head

Bus stops

Good morning.   8am here and already I am waiting for my second bus on what promises to be a fairly long day.  I have made one trip into work already, in part because I left my iPad on my desk yesterday and wanted to pick it up sooner rather than later.  See the thing is, I have grown somewhat accustomed to blogging on the iPad, usually is just put a note together for myself, then when I get home I email myself the note and copy and paste from the email to the blog.  I know there is a copy function on here, but it is such a pain to use that it is just easier the other way.  So the iPad allows me to blog while I am standing here waiting on bus #2 rather than just stand here looking all absent minded.

Karaoke Friday - I am what I am

Life has been hectic recently to say the least, as evidenced by the fact that I haven't posted one of these in a couple of weeks.  I guess I still haven't quite got my blogging groove quite back yet.  It has more to do with time to blog than a feeling to blog, which I guess is good.  There are plenty of times when I think to myself that I am on he verge of something that might be blog worthy, but it ends up being at a most inopportune time of the day, and until I get home and get settled in I am just to tired to mentally map out what I was thinking about earlier in the day.  Perhaps I just need to recommit to what it is I am actually doing here, and just as some people make time for themselves to go to the gym, or to sit down and read (something else that has been lacking on my part recently given I haven't updated Shelfari to the left in a while) I just need to set a time where it is just me and the page and whatever happens happens.  It is in that vane that I give you this week's selection, what I always thought the blog was at some point and what I hope it will become again.

Sharks @ Penguins 12/05/2013

Pittsburgh 5  San Jose 1

Marc-Andre Fleury - 44 SV

Pittsburgh is 16-1 this year when scoring the first goal

Penguins @ NY Islanders 12/03/2013

Pittsburgh 3  NY Islanders 2  OT

Sidney Crosby - 2 G

Evgeni Malkin posted 21 assists in November, the most assists in a month since Wayne Gretzky had 21 in January 1996.

Penguins @ Panthers 11/30/2013

Pittsburgh 5  Florida 1

Evgeni Malkin - G, 3 A

Malkin has recorded at least one point in the last 8 games (4 G, 13 A)

Penguins @ Lightning 11/29/2013

Pittsburgh 3  Tampa Bay 0

Marc-Andre Fleury - 21 SV

Sidney Crosby assisted on all three Pittsburgh goals, leads the NHL with 36 points