The summer hockey season started last night, and the first game was... erm... an eye-opener.

Late in the second period, we were ahead 3-1, and our opponents were pressing to catch up. After I stopped a shot, one of their less-talented skaters charged the net looking for a rebound that wasn't there. He crashed into me, and toppled over me in a messy heap. After throwing him off, I noticed something was wrong with my vision: I had lost a contact lens.

A bunch of us spent the next while searching the ice for my highly-expensive lens. Soon, our captain had found it. Well, half of it. The lens had broken in two (or more; we never found the other half), and without a spare and with my glasses sitting at home, I spent the remainder of the game half-blind.

The game resumed, and before long I faced my first one-eyed shot; a low one, heading straing toward me. I dropped to my knees to corral it, and it whistled past me to the left, wide of the goal.

Right, note to my teammates: One eye means I have no depth perception.

We managed to escape the game without allowing another goal, giving me a perfect save percentage in my career when playing with one eye.

The drive home, I must say, was more worrisome, but I also managed to come out of that unscathed.

Success:

Last Monday, I finally got my first men's-league ice hockey shutout. I've gotten shutouts in Waterloo ball hockey, WTSSC ball hockey, and blanks in both games I happened to play for a women's team. (I keep chivalry alive that way.) It took a year and a half to finally get that magical doughnut in the (relative) big league, after many 1-goal games, including a 1-0 loss from a bad goal with 7 seconds left. That one, nearly one year ago, has haunted me since, but I can finally let it pass. The milestone previously forbidden me has been achieved. Mmm... forbidden doughnut.

Failure

The next time you return an item at a store and receive a refund, try to appreciate how difficult it is to perform such an action and keep all the records straight. Noting the original sale price, with any discounts and taxes applied, less the refund, tracking multiple refunds, applying the taxes applicable to a refund, and allowing for the process to happen all over again. Doubly so if you're doing it in Quebec. It has been the bane of my employed existence for some time now.

Somewhere in Between:

With a Carolina vs Buffalo Eastern Conference Final on the schedule, I have had a perfect prediction record for the playoffs in the East so far. When I said Carolina would come back against Montreal and make quick work of the the Devils, people scoffed. When I positively declared that the Sabres would manhandle Ottawa, I was spot on again, albeit I didn't think it would be so quick. Should San Jose rebound against Edmonton, I will have been correct on 3 of my final four predictions, with only Calgary letting me down.

Too bad that I neglected to run my pool this year, which would have made my clairvoyance actually mean something.

Though much of my time lately has been spent following a furry little cotton ball running around the house, I don't want this site to turn into another blog about the mundane and groan-inducing life of an annoying person's pet. (That is, despite the petitioned and eventually-executed transition of the never-used Spudlevision to a Bunnycam.) Many a great weblog have been reduced to the charming-to-one, waste-of-time-to-everyone-else retellings of the adventures of furry creatures, full of "my cat did the cutest thing" and "my puppy is the smartest pooch". As one who despises animal-hero movies, I will certify that this site will not be reduced to such levels with the following statement:

My rabbit is not smart.

He is an adorably cute little furball and I love him to bits, but I make no myth about his intelligence. He is thoroughly and unarguably dense.

Case in point: rabbits are supposed to be perfectly capable of operant learning; Pavlov's dog experiments and such. Benji is not allowed on the couch, and any attempt to climb up there results in a hefty spray of water and/or a determined shove off the perch.

One would think that this sudden and consistent convergence of sea, air, and land would teach the bunny that the couch is not a safe place to be. Not so. On frequent occasions I will turn toward the sofa to find a big pair of ears and twitching nose peeking over the top staring back at me, at which point bunny becomes reaquainted once again with sea, air, and land in quick succession, seemingly much to his surprise.

Also consider that Benji has a habit of chewing the corners of walls, a doubly bad habit in that drywall provides zero nutritional value whatsoever, and that I then have to go patch and repaint the damage. After taking a hefty bite out of the wall, bunny realises that, yes, plaster and paint taste like ass. But, does that deter him from doing it again?

Oh, certainly no. Something like that would get him into the rabbit version of Mensa. This rabbit, however, is most definitely not smart.