Been a Bit of a While

So, of course, the big news was our trip to state in hockey...god, that was a party. Almost enough to make me want to go to hockey games on a regular basis next year. Indeed, I'm almost positive that I'm going to. The game against Appleton was fun in that terrifying sort of way...God, when they tied it 2-2 I was absolutely horrified that we were going to let it slip away, but then our little freshmen buddy made everything okay. The state final was more or less predictable...they were so much bigger that it was pretty much impossible to make any other assessment of how one team stacked up against another, but I'm damn sure Cody had better hands than their Mrs. Hockey fellow, but he's so small that he just gets smeared whenever he tries to penetrate the offensive zone. Our guys had a lot of heart, and to give them credit, they never gave up despite being pretty soundly outplayed. It's one of those games that you know you shouldn't win, but you're just close enough to the other team that if you get lucky, things might turn out in your favor. They didn't, but we hit the post early in the first and with about six minutes left in the third, so if either of those (or both) had gone in, it would've been a totally different hockey game. Hell, if just one of them went in it would've gone from being "domination" to being a "slug fest" where "heavy blows were traded"...it is quite obvious that none of the hockey reporters for the papers know what the hell they're talking about. Okay, I will concede that I am biased in favor of our guys, but it was a tight game, they just had a noticeable edge that carried through the game. Our cheering section was nuts, though, and we most certainly drowned out the Eau Claire kids during the last minute of th game. Honestly, when Cody finally did score, we were all as happy as if we had won the game. I feel for our guys, though - that had to've been such a frustrating game to play, just judging by how frustrating it was to watch them put so much effort into it and get so little in return.

Anyway, hockey rants aside...err, wait. Briefly, I'm rather disgusted that the Gophers let their first game against Anchorage slide, but they won the next one, and while we certainly aren't going to have home ice for the first round of the WCHA playoffs, if we hold things together well enough, we're in position to go to the NCAA tournament. Funny, given that we're seventh in the WCHA, and eleventh nationally. I think that says something about the strength of the WCHA (that and the four or five WCHA teams in the top 10), as well as how much stronger our nonconference schedule is than Wisconsin's (haha).

So, properly breaking away from hockey, I procured both Sins of a Solar Empire and No More Heroes. Haven't played a whole lot of the latter, but it's fun and bloody and the controls are good, for the most part. The lack of camera control gets annoying, but you can blame that on the shitty Wii controller. That whole one analog stick thing is a bit of a problem. And by a bit, I mean it's a huge problem that they should've foreseen, but failed to for some reason. Not every game for a console is a shooter or a party game, Jesus. Sins is a blast, and extremely elegant in terms of how it works. The strategy involved is almost excessively simply - it's all about choke points and spread your forces to cover as much of your territory as you need. Even when you're attacking an enemy, it becomes an issue of pincering their worlds so that they can't rebuild behind you, or else taking over the worlds as you clear them. Either way, it's very fun. I'm having a few issues on larger games where my video driver crashes when I'm zooming out while ships are entering or leaving phase space...not sure whether it's the game, my video card or drivers, or whatever, but it's not a deal-breaker and on the small maps it's rarely an issue. I might just need to update my video drivers at some point.

There was supposed to be some meat to this somewhere, but I don't know that I'm ever going to get to it. First base is comfy, and I don't really feel motivated to move beyond that; I'm also moderately ticklish, apparently.

School's getting to be a bitch, but the Am Lit research paper is almost done, which is going to offer a nice reprieve and a chance for me to get Chem in order. Calc and physics are going fine, we're almost done with editorial stuff in Wayfarer, and Am Lit should be just dandy when this research paper gets finished. Billy Budd is a fucking twit and I'm happy that he died, though the fact that Sarah is in love with Claggart only serves to reinforce my conviction that she is the devil in miniature human form.

I've been hearing marginally more from Libby, recently, which is to say I've actually been hearing from her. We chatted a few weeks ago about nothing in particular, and then proceeded to talk shit on Friday night about the state finals. Kinda annoying, 'cause apparently she's not into hockey at all, but I imagine there had to be an underlying joking nature to the whole thing; anything else would seem a little out of character. Either way, it was nice to talk to her, though I'm getting the impression that, unfortunately, she didn't get into Stanford, or at least got wait-listed. The fact that she brought up being a national merit finalist but not Stanford when I asked for life was going seemed to seal that one, at least for now. Eh, hopefully in a month I'll get some big-texted, obnoxious email about how she got in; that would make me smile. It really has been nice to hear from her and Nat every now and then; it provides me with that little bit of special conversation that I don't get enough of at school. I guess you could question my mental fidelity at this point, but I don't really care; my thoughts are inviolate, as far as I'm concerned, and so long as you don't act on them, I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

Finally, I'm reading Nineteen Eighty-Four, which is amusing, and I've very slowly been getting back into the writing groove, which makes me very happy.

>>Sam'ich out<<
"She's [still] on fire"