Okay, I am possibly overly excited about this clip, but I am mesmerized by the cuteness, and after a day like yesterday the world could use some Cute! Baby! Elephant!! NOM NOM NOM!

As always, my feelings about today are put so much better by someone else. Sars wrote one of the most powerful pieces about that morning that I've ever read. While I was gripped by the horror of something like that happening, and I was struck by the strangeness of an empty, planeless sky, she trudged from downtown back to her apartment covered in ashes. Hers are the posts I seek out on this day every year since.

"Looking at the light columns downtown, it's the same feeling, the same question. I love the lights, the way they look blocky and rectangular at the bottom, like buildings, and then as your eye goes up, they become fuzzier beams cutting through the clouds, but really, I want the buildings back — the actual buildings, with the people in them. I know that will never happen, and I know why, but the buildings and the people in them were stolen from all of us. That skyline belonged to us! Those people were ours. They weren't yours to take. Why did you do that? How could you steal them from us? WE NEEDED THEM." (full entry here)

Read her original entry here.

Also, if anyone who reads this lives on the east coast and thinks they might know Don, please let her know.

Holy shit.

The NHL needs some damn females. Get on it Mr. Bettman.

So, I have this dilemma, and I'd love it if anyone reading this would weigh in. Who knows, maybe in writing this it'll help make up my mind...

I've been taking hockey classes through the Pacific Hockey Association (PHA) since the beginning of June. My friends have played on PHA league teams in the past. But my friends have also played in the Northern California Women's Hockey League (NCWHL). I've done two "Give Hockey a Try Day" (GHATD) sessions with NCWHL, and enjoyed them.

As with everything, there are pluses and minuses to both leagues- I've included here the points that are most important to me.

Jerseys
PHA: Your team picks a name and logo, it goes on your jersey (that you have to buy) along with your name.
NCWHL:
Has stock jerseys and you borrow them for the season. No name or logo, and you don't get to keep it.

(Lame as it is, I really want a "this is my jersey for the very first team I played on", and I want to have my name on it. There is a possibility that I could just buy the jersey, but I'm not sure.)

Icetime
PHA: 17 games + playoffs if your team makes it. It's all gameplay- no practices unless your team rents ice time.
NCWHL: 21 games. At my level, it's more like 21 ice slots, with some games and some practices.

Friends/Teammates
PHA: My hockey class friends will be playing here. I've gotten close with like 5 of the people I met in class and we hang out a bit outside of class, and it's awesome, and I want to play on a team with them. Plus Charlotte will be playing in PHA next season.
NCWHL: Nicky will be playing here, and at my level, but she's a goalie, so she won't really be on my team, even if we get to play together sometimes. There aren't enough goalies and so they "float".

Cost
PHA: $475 + jersey
NCWHL: $435 (maybe more becasue I'd be registering late)

I am tempted to add a last category here called "drama level" but I won't. I'll just say that all my friends have had trouble with their teammates in PHA, and I keep getting told that NCWHL is "nicer". And from what little I've seen of this side of it, NCWHL seems better organized.

To sum up, NCHWL will give me more practice time, with others at my level. I am woefully behind the rest of my class in PHA in some things, and practice is a good thing. PHA lets me play with my new hockey friends (and yes I know I can make more friends in NCHWL, but I like my PHA friends), and I get a jersey. I know that's a material thing, but I've never played a sport EVER and I'm sentimental, so it's probably way more important to me than it would otherwise be.

(Third option- should I take a year off, work on my skating, lose some more weight and try again later?)

Seems like it should be a no-brainer, but it's not, so weigh in please.

Driving home from our last Tuesday skate before she and her husband move to North Carolina, I see the sign for Dee's exit and have to book it into the exit lane:
Me: Crap, I need to get over!"
Dee: You're fine, you have a ways
Me: I was auto-piloting home
Dee: Well that's a bigger problem. But I would have said something.
Me: Or I could kidnap you and then you couldn't move away
Dee: It doesn't work that way honey
Me: I dunno, I have a lot of duct tape
Dee: If you were going to kidnap me you'd have to use gaff tape
Me: Because it's more expensive and therefore it's a higher class of kidnapping?
Dee: No, becasue it leaves no sticky residue
Me: So you wouldn't be mad at me for kidnapping you, but you'd be mad about sticky residue?
Dee: Totally.

(Later, we recount the conversation to Dee's husband, and then)
Dee: So I could forgive her for the kidnapping, because that's understandable, but not for sticky residue.
Chad: I don't know, I might have a problem with the kidnapping
Dee: Yeah, but you know where she lives, and her door isn't all that thick
Me: (referring to a friend of all of ours who once woke up to Chad standing in the middle of her living room looking for Dee) At least my door has a lock on it
Chad: I have an axe
Me: I wasn't saying that the lock would stop you, but it'd at least take effort...

So needless to say, I did not kidnap her and she's still moving away. I am still not okay with this, but if she has to move, better to keep my door intact.