Y’know, I hate it when guys say stuff like I told you so, but I did correctly predict the winner of tonight’s Stanley Cup Final and the recipient of the Conn Smythe Trophy. No doubt the media will be arriving on my front lawn tomorrow morning wondering about the secret to my prognosticative prowess; here’s hoping I can get some chores done in between interviews.
Speaking of interviews, the line of the night goes to Jackson Cooke, the five-year-old son of Penguins forward Matt Cooke. Here’s a clip from the tail end of Scott Oake’s on-ice interview with Cooke from CBC:
Runner-up prize goes to Marc-Andre Fleury. Asked by Oake to describe how he felt when he saw the Red Wings swarming his crease in the final minutes of the 3rd period of the game, Fleury smiled, shook his head and said, “Oh shit!” Spouse and I exploded with laughter.
Not far from the friendly confines of Juniorvania, there used to be a Rona store. Careful and attentive readers may remember this store making a cameo appearance in a home improvement saga related to the making of shelves from last year. I think I went in to that store the day I was looking for the melamine to finish up that shelving project and on two other occasions, both of which were on the same day: it was the day I purchased some scrap cedar to make the rails on the side of our compost heap and the risers for the grass stairs that run alongside the largest of our gardens in the back.
Three visits on two days in the course of about fifteen months; not very many visits at all, compared to the time Spouse and I have spent in the Lowe’s and even (shudder) Home Depot in that same time period, though both stores are much further away. I guess if I was in to augury as it relates to home improvement centres, I would have given the matter some serious consideration and I would have likely come to the obvious conclusion (after ripping apart and examining the entrails of a shop vac and a mitre box) that the fact that I didn’t throw a lot of business the way of a store that was essentially in my backyard probably didn’t bode well for the survival of the place.
A couple of weeks ago, on one of our drives by the Rona, we noticed that it had indeed gone out of business. Here’s a picture of the message left for the citizens of Brantford by the folks at the recently demised Rona:
We didn't have a middle finger graphic, or we woulda posted THAT.
Closed. Thanks, Brantford! Way to go, citizens of the telephone city! If you heartless bastards could have found it in your cold, cold hearts to simply purchase a couple more board feet of pressure-treated lumber; if you could have managed to squeeze a single snow shovel into your annual basket of consumer good purchases; if you could have maybe managed to buy your paper towels here instead of at the 7-Eleven, you ridiculous hammerheads, we might not be boarding up the windows right now. Terrific. Thanks a fucking million!
I think that’s what the sign says. Maybe it’s just me.
It’s been a busy couple of days of gardening, and now I’m bushed.
A Panorama of the New Rear Garden
Yes, I waited three days to post THAT photographic pun. Sue me.
For an idea of what the newly landscaped area looks like, check out the “Before” picture. Well, you could if I remembered to take a series of photos from the same angle of the area before we did the work. Here’s a picture that kind of shows the area before the de-crudifying process of Saturday (thanks Mom and Dad!) and the planting on Sunday:
The afflicted area appears in the top left portion of this photo.
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(nb: The above photo was created with Canon’s EOS automatic photo-stitching software. I haven’t had a chance to fool around with it yet to figure out how to make it – um, “work” – but you get the idea of what the new back garden looks like, as long as you are able to imagine the rear portion of the house without massive and sudden differences in colouration. Those only appeared in the photo, they aren’t real.)
Shhh! Don’t tell anyone, but Spouse and I have taken a couple of days off from work.
A day off is a wonderful thing; if you’re anything like me, you have it in mind to accomplish so many things, but you also want to just revel in your chance to drive in the slow lane for a change. For us, on these days, priority one is very definitely just kind of recharging our batteries vis-a-vis the workplace.
A very close second, though, was “getting those chairs painted”, you know, the ones my father-in-law started painting two weekends ago. The lawn furniture in question is a set of two chairs with matching table and bird bath that my Dad made several years ago, and which he and my Mom kindly donated to the People of Juniorvania. The acquired assets were in need of a paint job and – when he and Gillian were here in late May – Harold was, as Pierre McGuire is wont to say, “a monster” with the paintbrush. He layed down a number of difficult early coats on all of the pieces over the course of a couple of days back-breaking work, but wisely fled the jurisdiction prior to completion of the task.
Here’s a picture of Harold getting the painting party started:
Harold Takes the Task in Hand
Spouse and I spent a couple of hours in the driveway ourselves this afternoon, gaining new appreciation for the difficult work Harold had already accomplished. With any luck, tomorrow morning will see the application of one final coat on each piece and I will happily spend the afternoon literally watching paint dry.
After the painting was done (well, actually, in between coats) we headed in to the backyard and were mesmerized by the movements of this little fellow:
May Be a Juvenile Ruby Throated Hummingbird
I had a great time following this little guy with the camera and trying to get some good in-flight shots. It was such a beautiful sunny day that I could really ramp up the shutter speed and go full telephoto. Here’s a shot of our new friend heading in for a snack at the new feeder:
JHB01 Looking for Clearance Runway Two Seven...
I am really pleased with some of the shots I got of this little visitor today.
We finished off the night with a bowl of fire out back (first one of the season) and a couple of beers before settling in to watch Malkin and the Penguins dismantle the Red Wings in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final (turning point of the game: for sure, Malkin’s first breakaway shorthanded in the second period. He didn’t score, but it gave life to the Pens, especially Jordan Staal, who followed that rush up with a breakaway of his own and rang up a shorty in the process. The Pens didn’t look back in the game and – with a few breaks and some discipline early in Game 5 in Detroit, they might not look back in the series.) I’d like to write some more about the Final tomorrow. For now, it’s time to pack it in for the night and get some shuteye so I can get up early and enjoy doing whatever the hell I damn well please again tomorrow.
schedule included one hour set aside to undertake “put up the birdfeeder” project;
actual time elapsed to complete “put up the birdfeeder” project: four and a half hours, including two trips to three Canadian Tire stores in two different municipalities;
the grass – it keeps growing, and I am compelled to stop that by use of heavy machinery and whirling blades;
Stanley Cup Final game #2 got played, and I therefore needed to watch. It will be interesting to see what happens if Pittsburgh ever gets to have the puck.
I prefer, however, to blame my absence from the keyboard on a certain larcencous feline fond of task chairs situated in front of personal computing devices.
On the edge of the sink in our bathroom stands a bottle of liquid hand soap.
“LIVE CLEAN,” announces the label. Appearing below the brand name, in slightly smaller type, are the words “Sweet Pea.” I choose to read the label – each and every time I use the bathroom – as an exhortation to adopt a generally ethical approach to life, followed by a diminutive and familiar address.
“Live Clean, Sweet Pea!” says the soap.
“I’ll try, l’il dumplin’,” I answer. “I’ll try.”
Then I leave the bathroom with clean hands, a renewed sense of purpose and a feeling that I am well-liked and surrounded by various and sundry supportive items of personal property.
2009 Memorial Cup Champions - Mickey Renaud's Jersey Front & Centre
It had no effect on the players, of course. It couldn’t have – most of the guys wearing Spitfire sweaters today weren’t even born when it happened, so how could it have any effect on them? Nonsense. It did, though, have an effect on their fans. I know that to be true.
“It” was the 1988 Memorial Cup Final game. Two months ago, I wrote that the City of Windsor needed a Memorial Cup Champion more than any other place in this country. The case that I laid out for a Rose City Champion included consideration of economic factors (heavily dependent upon the suffering North American auto manufacturing sector, Windsor has the worst unemployment in the country); it included consideration of the tragic death of the team’s young captain last year (Mickey Renaud, from a hidden heart defect); and it included reference to some dicey circumstances for the franchise itself (a notorious hazing incident and some ownership instability, along with the perennial struggle to get a new place to play in). All of those things are true, and all of them make a compelling case for the Spitfires as Memorial Cup Champion.
But the factor that tipped the scales, in my humble (and biased) opinion, was the gut-wrenching history of the Spits in the Memorial Cup tournament. After years of mostly disappointing teams (only one trip to the league final, in 1980), the Spits finally had a powerhouse team in 1988. The one and only time the club had made it to the big dance in 1988, the team was a prohibitive favourite. That team won 39 of its last 40 games. It went undefeated – UNDEFEATED – in four rounds of the OHL playoffs (just imagine that). It skated through the round robin portion of the Cup undefeated as well. And it jumped out to a 3-0 lead over its opponent, the Medicine Hat Tigers. Coached by Tom Webster (later the bench boss of the Rangers and Gretzky-era Kings – just prior to Barry Melrose’s Mullet – in the NHL). The Spits were a lock to hoist that Memorial Cup trophy that day; I remember it. I remember lusting after that moment on that day. As a Spits fan, someone who had followed the team as a young boy since the inception of the modern franchise in 1975, it was finally going to be our turn to hold the trophy that ordinarily got won every year by somebody else from a bigger, better city or a more famous junior hockey program. It was time to walk on to the big stage with all the other Grade “A” franchises.
The thing is, though, the hockey gods do not like it when things are so predictable and certain. And so the hockey gods threw Spitfire fans a curveball that day. I remember they were leading going in to the third period, and I remember thinking they had the game in hand. When the buzzer sounded at the end of the game though, they had lost 7-6 to Trevor Linden’s Medicine Hat Tigers. Somebody else was carrying our trophy around the ice; the team that had lost one game in forty was only second best. Click here to continue reading 2009 Memorial Cup Champions: Turning the Page on 1988
This Goblet Will be taking a trip down the 401 to the Rose City
Congratulations to the Windsor Spitfires – and the City of Windsor – on the Spits’ first Memorial Cup victory. Windsor becomes the first team ever to win the Cup after going down 0-2 in the round robin portion of the tournament. They had to beat Kelowna in their final game of the round robin to force a tiebreaker, beat Rimouski in the tiebreaker and then Drummondville in the semi-final just to make it to today’s game.
Once they were there, they seemed desperately hungry to claim the trophy; three quick goals in the first seven minutes and eleven seconds pretty much sealed the Rockets’ fate, as the Spits beat Kelowna 4 – 1 to claim the 2009 Memorial Cup Championship. Give Kelowna credit, they gave it a whirl to come back, scoring a goal eight seconds in to the second period – but Ryan Ellis’ bomb from the point in the dying portions of that period restored a three goal lead and made Kelowna’s route to victory all the more difficult.
I will have a more complete recap up later; for now, be proud of your team, Windsor – they showed skill, talent and heart in winning this Championship. Enjoy it!
Oh, and Leaf fans: the Memorial Cup winning goal – was scored by Dale Mitchell (2007 3rd round pick, 74th overall).
I will be watching on a slight tape delay for much of the first part of the game – yard chores kept me a little bit later than I thought today – so don’t nobody call me on the phone and be giving me updates about what’s happening.
One game for the big trophy. Winner takes all; the Memorial Cup delivers up a notional game 7 for the Championship each and every year. I can’t bear blogging along with the game; my father-in-law and I are camped out on the couch with beers in hand ready to take it all in. I hope it’s a good game, and I hope my Spits are holding the hardware at the end of the day. I’m gonna say it again: this tournament owes us one. It is dangerous to demand satisfaction from the hockey gods, but perhaps a subtle reminder of an existing imbalance in the hockey cosmos will persuade them to rectify the historical imbalance of karma.
Go Spits Go!!!
UPDATE: Twenty minutes to go for a Memorial Cup Championship? Kelowna is going to come at us like crazy, but that late goal from Ellis is huge and makes the Rockets’ mountain a tall one to climb. I am not assigning any numbering to any sort of poultry, but this is an excellent position for the boys to be in. Go Spits Go!!!!
Popeye has a habit of standing at the top of the hill behind the house, just over the property line so that he’s technically all four feet firmly on the neighbour’s property. Next door to us, there is a fairly large farm, and the edges of the fields – as you might imagine – get somewhat overgrown with tall grasses, wildflowers and weeds.
Popper likes to stick his head through the grass that’s grown up along the edge of the property and perform surveillance: looking left, then straight ahead, then right; back to the middle, back to the left; back to the middle, back to the right….you get the idea. Well, maybe you don’t – but this picture should give you a pretty good idea of what I’m talking about.
