Not To Be Trusted With Knives

I’m sorry about all those times I called you ugly. Or fugly. Please sign with the Canucks.

Sincerely,

Dr. Beth.

Update July 1, 2009: It worked!!!

My dad is a big time Leafs fan. Big time.  Despite growing up in Montreal, where it would have made a lot of sense to be a Habs fan (you know, given that the Habs win once in a while), he’s always been a fan of the Leafs.  He moved to the Toronto area in the early 70s and has lived there ever since, faithfully cheering for his Leafs through thick and thin.  Mostly thin.  (Or thick… whichever of those is meant to be the bad times).

Now I – and you may not have known this about me – am a wee bit of a Canucks fan.  So last night’s showdown between the Canucks and Leafs took on extra significance for me (beyond just the general hating of the Leafs that all Canucks fan have).  The Canucks, being in the Western Conference, and the Leafs, being in the Eastern Conference, only play each other once per season (if that), so whichever team wins, either my dad or I get bragging rights for a year!

Adding additional fuel to the fire, it was Mats Sundin’s first game against the Leafs since leaving Toronto. My dad refers to Sundin as a “double liar” – apparently Sundin, before the start of this season when there was all sorts of speculation about which team he would sign with – said he didn’t want to play only half a season and he didn’t want to be a “rent-a-player¹.”  And then he signed with Vancouver halfway through this season as a rent-a-player. “Double liar!” my dad says.

And was last night’s game ever a good one!  It went to a shootout!  And guess who scored the winning goal in the shootout?

And guess who immediately called her dad to ask, “So, how ’bout that game?”  Let the yearlong taunting begin!

¹A “rent-a-player” is someone who signs on with a team for a short period, the idea being that they just swoop in because the team is doing well and the player can help them in the short term, as opposed to signing a longer term deal and really becoming part of the team.

So today was the big day – my chance to skate at GM Place *and* have my picture taken with Taylor Pyatt! (You know you are jealous!)

This is me, heading down the steps to go skate at GM Place:

This is me skating:

I have to say the ice is pretty damn nice. (Comparable, I’d say, to the Olympic-sized rink at UBC ).  It was also pretty cool to skate through the crease and think, “damn, this is wear Luongo stands!”)

This is me on the Canucks bench.  It was pretty much the same as any hockey bench I’ve ever been on before. (I don’t know why I expected it to be different, but I did).

And this is the Canucks’ mascot, Fin, eating my arm:

Of course, the highlight of the event was meeting Taylor Pyatt for a photo.

Our conversation went something like this:

Taylor:    Hi, what’s your name?
Me:           Beth
Taylor:    Hi, Beth. I’m Taylor.
Me:          I know.

Thanks again to everyone who sponsored me for this event. I appreciate your generosity in supporting this very worthy cause!  (The Michael Cuccione Laboratory for Childhood Cancer Research, I mean.  Not that me getting to skate at GM Place and have my pic taken with Taylor isn’t a worthy cause.  Just the charity is a bit worthier.)

1.   The email I got telling us Skate for a Cure VIP fundraisers that we get to have our pictures taken with His Hotness Taylor Pyatt, it stated: “You will receive a pre-signed photo frame with your picture with Taylor. Please note that Taylor will not sign other items (jersey’s, shirts, etc.)”  Aside from the fact that the plural form of words should not have an apostrophe in them (!), the only thing I could think when I read this was, “Please note that Taylor will not sign other items (jersey’s, shirts, body parts…)

2.  A scale of 1 to 10, where 1 = “that’s totally appropriate” and 10 = “inappropriate beyond description,” how inappropriate would it be to tell Taylor Pyatt that I named one of my, um, electronic devices after him?  And then that, um, electronic device actually burned out?

3.  And, most importantly, what the heck should I wear on Sunday when I get my picture taken with Taylor? Remember, it has to be something that I can skate in, which rules out any of my funky skirts or awesome footwear.

So, remember how I came around, figurative hat in hand, shaking people down for moolah for the  Michael Cuccione Laboratory for Childhood Cancer Research as part of the Skate For A Cure fundraiser. And that those who raised enough cash get to skate at GM Place and have their picture taken with a Canuck?

Well, they just told us which Canuck it’s going to be.

You may remember Taylor Pyatt from such blog postings as the post where I declared I would have his babies and our babies will have hellabeautiful blue eyes and The Detox is Over. The Retoxification has Begun. Oh ya, and I Got a Free Drink Courtesy of Taylor Pyatt.

So yeah, Sunday. I get to skate at GM Place AND have my picture taken with Taylor Pyatt.

See.  Give and you shall receive.
Photo credit: Posted by John Bollwitt on Flickr.

Item the First: this, my friends, is a toddler hockey brawl:

It’s so very wrong, yet so adorable.  I would so love to see a couple of NHLers have a slap fight like that.

Item the Second: Apparently there’s a new play on tour called “Five Hole: Tales of Hockey Erotica.” In case it isn’t clear, they provide this informative tagline: “Combines sex and hockey together.”   According to this site they are on a “cross-Canada” tour.  A tour which stretches from Calgary, AB to Ottawa, ON¹.    There are a number of shows slated for Ontario, so all of my Ontario-based readers: I expect you to attend this play and report back.  Maybe you can win the much coveted role of “Theatre Critic” here on NTBTWK².

Item The Third: I’ve figured out what’s been wrong with the Canucks.  It’s not been coaching nor injuries nor lacklustre play by the defence.  It’s all been the result of a cursed password.  Not unlike the cursed chocolate bar episode of 2007, the cursed password is a password that was jinxing my boys.  I have to change my work computer password every 42 days.  And it’s surprisingly difficult to think up a new password that often, so I usually go with whatever I’m thinking of at the time I get the “change your password now” reminder.  And in early January, I happened to be thinking of that Canucks when I got that reminder and so I happened to make that my password.  And the Canucks went on a horrible losing skid.  And it didn’t occur to me until just yesterday that this is obviously the result of my password, which must be cursed.  And so I changed it.  And guess what happened in tonight’s Canucks game?  Yeah, I think that’s enough evidence to conclusively prove that my password was cursed.  Lesson learned: no more Canucks-related passwords.

¹Hate to break the news to you, but if you keep going west past those big moutains, you’ll find more Canada! Ditto for going east of Ottawa.
²“Coveted” due to the level of prestige that comes with this role. The level of pay, not so much³.
³There is no pay for the NTBTWK Theatre Critic position.

Only two days into my 1001 days and already I get to cross something off my list!

43. take Tod to a Vancouver Canucks game

Last night I took Tod to his first ever Vancouver Canucks game.  Shocking, I know.  He has lived¹ his whole life in BC, most of it in and around Vancouver, without ever having gone to a Canucks game.  Mercifully, this has now been rectified.

You’ll note, however, that I didn’t specify on my list that I would take him to a good hockey game.  You know, like a game in which we wouldn’t have to give our goalie the hook at 3.5 minutes into the game because he had already been scored on TWICE!  Sanford came into replace LaBarbera and soon was inexplicably behind the net with Gionta (a Devils player) putting the puck into the net².  Combine those with the fact that the Canucks let the Devils win every battle for the puck and let the Devils skate around them as if they were a bunch of pylons and it was so bad that the whole stadium booed the Canucks off the ice at the end of the first period!  A little kid a few rows back was heard asking, quite loudly, “Why do they suck so much?”

Thankfully, the ‘nucks came out much better in the second and third periods.  They managed to make a game of it and there was some entertaining hockey to be watched.  Surprisingly, though, there wasn’t a single fight.  I think I’ll have to accomplish #44 on my 101 list (take Tod to a Vancouver Giants game) to see the fighting action. Who knows, maybe we’ll even get to see another full team brawl!

In somewhat related news, when I was telling a friend of mine at work that I’d been at the game last night and mentioned that the Canucks were playing the New Jersey Devils, my friend said, “Oh really? I met a bunch of NFL players from New Jersey on Sunday.”  She meant NHL (but that’s an indication of just how much she’s interested in pro sports) and after a quick look at the Devils’ website, we discovered that she was partying with Dainius Zubrus and Zach Parise that night.  Parise, as it happens, is on my hockey hotties list and it looks like Zubrus needs to be added to my roster!

¹Although whether one can say they’ve truly lived without having been to see a Canucks game is up for debate.
²I miss you Roberto. Please say the rumors that you are coming back tomorrow are true!

Photo credit: Tod Maffin on Flickr.