Tag: ice Hockey

Conversations with my cat – 66

This is Chester. He’s feeling very smug.

Our focus has mainly centred on getting the NaNoWriMo project done each day, but in between all of this, a number of issues have arisen.

The first, the Maple Leads, and what Chester calls my obsession with ice hockey.

He doesn’t get it. No one plays ice hockey in this country at the same level, and you can never find it mentioned anywhere, so why bother.

Besides he adds in his most cutting tone, they’re a bunch of losers.

So they’ve lost six games in a row and sacked the 50 million dollar coach, but…

To him it’s but nothing. Chester now refuses to watch the ice hockey with me, not until they win again. That 6-1 drubbing two games back was the start of the slide.

I tell him that we’re missing key players and with the newish lineup it takes time to work as a team.

Right.

So we move to God Friended Me.

What the hell is going on there. Miles and Cara are stumbling, with doubts seeded, Rakesh has just had his heart torn to shreds and the incoming Bishop is at a crossroads.

So, for a little early advice…

What’s going to happen to Miles and Cara?

Chester: I’m cynical, their the heart of the show, they won’t be forced apart. It’s all about the ratings.

What’s going to happen to Rakesh?

Chester: Draw out the angst for another 14 episodes, we’ll have to keep tuning on to see what happens.

And the bishop and his girlfriend?

Chester: Send them to another parish, they’re just a distraction we don’t need.

I’m inclined to agree with him.

Except about the Maple Leafs. They’re in Pheonix tomorrow, maybe with a new head coach they might pull off a miracle.

Conversations with my cat – 64

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This is Chester.  He’s decided to look the other way.

We are not on very good terms.  Three times in a row he’s decided to wake me at some ungodly hour of the morning on the pretence that he needs feeding, and three times he’s sniffed it and walked haughtily away.

If that was not bad enough, he’s now barracking for any other team than the Maple Leafs.  And to make matters worse, he’s now calling them losers, which technically is correct, but we are missing Marner, and Tavares needs more time to get back into it, and I can’t tell you where Mathews is, but he needs to come back real soon.

On top of this, I’m starting to feel for Anderson because they got rid of Hutchinson as a backup goalie and I didn’t think he was that bad.

Trust Chester to say that Hutchinson hadn’t been in a winning side for a while.  Obviously, he’s a keen observer of the game, or he’s figured out how to use my phone and the NHL / Maple Leafs apps.

OK, enough of the boring stuff.

I’m in need of some mood music so I put on Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.  Yes, it’s definitely annoying Chester.

Karma!

 

NaNoWriMo Day Fourteen

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Distractions, distractions…

You guessed it, the Maple Leaf’s are playing the New York Islanders, and it’s not going to be pretty.

It’s made worse by the fact Chester has decided to barrack for the Islanders.

Turncoat!

But, it gives me an idea to dig myself out of a plot hole, and there’s more scribbling before I go to the master plan, now on the computer, and can easily move things around.

I was writing yesterday, and somehow my mind took the story off on a tangent.

Sleeping on it, it led to another part, and then will neatly fold back into the masterplan later on.  It’s a twist no one will see coming, simply because I didn’t, at first.

As of last night, my word count is sitting on 25,044 words, which is good and gives me a buffer in case I get a blockage of some sort.

Today’s word count looks like it will be about 1,400 words.

The Maple Leafs are 2 to 0 down, and I think I’ll change the channel to a repeat of Murdoch Mysteries.

All I have to do is get the channel changer out from under the cat.

Maybe not.

 

NANOWRIMO Day Eleven

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Like yesterday, the Maple Leafs are playing again, and as much as I want to forsake i and get on with the story, The fact that we are down by a large margin at the end of the first period given me the opportunity to turn it off, or watch the stage a come back.

Damn.

I stick with it.

Then, we make a decision to go and see a movie, Last Christmas, because it looked interesting when we saw the preview some weeks ago.

That means mossing half of the third period of the ice hockey if we’re going there.  Well, there’s always the live broadcast via the phone.

It is not easy driving a car and listening to a brilliant comeback by the Leafs, and the excitement in the car is almost at the same fever pitch as the commentators.

Alas, we lose.

As for the movie, it was everything we hoped for.  Two delightful leads who didn’t overact, Emma Thompson as a Yugoslav, and Michelle Yeoh in a restrained performance that I’m unused to seeing her in.  Perhaps Star Trek Discovery kick-arse was not needed here.

Christmas, no swearing, no killing sprees, a few songs, and a lesson hidden between the lines.  What more could one ask for?

As for the story, I’m having a coffee and then it’ll be time to get back into the groove.

Or watch Jack Ryan series 2…

I was never very good at doing two things at once

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A NaNoWriMo journal supplemental

The Maple Leafs are playing and so I thought I would juggle watching them play and work on my NaNoWriMo project at the same time.

It seemed like a good way to get in 3 hours of work, and a little entertainment on the side.

But…

First period down and the Maple Leafs are 2 goals down.

What I first thought was going to be easy, is now becoming mission impossible.

After the second Philadelphia goal, Chester, my stalwart anti-everything cat comes down to see what the commotion is.  By that I mean, almost yelling at the TV screen.

A lot of good that’s going to do when they’re 12,000 miles away on the other side of the world.

And by the look on Chester’s face, I think he thinks it’s a waste of time too.  Or maybe that’s his usual, I don’t give a $%^^%$ expression he has most of the time.

We have the Philadelphia feed so we’re getting the joy from the intermission analysts at their teams lead, but it does take me back to Philadephia when we were there last year when they cut to shots of the city.

And, of course, instead of having my eyes on the story, I’m now thinking of a subplot, yes, you guessed it, in Philadelphia, which is not very far from New York where the main action takes place.

Then…

We score.  It’s now a more respectable scoreline, but Anderson has his work cut out for him, and I’m thinking of turning off the sound because I don’t want to hear any more praise for their young stars.

The story proceeds, taking out the outline pages and looking to see where it can fit in.  Yes, I see a gap where I can fit in an interlude, and scribble a few notes.

End of the second period.  Still 2 goals to 1 down.

Start of the third period.  Chester decided to jump up on the table and, seeing the pencil sitting there, starts to push it around with his paw,  I snatch it away, and he gives me a chastising swipe.

Blast him, while my attention was diverted we score again, and I missed it.,  Thank heavens for the replay.  Over and over.

I finish the notes for the interlude, and the game ends a draw.  We now move to overtime.

I get the first few lines of the chapter I began working on at the start of the game, and just as the words are flowing, overtime ends with no score and we go into a shootout.  And before you know it, the game’s over and we’ve lost.

I swear Chester is smirking so I pick him up and put him on the floor with a very stern admonishment.

No, I’m not taking the loss badly, but there’s a few bad guys about to die horribly.

It’s been a good day for the Maple Leafs

It’s an unusual topic, but I was looking for a distraction from the rigours of NaNoWriMo, and this fitted the bill perfectly.

For someone who doesn’t really care about sport in general, and rarely able to find the time in between all the writing to actually sit down for several hours, and, in some cases, all day, today seems to have been an exception.

I got through my NaNoWriMo exercise earlier this morning, and since the Maple Leafs were playing today, I thought I’d fire up the computer and take a look at how they’re going.

By the time I’d found the streaming site the game had started but it was nil-all so it was much the same as not missing the start.

I thought it odd that an Australian would be interested in ice hockey, but it seems I’m not alone.  Nor that others barracked for Toronto, Ottowa, and Edmonton, and all seem to dislike with varying degrees of intensity, the New York Islanders.

Maybe because they’ve won ten straight games.

So, it takes a long time, almost halfway through the third period for the first goal, and its the opposition the Vegas Golden Knights.

Damn them.

And now I have this sinking feeling the game might slip away.  Their form can hardly be labelled stellar, and I thought I heard the home crowd booing them, but that must have been my imagination.

No, my dismay is misplaced, there it is, Mathews comes to life and evens up the scoreline.

And for the rest of the period, Anderson keeps the Golden Knights out.  As only Anderson can when he’s on his game.

Once again we’re in overtime, with more heart in mouth stuff, and, of course, the man we’ve been missing, Tavares finally pulls the rabbit out of the hat.

It’s a pity we couldn’t be there in person to see it.