How I'm Spending a Hockey-less Summer

Thank your gods that hockey is around the corner. Even if it's just shitty training camp and pre-season hockey. Even that is like 87% better than great baseball. As for me, I've had a hard time killing the hours since last April. Here's a few ways I spent my time:

1. Remembering why the fucking Replacements became my favorite band and realizing that their fuck you attitude might have made too big of an imprint on my development years. Bonus for you link-clickers: the chick whose album was the first record I ever bought covering one of the Mats' best songs.

2. Offering to buy the second round.

3. Wondering which Brad Boyes is going to show up this year.

4. Telling my ticket guy that yes, I will renew my season tickets for a Jaroslav Halak -backed team but that if Chris Mason had been signed that I'd probably have stayed home this year.

5. Growing a mullet for a rec league tournament.

6. Inching ever closer to buying that McClement jersey.

7. Wondering why YouTube keeps selecting sugar glider videos as Recommended For You.

8. Telling the same guy for the 15th time, "Cool," when he tells me that his lacrosse buddy's friend's girlfriend's sister is dating T.J. Oshie.

9. Getting into older Black Keys albums thanks to averagejoe and Dan Cahill, the rec league wrecking ball. 

10. Eating the fuck out of jalapeno flavored sunflower seeds.

11. Listening half-heartedly to yet another story about how "that ref that lives near you" was going for it at OB Clarks again.

12. Knowing that the Blackhawks won't be nearly as good next year.

13. Knowing that the Red Wings won't be as good as last year.

14. Naming my EA NHL10 player "Sugar Glider."

15. Wondering what exactly will motivate David Perron to go from flashes of brilliance to dangerous every shift. The talent is there, is the head?

16. And by 'head' I meant 'mindset'.

17. Praising and cursing Chuck Palahniuk for writing Rant, a book I had to read twice to truly enjoy. You twisted fuck.

18. Still laughing about the time I told Roman Polak that I loved his Twitter feed.

19. Waiting with quiet excitement to see how good Polak is next year. And what his Twitter says.

20. Wanting to make fun of the Blackhawks for parading the Cup in the Gay Pride parade in Chicago and yet finding that too neanderthal for even me. Plus, Brent Sopel did the parade, which strangely works well on both the gay and neanderthal levels.

21. And by 'did', I meant 'rode in'.

22. Accepting apologies from people who made fun of me for going over the top in my praise for Philadelphia's Mike Richards... before the playoffs.

23. Wondering who the Blues' Mike Richards is.

24. Planning a kick-ass trip to some Mexican beach town with my college buddies only to have it transform into a kick-ass trip to Vegas with my college buddies only to have it transform into a weekend trip to stay in one guy's one-bedroom apartment in Chicago.

25. Cutting down all fluid intake into only coffee and beer. But lots of each, which my doctor recommended. I think.

26. Loving Doug Armstrong. Trying not to hate Larry Pleau. Then feeling weird about Doug Armstrong. And then comparing him to Larry Pleau.

27. Finding Chris Pronger, the most hated man in hockey, to finally be really likable.

28. Using the phrase, "Work drugs" in everyday life.

29. Telling ordinary people that, "You're fucking out, I'm fucking in."

30. Wishing Davis Payne didn't look like my accountant; hoping my accountant wins the Jack Adams next year. And the year after that. And the year after that.

31. Glad that SBN readily tells people that they want blogs that are unabashedly team-centric.

32. Tired of having nightmares where SBN tells me how to run this site to make it "successful."

33. Wishing I didn't know what "SEO" meant.

34. Wondering if sugar gliders truly do "bring the poozle."

35. Knowing that I don't give a fuck enough to find out what an Airbender is. My sixth sense tells me it wasn't worth the time.

36. Convincing myself that Daniel Tosh and I would be friends. 

37. Feeling pretty sure that David Backes will have yet another agonizingly slow start.

38. Quoting Answer Man's "punk rock on sellout is Blink-182" way too much.

39. Rooting for the Cylons as I watched the new series on DVD. Until it became cool to root for the Cylons, at which point I started rooting for the Stormtroopers.        

40. Going insane and getting a puppy to guarantee that no day is easy in my house.

41. Apparently deciding at 2 am one night that I needed information sent to me on a new, exciting career in underwater welding.

42. Finding hamsters cool. And trying to forget all the horrific deaths that my hamsters suffered when I was a kid.

43. Remembering that coffee is for closers, motherfucker. The good news is, you're fired.

44. Wondering if T.J. Oshie is happy to be a fan favorite, score a few less than 50 points, nail a sea of puckbunnies and be happy with that or if he wants to be a heavy-hitting, clutch goal scoring, 20 and 40 scoring leader of this team.

45. Fucking the internet. Don't ask me to explain further.

46. Justifying awake, drunk and eating at 2:30 a.m.

47. Calling bullshit on suburbanites who try to hide their racism by describing shit as being "very urban."

48. Spending about 12 minutes trying to remember how many ounces there are in a pound before saying, "Wait... Shit."

49. Surrounding myself with people who know they're hard to deal with.

50. Saying Fuck it to coming up with 99 ways I'm wasting my summer.