Sunday notes

I know some of you out there have wondered where my Sunday messages have been.  Well, I have some pretty stiff criteria on what to post on this subject.  First, It needs to be based on something I had to learn.  Second, it has to be something that I am taking to heart.  Third it has to have the proper period of digestion.  Lately, I have either struggled to have myself in the right mind-set, or haven't been led by something compelling enough, or haven't been compelled enough.  Today, I heard a strong, compelling pair of sermons- but digestion is still working on them.  In other words, if I am to give you the lesson I learn, two things must happen- I must learn, and I must be able to tellit in a beneficial way.  On the bright side, you all aren't paying me for insight, so no one's getting short-changed.

This morning, I read an excellent blog post on Surviving Boys about what it means to be an independant voter.  I'd like to make two observations before you check it out, though.  First, though Juli and I sometimes disagree on the candidates' "level of morality", we are pretty much in agreement on everything else, and I thought she did an excellent job on this piece.  Second, I guess I hadn't really given much thought to the "levels" of being an independant voter.  For example, with rare occasions of exception (many of which I came to regret), I have generally voted Republican.  But being independant for me has always meant that, while voting one way, I had the freedom to vote the other on occasion without the broccoli gods smiting me for "betraying the party line".  I believe that the other end of the spectrum for me are those who claim independant status because of an axe they wish to grind, whether they are a minority party adherant (say a communist, libertarian, or neo-nazi) who claim independance to deride all parties, or the system, or what have you.  Juli clearly shows what it means to be an honest-to-gosh independant- one who does her own thinking, weighs what is said on her experience of what has been done, and votes her conscience.  Okay, no go read her post, I promise you won't be missing anything.

Okay, in the meantime I thought I would bring up that the battle between myself and KC over who picks college football the best goes on. This week, he picked 46 winners to my 43 to win his first week out of four.  So far this year, I've picked 206 winners for a 74.37%, and he has 203 for a 73.29 %.

In other news, as we speak I am keeping one eye on the text summary of the ongoing game between Lokomotiv and Dinamo Riga.  Friday was out last game and we managed to snap a two game losing streak with a 4-2 win over Moscow Spartak.  They took the early 1-0 lead in front of 9,000 screaming Yaroslavlians, but Alexei Kalyuzhny tied it with under 15 ticks to go in the first period, his 3rd of the season.  We went on to score 4 straight times, all but one of them in scrambles out front like the first one.  Mikelis Redlihis got #2 6 1/2 minutes into the second; Yegor Yakolev, a member of last years' VHL team, got his first at the game's halfway point; and Yegor Averin tallied his 3rd on a breakaway 4 minutes into the final stanza.  Spartak got a goal late in the third, but came no closer.

Todays game has been a tight affair, and as I write is just now going to OT tied at 1-1.  Andris Dzerins scored at the halfway point to put the Lithuanian visitors on top, but Stefan Kronwall bagged his third at the 7:04 mark of the third to tie things up.  Despite a seven-shot advantage in the third, that's all we got.

While we're waiting for OT to get going, here's a new pick of Mr. Woody Pecker.

Geez, I used to be neat and entertaining; now, I'm just halftime entertainment.  What an upside-down world!

I guess while we're waiting I could mention that NHL star Alex Ovechkin scored his first goal of the year with Dynamo Moscow in a 3-1 loss to SKA St. Petersburg.  Another NHLer, Ilya Kovalchuk had an assist for SKA in the win.  Also, I see Martin Thornberg, a Swede in his second season with Torpedo after 12 years with HV71 in Sweden's elitserien, scored three times in a 10:04 stretch of the second in the ongoing game between Torpedo and Spartak. Wow!  In the meantime, the 5 minite OT is finished with no scoring, so we go to the shoot-out.  Our first two shooters are stopped, so are theirs.  Jamie Johnson, a Canuck who spent last year with Grand Rapids of the AHL, scored for Riga on their third try; Niklas Hagman ties it back up with a score for us. Our goalie, Vitaly Kolesnik, stops their fourth shooter.  And then Emil Galimov, one of last year's stars, beats Maris Jucers for the Lokomotiv win!  It's only the second game he's gotten into, and he was hot late, with two of our four OT shots to go with his game-ender.  That puts us at 3 regulation wins, two shootout wins, and 2 losses.  Next up is Tuesday against Donbass, who just got a score from would-be Philly Fyler Ruslan Fedetenko to beat Spartak in a shootout.