Chris' eurohockey stuff starts

As you might guess, this has been a wind-down day, so I thought I'd look at the already-opening euro-hockey seasons.
Sweden's Elitserien opened today, with Linkoping topping AIK 5-1 in the opener. Defending champ HV71 plays Djurgardens tomorrow in a playoff rematch.
The Czech Extraliga, including Karlovy Vary, who tried and failed to get permission to join the KHL, opens Friday. The Finnish S-M Liga opens tomorrow.
The Slovak Extraliga, including Poprad who tried and failed to get permission to join the KHL, opened a week ago, and defending champ Kosice is already in a battle with MHC Mountfield Martin for the top spot. The Swiss National League A opened last Friday, and last year's runner up HC Davos is tied with 2 others at 2-0; one of those is EV Zug, who whupped defending champ SC Bern in their openner 4-1.
The German DEL openned two Fridays ago, and the defending champs Hanover Scorpions have rolled to a 3-1 record, their only loss a 2-1 OT affair to last year's regular season winner, the Icebears of Berlin. Unfortunately for the Berliners, that is their only win thus far.
The AL-Bank Ligaen of Denmark is having a season-opening tourney, in which they have just reached the semis. Both the Norwegian GET-Ligaen and the French Ligue Magnus open Saturday, while the Italian Serie A waits till next Thursday.
The Austrian Erste-Bank Liga opened earlier in the week with a replay of last year's final. Same result- Red Bull Salzburg beat Black Wings Linz 5-3.
In Jolly ol', the EIHL opened 2 weeks ago, with Nottingham running to a 4-0 record, the most recent a 9-4 rout of Dundee on the road. Defending champ Belfast is 3-1 having suffered a shootout loss to the Nottinghammers in their second match.
Last but not least, the KHL is well underway, with the early lead belonging to 2 surprise teams. Sibir Novosibirsk is one of the 3-1 teams, rolling their first 3 games (albeit 2 of them were against usually hapless Amur) before losing to the other 3-1 team, Dinamo Minsk. The Belorussians have made more of an achievement, though, beating Ak Bars and Lokomotiv in addition to Sibir. Their loss was a 2-1 setback to Torpedo Nizhny-Novgorod. Thankfully, my beloved Lokomotiv recovered to top Atlant and Torpedo to move to 2-1. Media favorite and early choice to be new champ SKA St. Petersburg has struggled to a merely human 2-2 record. To make it worse, their losses were to Spartak in a 5-1 rout and to Amur (!) in OT.
My source in the Asia Hockey League complains that here we are with the season opening Sunday and the league website is "under construction". Also, apparently they were considering expanding the league presence in mainland China by splitting the team from last year into two, which he hoped doesn't happen because "they were brutal last year as one squad". Let's see- last year's attempt to expand the Chinese presence was to have the one crappy team call two cities home. This year they want to split one crappy team into two crappier teams so that each city might suffer. And they wonder why the website wasn't up! (PS I checked the site. It is up... but you can't do anything on it yet.)

what I did on vacation day 3, 4 and 5

Day 3: took a walk, saw 2 deer and one unknown, possibly a spry ground hog. Watched football.

Day 4: Took the "long walk" (down to Coliseum Blvd, over to Clinton, up to Washington Ctr., and home). Watched football.

Day 5: Today we visited the Fallen Timbers Memorial in Maumee, OH. As I am gonna be putting in a LOT of pictures, you can learn about the battle

here. Me, I had more than enough trouble with the google maps, the Ohio tourism sites, and etc. trying to find out what was where and how you got in. The whole thing is set up in 4 parts, of which we visited 3: the actual battle site; the memorial; and Fort Megis down the way. After spending much of day 4 afternoon studying the maps, I was mainly confident of what I was doing; after all, it was 99% on US 24, eh?

We went to the memorial first. The memorial consisted of one main monument and 2 smaller ones. Each side saluted a different group involved. This side saluted Little Turtle and the indians.

Here's Laurie at the main side.

Cool, no?

The next monument was the Indian monument. This included Turkey Foot Rock, whose story you can read on the plaque.

This was to the west of the monument. On the east was the soldiers' monument, with all the names of the fallen, except for ten men they couldn't name.

Trails led far and wide down a bluff that was a good two miles from the river, despite one

website's claim that it "overlooked the rapids".(link)

The little white speck is the monument from the valley floor.

A foot bridge over 24 led to where the actual battle took place.

It was only when we got to the other side that I learned why the "access points" weren't on the map: And here I am showing the scofflaw streak we'd need later on.

So next we went on to Fort Megis, which withstood 2 out of 3 sieges by the Brits and their drunken indian footsoldiers in the War of 1812. There was an awesome monument to the soldiers from Pennsylvania who died here:

And here's the Fort itself. Not much different inside form outside, save for the monument.

If Laurie looks a bit nervous, she was. You see, the visitor's center is closed on Monday and Tuesday, and so when we got to the fort's gate, we saw:

However, we also saw that the gate was wide open:

and went right on in. I wasn't coming back tomorrow, damn their eyes!

At any rate, then it was time to eat, and we went to the Fallen Timbers Mall, which is store-wise a lot like Jefferson Pointe. But the layout kicks JP's butt!

After a satisfying meal at Red Robin, it was home again and another well deserved nap.

NFL Sunday week one

Here's my thoughts on today's games, and how we did in the NHFFL.

The biggest thing we take away from today is how desperately the rule on TD receptions needs to be re-written. When what happened to Detroit occurs- what should be a TD taken away by a technicality- the powers that be need to ask, "has this rule served the spirit of the intent?" Of course, the Lions will have to join the Cowboys on reflecting that it doesn't pay to wait until the last moment to try and win a game.

Speaking of the Cowboys, I don't think Alex Barron would be well-advised to fly home with the team. He spent that entire game giving his teammates a reason to toss him out the plane, and that holding penalty that ended the game rivalled the stupidest ways to lose a game of all time.
And Jason Garrett's play calling was abysmal. As it has for the last how many years. And Dez Bryant played like he was in a cloud. Show up or stay home.

So, was it the revenge factor motivating Houston or does the Colts D suck that bad? I've got to give Gary Kubiak credit for his work with Arian Foster. Used to be, I wouldn't have believed Foster could walk 231 feet without fumbling, much less rush for 231 yards.

It cracks me up that Pittsburgh and Atlanta couldn't score a touchdown between them in sixty minutes, but Mendenhall can run one in from 50 yards away in OT.

I looked in on the Giants' game at one point and saw Brandon Jacobs 8 carries for 33 yds and Ahmad Bradshaw 10 carries for 7, and thought, boy the Bradshaw as starter era is going to be a short one. About 5 minutes later Bradshaw had 13 carries, 65 yards, and a TD. Maybe I'll learn.

In the NHFFL, the KCAs parley two Jahvid Best scores into a 37-29 lead on the Rangers, and the Rangers are done scoring. The lightweight game has so far been the SVA and the Beagles. Scrappy's heroes have a 22-10 lead, but Shenan has 3 players in the Monday night doubleheader. The Elks, like the KCAs, have a win and players yet to play, with a 38-30 win over the Clock BBQs. 3 Hakeem Nicks scores top 2 by Matt Forte.
That Mendenhall OT score gives the T-cubs a 34-13 lead on the B2s. The good news is each team has a player to go. The bad news is they both play for the Chiefs. The classic match of the weekend is the Angels/Rhinos shootout. Going into the Sunday night game, the Angels led 43-42, Chris Johson's 15 points balancing somewhat those three Arian Foster scores. However, the Romo-to-Austin hookup was both for the Angels, and the tally going into Monday Night and only Shawn Greene to play for the Rhinos, is 52-42 now. Finally, the Buzz/Ducks match is all over but the final scores, with Buzz leading 51-12 behind a dozen each by Peyton "the Cape" Manning and Wes Welker.

what I did on vacation day 2

Other than the aforementioned green hole expedition, we watched Kansas beat GA Tech, and then went to a birthday party for Laurie's brother-in-law Jack.

Here's the basic group: picture one (l to r) : the legs of TJ, who is Laurie's niece Katie's fiancee; the back of Laurie's nephew Andy's stepdaughter Abbey with Andy over her left shoulder; Laurie's niece Rachel; sitting, Jack's sister in law Penny and brother "Beanie", and Mark Burns; standing at the edge of the table is the birthday boy hisself; and running towards me on the floor is my good buddy Baxter. Picture two features Laurie's sis-in-law Mary holding new kitten Manny (seated in the rocker).

Here is Manny. He was found abandoned by a co-worker of Laurie's brother Chuck. Mary guesses him at no more than two weeks old due to the fact that she is having to bottle-feed him and rub him to go to the bathroom. At first they didn't think he was going to make it, but he's a real fighter. Everyone fell in love with him, especially Mark's wife Jackie. The picture is him and Laurie.

Next we have the new generation: the little little guy is TJ and Katie's son Jackson. The slightly bigger little guy is Andy and wife Kristen's son Blaine. He gave us a good floor show, shaking his booty to the Allman Brothers. Jackson got his moment in the sun by sticking his hand in mom's broccoli casserole. And for good measure, while she cleaned one hand, he put the other one in. And while she removed that one, he grabbed a foot with the first one. Easy, mommy, I'm just experimenting with more efficient eating methods.

Once the crowd dwindled somewhat, we started a rousing game of pictionary. Some of us are better artists than others. Among the words we refused to do were: parasol, cornflake, tango, and cowardly lion. But the topper was Jack's rendition of lab rat. He never did get to the "lab" part, because we couldn't figure out his "rat":

I ended the game with a wonderful green and red marker rendition of an olive, which gave the boys (me, Jack, Mark, and Rachel's friend Christian) the win over the girls (sister Mary, Jackie, Rachel, and Laurie). Rachel's man Alex did the timekeeping, dice-rolling, and guessed for the girls when Laurie finally succumbed to whatever bug she got from Tina this week. I've a feeling that whatever day three brings, it'll be me'n'Scrappy against the world.

The green hole exists!!!

And if any of you doubted it, here's pictures to prove it.

The one picture is Scrappy at the top of the hole to get an idea of how deep it is; the other is the former stream bed that must have fed it before it was closed off from the ditch to the north or the river to the east.

Last night, me and Mr. Boy did some star gazing with my new binoculars. Among the sights out at aproximately 2 am were Aldebaran, the Pelaides, Jupiter, Capella, Deneb, Vega, and a neat blue star at the bottom of the constellation Auriga,
near Capella, named Menkalinan. How's that for a mouthful? (On the map here, he is the star at the bottom of the 'pentagon', marked with the Greek letter β.) On the bright side, at least we didn't run into Mr. Raccoon, who was out about 2:45 the morning before, crossing from fence row to patio (our neighbors') on his way to the trash dumpster for his daily shopping.

what I did on vacation day 1

Yep, on two weeks vacation, and today was day one. Uncharacteristically, Scrappy actually left me sleep in, so no walk today. Don't bet on that repeating tomorrow. Got a message from son KC saying he calls Baltimore over Atlanta in the Super Bowl (the real one, that is.) I'll look into that in a bit. Laurie and I ended up going to Grabill days, which we missed last year because of my idiot leg. Grabill Days is always just a hair better than most of the area festivals because of the Amish influences, like the Souder store. Laurie picked up a bottle of raspberry jam there, and I got the obligatory fudge. We ran into my brother Tom (the oldest of my family), who I haven't seen in ages, and his whole family: wife Kathy, daughters Robin and Raine, and Raine's daughter Tori. Most of that music I like so much on time machine I learned to love with Rob and Raine. Rob was born 5 months after me, Raine a year and a half. (Yes, I've been an uncle my whole life, just about.) Amazingly enough, it was Tori- who hasn't seen me since she was 6, about 20 years ago- who picked me out of the crowd. Rob didn't even recognize me till I took my hat off- a slow building OMG moment.

After a couple of steakburgers (mine w/mushroom and swiss), we met up with Laurie's sister Mary and our friend Jackie and re-toured the stuff we looked at but didn't pay attention to the first time. The highlights were the metal detector/coin collector's booth (which is by the Fudergong, and scroll to the end of the post to find out what a Fudergong is) and the couple that melted glass bottles in a clay kiln to make artwork. There was also this guy who was a mushroom hunter and guide, who had a t-shirt I loved- "all mushrooms are edible- some only once". And the stone monument place that had the stone sign for your front porch-"ring bell/ if no answer, pull weeds".

We ended the tour with a stop at a garage sale at American Legion post 47 on St. Joe rd. You don't want to go by the Journal Gazzette's sale map here. It says Halter rd leads across a bridge to St Joe, but what it DOESN'T tell you is that for a quarter mile it is Clay st., then becomes Halter road for another quarter mile before t-ing into St. Joe. Gotta love our road-naming system in Allen county. If you can't find the road you're looking for, just stay on the one you're on till the name changes.

At any rate, we did find the sale, and I got a new pair of sunglasses (I've worn a pair with one arm for about 2 1/2 months), a pair of binoculars, and a military canteen for those aforementioned walks with Mr. Beagle. Then, as one might expect, came a well-deserved nap.

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Okay, let me look at the NFL. AFC east goes to New England, central will be Ravens with the Bengals making a wild card. South, uhmmmm... I'll go Colts, much as I hate to (I am not a Colt fan) and I'll call Tennesee for the other wild card. The west is a real mess. I'll say the Chargers sneak past the Raiders. Not sure if it matters who comes out of this, they'll get killed by the NFC in the Super Bowl. Uhmmmm.... I guess I'll follow my son and take Baltimore.

NFC: east goes easily to Dallas; central, I'll take Green Bay, with the Vikings edging upstart Detroit for a wild card. South will go to New Orleans with Atlanta grabbing the other wild card.

The west is a real mess. Where have I heard that before? I'll say that the 49ers will go 9-7 and win the division. I'm going to say that the winner of a Vikes-Saints rematch will beat Dallas in the conference championship, and go on to win the super bowl. Based on last night's game, right now I'll take New Orleans to repeat. Now, last year I had the Titans taking on the Cowboys, and Jeff Fischer managed to 0-8 me out of the running before half the season was gone. So, sorry, Drew.

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Fair fun found at the fudergong
By Steve Penhollow The Journal Gazette

Searching for an answer to just what exactly a “fudergong” is? Visit the Grabill Country Fair this year, and you’ll see for yourself.
Spend more than an hour at the Grabill Country Fair and you will become enamored of, perhaps obsessed with and possibly haunted by a single word.
Fudergong.
A confident voice comes over the PA system seemingly every five minutes or so entreating everyone to go to the fudergong.
Whether you previously wanted to go to a fudergong or not, you soon find yourself almost desperate to get there. But also apprehensive.
What in the name of all that’s Amish is a fudergong anyway?
Google the term and all you get is references to the Grabill Country Fair.
Try to translate it at various German- and Dutch-friendly language translation sites and you get bupkes.
It is, however, fairly easy to get a translation of bupkes.
I called the Grabill branch of the Allen County Public Library and spoke with a librarian by the name of Angela Fox. She consulted a couple of her fellow librarians.
“We’re not betting our lives on it, but we think it means ‘gathering place,’ ” she says. “Both of them said, ‘gathering place’ so either they’re sharing the same brain or it actually means that.”Later, Fox called Lynn Witt of Grabill Town Council fame. Witt had a more definitive answer.
“It’s from the German,” he said. “The person who named it said it was an eating place. Now you take your Amish, they translate it as the place where you walk in front of cows and horses, an area you walk down through and feed them.”
Witt’s not sure a more exacting translation is even necessary.
“Whenever you say, ‘Everybody meet here tonight at the fudergong, someone always says, “What the heck’s a fudergong?” ’ We know what it is out here, but strange people don’t.”
Don’t be a strange person.
Embrace the fudergong.

Step into my time machine week twenty

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So here we are for our twentieth trip down memory lane, a trip we could, upon looking at the top of our charts, title,"change partners and dance." Among our stories will be an accomplishment repeated for the first time in 14 years. Away We go!

First up, we have nine debuts in the hot 100 this week, but only a measly three of them are recognizable in impact. Coming in at 87 is The Boss, Bruce Springsteen, with his signature Born To Run. At 84 comes War with their follow up to Why Can't We Be Friends, Low Rider. and way up at 69 (so high I almost missed it) comes Neil Sedaka, with some background help from our good friend Elton John, with Bad Blood. The big jumper comes first this week- an 18-spot jump for the Four Seasons and Who Loves You. The big dropper is a tie between One Of These Nights (landing at 41) and How Sweet It Is (30) who both drop 16 spaces this week.

Let's take our trip to the other years' charts first this time. 1993 saw Cashbox in the midst of a couple-month long stretch where they intermittently did not issue new charts. Billboard had Mariah Carey's Dream Lover at the top. We continue the theme in 1983, where we find Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This by the Eurythmics at #1. This week in 1973, Helen Reddy was top dog with Delta Dawn. In 1963, the Angels were contacted to demo a song for the Shirelles, but did such a good job it was released as is- their one big hit, My Boyfriend's Back. And in 1953, it was guitar pioneer Les Paul and his wife from 1949-1962, Mary Ford, with their second appearance in this feature (remember "How High The Moon" a few weeks ago?), Via Con Dios.

This brings us to airplay alley, and three of the five debuts this week I did not recognize-at first. After playing them, I cut that number to 2. Jumping 14 places to 40 is the one I finally remembered, the Ritchie Family with Brazil. This group, not an actual "family", was put together by French producer Jacques Morali, who also put together the Village People. At 39 we have Gary Toms Empire with a disco hit, 7-6-5-4-3-2-1 (Blow Your Whistle). Jefferson Starship soared 12 spots to 38 with Miracles; The People's Choice (not necessarily mine) came in at 36 with Do It Any Way You Wanna; and John Williams' main theme from Jaws joined Dickie Goodman's parody Mr. Jaws (now up at 27) in the top 40 at 34, up 11.

The almost but not quite this week goes to the Amazing Rhythm Aces with Third Rate Romance, which peaks at 17 this week. A group that developed a large cult following, the Aces never hit the top 40 again, disbanding (but not Permanently) in the eighties after the album How The Hell Do You Spell Rhythm? (answer: I use spellcheck. Every stinking time.)

Only one song goes into the top ten this week, thus only one drops out. The victim: Jive Talkin', which slides from 5 to 12. Oh, and by the way, Love Will Keep Us Together stubbornly holds onto its spot in airplay alley, dropping just 1 this week to 37.

My tops of the seventies rolls into the mid-fifties this week. That song I said dueled with Grooveline last week? This Time I'm In It For Love by Player which resides at 55. 54 is Too Late To Turn Back Now by the Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rose, for which I found a rather curious postscript:

The group broke up in 1976 when Carter Cornelius joined a black Hebrew sect in Miami and adopted the name Prince Gideon Israel. He wrote, recorded, and mixed the sect's music and videos for the next 15 years. He died on November 7, 1991 as the result of a heart attack at the age of 43. Eddie Cornelius became a born-again Christian and later an ordained pastor. He still continues to sing, produce, and write music that reflects his faith in God.

A couple of tunes we are familiar with here on time machine show up next: Magic by Pilot at 53, and the Beach Boys' Sail On Sailor at 52. Finally this week, Burton Cummings' first solo hit, Stand Tall, is at 51.

John Denver leads off the top 10 at 10, up one, with I'm Sorry. The next five songs climb one notch: Run Joey Run to 9, Could It Be Magic to 8, Wasted Days And Wasted Nights (which was originally recorded in 1959, but do to the three years in Prison Freddy Fender soon got for a marijuana bust, went nowhere until re-recording it after Before The Next Teardrop Falls) to 7, Fight The Power to 6, and Fame to 5. 3 and 4 switch positions- Get Down Tonight dropping to 4 and At Seventeen climbing to 3. Same thing with the top two- Fallin' In Love drops after its one week as top dog. That makes Glen Campbell the upper canine this week with Rhinestone Cowboy- the first song since Big Bad John in November of 1961 to be the #1 on both the Hot 100 and the Country charts simultaneously.

And that concludes your trip this week. Please watch your step on the way out, and see you here next week!