Goal Goal Goal! Sieve Sieve Sieve!

Wikipedia was made for games like hockey that have rules and cheers and rituals that are totally inscrutable unless you grew up wacthing/playing them.

We went to our first college hockey game on Friday night to watch the Badgers take on the North Dakota Sioux.

 
The first thing to know about hockey is that getting a goal is a HUGE deal.  Bigger than a touchdown in football.  Every time the Badgers scored a goal, they blasted the foghorn thing that signals the end of the quarter of a basketball game for like 20 seconds straight.  Then the audience gets up and screams and cheers and yells "Goal Goal Goal!  Sieve Sieve Sieve!"

What the heck does sieve mean?  According to our helpful Wikipedia: At many college and high school hockey games, fans refer to the visiting goalie as "sieve", This is a reference to the holes in sieves and implies that the goalie cannot stop the puck from entering the net. Don Cherry famously dubbed Colorado Rockies' goalie Hardy Åström the "Swedish Sieve".

See, it's real!

The idea that the game is about getting your hockey puck into the opponent's net and preventing them from doing the same is clear, but there are plenty of other things about hockey that make no sense.  For example, every now and then a player would get put in the penalty box for "roughing" or "tripping" but you had to wonder what it was about any of the rest of the 923847 plays in the game that didn't constitute "roughing" or "tripping."  These guys hit each other hard.  There was a woman who was sitting in the front row of the section next to us who would scream every time one player would check the other into the plastic wall in front of her.

They stop the game at random times for time outs and face offs and there's something called "the zone" that the woman behind us was very concerned about us getting out of.  "Come on, Red, clear the zone!"

All things considered, it was fun and I'd go back to another game if we had visitors in town who were interested.  Plus, we got to see the Zamboni!

Yesterday I did my final long run before the Haunted Hustle next Saturday.  I finished 12 miles in 1:49:30, which is the best long run I've had in a while, and confirmed that I had a horrible race and long run last week because I was sick/ recovering and not because I'd begun the long slow decline.

I also go to go to a "make up" baby shower for a friend who gave birth the day before the original shower date.  Baby E was more awake than I'd seen her so far.  It's crazy that she isn't even supposed to be born yet!  Her due date was the 30th.

So tiny!  I can't believe how pulled together Mom J looks
despite not having slept for the past month!

Not much going on here this afternoon- just the usual cleaning, laundry, getting ready for the week, yoga class at 4pm, and guitar marathon in the living room.  We were up early to get to church and lead the set-up team for the first time.  I think things went well despite the fact that the three other people on our team had never done set-up before.

Hope you have a relaxing Sunday!