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Tonight was Opening Night for MCHL’s Ironclad Bendis division and I don’t think we could have come up with two more different games if we tried.

But before we get to the games, it was time to unleash the mighty stadium speakers with some Rush tunes because this entire week has been nothing but a headlong rush pretty much from the off culminating in finishing up helping my brother and his wife navigate the car buying process they utterly loathe into the second Corolla in as many years after his 17 year-old Honda Fit decided to not be a working Honda Fit anymore!

Game 1 Warm-Ups

Speaking of vehicles deciding they’ve had enough…the day after my brother’s Fit blew the head gasket, my Traverse’s left front CV and axle gave way starting at the Burger King on Poole Road (the one that was torpedoed twice by cars, the second literally after the repairs were signed off by the city after the first torpedo attack) and finally went completely as I was coming down my street.

She picked her spot well and I was able to coast to the top of the driveway but my head and my gut had already told me that this was likely terminal.

It’s going to take my heart a heck of a lot longer to get there and the heart is where this theme was born on the fly because this week just didn’t allow any time to look at any different theme options.

You don’t spend 12 years and just under 300,000 miles with a car and let them leave your life that easy.

I really can’t complain (though in fairness, I really didn’t need that massively expensive complete transmission replacement 60,000 miles ago!).

But I’m definitely going to miss her comfort and cargo capacity and especially the one feature I never thought I’d use when I bought her…the tushy and back warmers in the seats. I am *SO* missing the tushy warmer…

Zamboni and Game 2 Warm-Ups

Just a minute, Exec, we’re picking up the pieces down here.

Scotty — Star Trek, The Motion Picture

So you know how there are times that you can see and feel the harbingers of doom coming your way?

The first game was a pitched defensive battle that ended with a very late goal and a 1-nil final score. But everything worked just fine…the music and the speakers were fine, we captured the goal and penalty information (what little there was) and we were able to make the parish announcements over the 1-MC tannoy just fine.

Then game 2 occurred and I had the feeling during the intermission that we were in for a special penance for how well game 1 had gone.

There’s a reason why I never ignore feelings of grodiness like that… 😉

From the off, it was a *NON-STOP* barrage of goals such that we’d no sooner stop writing the details on the goal just scored and do all the other things like rocking the music and updating the scoreboard and be reaching for the microphone when…yep, there’s another that just went in!

Wash, rinse, repeat!

*NINE TIMES* in the first period alone.

And things weren’t helped by the fact that we were on the Forest rink on a Friday night (when we’re usually on Wake) and the first two goals were recorded on the wrong side of the scoresheet and things went to hell quickly from then on.

Poor Miss Kristina was fighting connectivity issues with her laptop which is what she uses to keep the statistics in real time when she’s sharing the scorer’s booth until she gave up and used her much smaller phone.

Halfway through the period, all three of us in the booth abandoned any hope of doing much more than trying to pick up the pieces and make sense of it all to at least have the score right at the extra long intermission.

And that’s why Nick heard that exact quote delivered pretty much as it was in the film as we were desperately trying to come to consensus on the state of the game before the puck dropped for the second period. 🙂

The pace of goal scoring slowed down a bit in the second and really cratered in the third after the damage was done only for the iPad to lose contact with the USB dongle hanging off the speaker system’s mixer and after a quick reboot and reconnect…the mixer was getting signal but no sound was coming out so I’m guessing someone killed the volume in their office whilst we were still underway.

I could have lived without that.

But on the bright side, I was able to pack up the backpack early until the clock mercifully hit 0:00.

Some nights are like this and the only way out is to eventually be able to have a few laughs about it.

Fortunately, I can re-create the correct scoresheet from the scribbled mess game 2’s sheet had become and they’ll be in the system presently.

But as you can imagine, there was no tunes for after the game when I’m usually finishing up the paperwork which is yet another bummer because it was going to be “Holding Out For a Hero” from the “Footloose” soundtrack in honour of Bonnie Tyler who sadly left us yesterday at the age of 75.