Devauld.ca

Last night the Flames brought the Stanley Cup playoffs to Calgary. Fortunately I was able to attend the game, and right from the start I could tell it was going to be a different kind of game.

Upon arriving, the front of the Saddledome was crawling with tailgaters having a great old party. The weather this particular Sunday was poking at the twenties and I'm sure a lot of the crowd was there all day. Just walking up to the Saddledome was deafening. Even before the warmup the place was already over half capacity. The majority of people were sporting an authentic game jersey. The opening was electric and you could feel the energy in the air. The stadium almost ripped in half when the announcer said: "Let's show the Sharks the true meaning of: Home Ice Advantage".

Despite the rush of energy, jitters got to the Flames and the game got off to a terrible start. Not even four minutes in and the visiting team was up 3-0. At this point we pulled our mainstay goalie, the legendary Kipper, and inserted our substitute: CuJo. Here they managed to hold the Sharks back, and then the hit was layed. The crowd exploded, and the team turned around. The second period of play was some of the best hockey I've ever seen from the Flames. Coupled with the energy of the playoffs, it was some very exiting hockey.

Against the odds, the replacement goaltender and a field of dedicated Flames managed to pull out a 4-3 win against the Sharks. After the first four minutes of play not a single puck made it past CuJo and we managed to create some amazing opportunities with enough capitalization to pull off the win.

The fourth game of the round is on Tuesday night, and I'm pumped to see another amazing game

I have climbed, gone to a hockey game, enjoyed a gut buster at Big T's, attended the CPS's January meeting, learned how to contruct a wood plane, watched the Roughnecks lose their first game at home, changed the oil in my car, set up my wolverine jig, made another wooden pen, worked 43 hours and slept around 50.

All in a week

It has almost become expected for me to complain about the weekend being over, and I wouldn't want to disappoint. This weekend was especially short, being that the restful portion of the weekend was only a single day.

I've been attending classes for a Master's Certificate in Project Management which is put on by the University of Lethbridge. The course is very enlightening, and after only two sessions I have already learned a great deal about how to properly run a project. The difficulty around the course is that to accommodate working professionals and weekend lovers, the course straddles weekdays and weekends. So until June, every second weekend is going to be a little shorter.

The course didn't stop me from getting out and enjoying myself. On Friday night, the usual crew attended the Roughnecks game at the Saddledome. We were hosting the Toronto Rock, and they beat us down quite bad at the start, and our come-back wasn't there resulting in a 12-9 score in their favor. At the time I was quite dissapointed, but it turns out that we beat them on their home turf to a final score of 17-13.

Saturday night Sonja and I attended a fund raising benefit for a young man who has been found to have terminal cancer. His wish is to take an Alaskan cruise with his family, so the benefit was to raise funds to have the best damn cruise ever. A silent auction, a long drive contest some appetizers and a Flames game on the big screen all come together at Schank's north for a rather nice evening.

Sunday was my only day off, and I spent most of it getting through my list of things to do. I fixed the house's downspouts so my backyard will no longer be a skating rink, I changed my oil, and replaced some bulbs in the Buick. If you think that changing bulbs is a trivial task, try changing the rear low beams on a 2000 Buick. I wish you all the best. After the outdoors stuff was done, I had Sonja help me out with some Photography, then I edited some pictures while plowing through a massive chunk of laundry. After everything was completed, it was almost time for bed. Just enough time to squeeze in a viewing of Office Space