oh, let me tell you about the sad man

Handed in my essays two minutes late but it was fine! My period struck while we were at the first pub and then the cramps from hell struck at the second one. It was a great day, though, because I had cider and good company and then I curled up in bed. The only bad part was some horrible woman waking me up at one in the morning, Jessica. It's cool, I'm going to cuddle her to death tomorrow. SNUGGLES FOREVER.

I don't think I'd really processed how stressed I've been until I sat down at the pub yesterday with my cohort and relaxed. I was aware that I was absolutely out of my mind, so seriously, I apologize for how unhinged I've been. I'm working on a return to sanity and it's really quite nice. I did have a bit of a, um, moment on twitter today while listening to Marek vs. Wyshynski, but if you are capable of hearing someone float the idea of Dale trading for Kane and then them saying, "And you have Patrick Kane shepherding Jonathan Huberdeau along as he enters the league" without going insane on some level, you have more mental fortitude than I do.

Slowly putting together that post about Andrew Shaw and Garrett Wilson. There are distracting things in Panthers land, like playoff series that are both a game away from being won by my teams and Trocheck, my favorite prospect after Markstrom and Huberdeau, signing his ELC! I don't know that he'll actually make the team, but whatever, he's my favorite. If you can look at his smile and not be charmed, you're not human. (He's in Chicago right now, ftr. A healthy scratch, because he JUST got to the Rampage and we're not going to talk about how I squeaked just seeing his name on the scratches list. We're going to go for a picspam instead, which will be slightly less embarrassing.)

( Trocheck! And a couple with Brandon Saad, because Pittsburgh bros playing for Saginaw. )

♥

The Caps were noticably loosey-goosey during their optional morning skate that was sans petulant Russian star Alexander Ovechkin (who I saw chatting with friends in the parking lot). Perhaps, Ovi didn't want to mix it up with Dennis Wideman after yesterday's slashing incident.

Harvey, YOU ARE THE ACTUAL WORST. Also shut up about John Madden, SERIOUSLY, I HATE YOU. EVERYONE KNOWS HE'S OLD, BUT I'M PRETTY SURE HE WOULD'VE BEEN SCRATCHED INSTEAD OF BARCH IF BARCH WAS AS GREAT AS YOU THINK HE IS AND COULD HIT THE BROAD SIDE OF A BARN WITH THE PUCK.

Other people that are the worst: OVIE AND VOKOUN. Seriously, I don't understand the southeast right now at ALL. But there is a video of Soupy petting Weaver and then snuggling him and making him answer a fan question about hating the Habs games and that makes things a little better.

Speaking of Soupy: now that Garrison and Kulikov are both out and Dineen hates the AHLers (no matter what he says about Strachan proving he's an NHL player, lol no; that one way extension was the stupidest thing ever and he's getting half as much time as Ellerby, who I'm pretty sure Dineen legitimately hates), Soupy's average TOI/G has jumped from fifth in the league to tied for second with Duncs. I am torn between laughing at Chicago for complaining about all the minutes Duncs has to pull because Q hates everyone else (or at least that's what I've gathered; I follow the Blackhawks the same way I follow the Bulls, with a lot of affection and not intensely) and slamming my head into the wall because we can't keep playing him half an hour a night.

Blah blah blah hockey, basically. Sarah and Jessica will be here in a few hours, so I'm off to do some writing since I need to hand things in today. And then I can snuggle with them for aaaaaages and it will be lovely. It's only taken them until the end of fifth week to visit me. WRETCHED WOMEN.

Fake Christmas was wonderful. :) There were bagels that I brought from my favorite place back home (one of maybe two places that actually boils their bagels before baking them in Miami) and eggs and fake bacon for breakfast and then Meet Me in St. Louis and ridiculous blue drinks and a delicious Christmas dinner produced by Sarah and Jessica followed by presents! My haul included two things of mango tea, two things of body wash, and a Latin phrasebook. I don't know what this says about how predictable I am, but we'll go with it. (Also, Claire got me socks and I was delighted. Oops, I'm a grownup now!)

My last two days in Miami were pretty amazing, not gonna lie, and I just want to go back and do them all over again. The beach with Mom was perfect, as was tea time with my girls after that, and then even though the Toronto fans pissed me the fuck off all over the place that night (ugh, seriously, cheer for your team, away fans, but don't boo the home team and get the hell out of here if all you want to do is chant "GO LEAFS GO" in the hallways between periods and after you lose the fucking game), they went home sad and I did a little dance. And then my last day was spent hanging with C and cooing over how adorable Mike Weaver's child is and shopping for things for Fake Christmas.

There was a paragraph here about how homesick I am, but then I spent 15 minutes on Skype to my mom and Cathy and now I much happier. Also, because it's Fake Christmas, we watched the Lion in Winter (still the best Christmas movie ever) and I had all the feelings as usual about how much I love history and how important it is and that made being here way more worth it. Because I'm here because I love what I do. And in a couple of days, I'll be back in my library getting things done and in a couple of weeks, the second term starts.

I'm still planning to go home after this year, but I don't mean "I just want to go straight back home right now and never think about this horrible set of time ever again" anymore, so hey. Positives.