oh, let me tell you about the sad man

I'm -- doing better. I'm getting work done and if I can do 500/weekday consistently instead of 500/day every few days, I should have a draft of this chapter by the end of next week, which will put me precisely on pace to get a draft finished by eighth week. Also I've spent the last couple of weeks very slowly writing the most embarrassing Hallsy/Ebs fic in the world -- it's basically a love letter to South Florida, based off of Hallsy tweeting about going to the beach in Tampa, and my homesickness is visible from space in it.

The IIHF's Power Rankings are out and I want to marry them. ( Reproduced under the cut, because I think they'll update the page in the future and some of these are so great I want to keep them forever. )This article on Evan Kaufmann is amazing. I have a lot of feelings on it, but I am done with exploding feelings for a while. It's about one of the few Jewish athletes representing Germany on the international level, the grandson of a Holocaust survivor who moved to Germany to play pro-hockey and see where his grandfather came from. For me, the most interesting part is when he talks about his family's relationship with Germany and I think the issue of American-Jewish aversion to Germany is handled quite gracefully. I'm basically bandwagoning the shit out of Germany during the group stage. Because of Kaufmann, but also because...

CAPTAIN GOC! Marcel Goc, perhaps better known to South Floridians as Dracula or #OMGoc, on playing with his little brother (you guys KNOW how I feel about families by now, I ASSUME), written by my favorite of the Panthers reporters -- who also wrote this, with Ellerby talking about the Coyotes. She also has a fabulous feature on Weaver on the site with the Ellerby piece and a really good "since the last time the Panthers were in the playoffs" piece.

1. Hahahahahahahahahahaha ohgod. Rick Scott declared we need a west coast counterpart to Florida Institute of Technology and so now we're creating Florida Polytechnic, but he's still making sure the education budget gets slashed by 30% and oh yeah, UF is increasing football and cutting the computer science program. I HATE EVERYTHING ABOUT FLORIDA, WHY DO I LOVE IT? Oh right because I believe that my vote may one day make a difference and something something hope for the best, cope with the worst.

2. I have been amazingly productive in the five hours I've been awake since my midnight nap. I'm not sure it's going to be enough, but I did just finish my methods essay and I didn't think it was actually going to get FINISHED, I thought I was just going to have to leave in the really bad bits of my "I wrote this while having an anxiety attack" draft to make word count. I am therefore taking a well-deserved break to update this shit.

( crazy sleep deprived Panthers/Canucks/baby Panthers/baby Canucks nonsense )

6. We're apparently meeting at a pub as soon as everyone hands in their essays at noon. I love British pub culture, but when I say "we," I mean "the rest of the medievalists." I am crawling into bed with my Kindle Fire, popping over to AO3 and reading the shit out of the lady NHLers fic that people have been posting but I CAN'T READ YET, BECAUSE I NEED TO WORK, and then going to sleep. And then dinner in hall with A because she's very worried that I'm going to starve to death because I've been working through meals. FOOD AND SLEEP ARE FOR THE WEAK.

7. Sanity returns tomorrow. I am sure you're all looking forward to it. Sanity will then depart at midnight local time because game six, but you should be able to get a whole sixteen hours of me being rational and possibly a post about Garrett Wilson and how in love he and Andrew Shaw are, because now that you people are actually aware of and in love with Shaw, you need to know about his first love. Who was everyone's favorite prospect, but now I think most people are more excited about even Trocheck, which, I was the loneliest Trocheck fan for like six months until Wilson started to SUCK and people began realizing how perfect Troch is (other than the whole growing up a Pens fan, but they can't all be Logan Shaw!) ...okay, maybe sanity won't return. WHATEVER. You wouldn't know what to do if I wasn't posting disjointed rambles about the obsession of the week. You'd be worried someone was wearing me as a skinsuit.

1. If Best Bro had gotten rid of New Jersey like I told her to YEARS ago, the Panthers would not have lost so miserably last night. It is all her fault. It is also her fault Ellerby got hurt.

2. ELLERBY GOT TO PLAY IN THE PLAYOFFS. He ended up getting hurt worse than the guy he was in for is -- Garrison's got a chance to play Saturday, Ellerby does not.

3. Ellerby played top four minutes relative to the other D until he was hurt, as he usually does when in the lineup. Everyone still shits on him and says he's barely a bottom pairing guy. Okay, whatever, CLEARLY the coach disagrees with you. But the coach can't make up his mind on if the kid's top four or spare parts, so whatever. (I'm pretty sure the Jovo-Guds pairing has been declared untouchable which is why they keep getting played instead of a Jovo-Ells or Ells-Guds pairing. Also, you can't bench Jovo.)

4. Garrison and Ellerby being injured means Strachan -> Florida, means Seabrook out of the pressbox and onto the ice against Chicago for the Rampage! Hopefully this means he gets in some playoff hockey in Chicago next week and big bro gets to see it. My thing for families let me show you it. (It occurred to me that theoretically, Ellerby could end up anywhere once we do right by him and send him away which means THEORETICALLY Montreal or Phoenix with his cousins and the thought made me die a lot.)

5. Half of my work for my degree is due on Monday. Right now, both of my essays are of failing quality. THIS COULD END HORRIBLY. It'll be fine. I'm going to finish editing my methods section of one and putting in my information into a section of another and edit the shit out of the introductions tonight and then tomorrow is THEORY and fixing all of my citations and the chapters of my option paper and then Sunday is fixing EVERYTHING ELSE and Monday is hand in day oh god oh god oh god. On the bright side, I should be way more sane come Monday evening. HOORAY!

I am rolling around on the air mattress at Steph's apartment pretending to be doing work while actually fucking around on the internet trying to find a juniors equivalent to this so I don't have to make one myself. Look, it is very important that there be a ready made resource for this shit so I don't end up spending more hours navigating the hell holes that are the various CHL websites. Seriously, Michigan State's 2002 archive is better organized than those things.

I reached the point in being sick yesterday where I wrote several hundred words about how it was totally plausible for Ellerby and PK to have hooked up at WJC camp (TOTALLY plausible; Ellerby's juniors bestie played his junior hockey in Bellville! three seasons with PK!) and also how great it would be if someone (and by someone I mean me, I guess, because I'm the only one that crazy) wrote fic where Ellerby and Versteeg boned during Versteeg's fourteen games in Kamloops. Luckily, I passed out before I subjected you all to that. The condensed version is horrible enough.

I'm at 1000 words on my option paper. It needs to be at 4000 tonight. ...this could be a fun few hours. I grabbed my notebook so I can start flipping through my notes and building things up. That's progress, right?

Anyway, I am in Chicago, I am alive, I am going to see a Dili and a Rosie tomorrow! Also, all is right with the world, because unlike last time I was here, I have seen way, way more Chicago sports paraphernalia than Miami Dolphins paraphernalia. ...is it weird that I track that? I'm just intrigued by who wears what where. LIKE THE SLOVAKS. OH MAN. I FOUND SLOVAKS AT THE GAME LAST NIGHT AND LOST MY MIND. There was a crowd of them in Team Slovakia Chara jerseys and then all of a sudden it turned out two of them actually had Kopecky jerseys on. AMAZING. Also we got upgraded to the IKEA couch in the club level (it is one of the promotion things; basically, our fan patrol group loves me because that's the second time this season they've nabbed me for a thing). IT WAS A PRETTY SWEET NIGHT. I got lots of snuggles from Best Bro while I was being sick and a crazy person about hockey in the state of Florida and the Bruins getting outscored 12-3 on this swing and then John Madden scored his first goal as a Panther (also his first point!) and I fell off of the couch. The end.

Oh, and sentencing for my mom's friend happened. Four years (with time served), fifteen years probation. Mom admitted he should be in prison, so that's progress. I still feel sick about it all.

GREATEST NEWS: the sentencing has been postponed until the day after it was supposed to be, which means that even though I got this kind of emotionally/religiously manipulative e-mail from that dude's wife, I don't have to go to his sentencing and be emotionally fucked up and physically ill or risk feeling like a massive douche. And the sentence should be handed down by the time I land in Chicago, so I won't be jittering around about it, just still confused -- though, mostly, I've settled on, "Nah, he's pretty much scum, whatever everyone is saying about 'repentance,' because he's said that before, and yes, as much as I object to the prison system, that's where he belongs."

I'm at the halfway point of my degree. \o/ It's pretty weird -- in six months, I'll have a master's and hopefully a big girl job, which is terrifying. I'll be done with academia for the foreseeable future, though there's still the possibility of going back to do enough school for degrees in educational psychology and curriculum development if I end up needing them to smack people around.

I need to sleep, because tomorrow is going to be a loooooong day -- I've got to finish my data collection, work on outlining my option paper, I have an evening outing, and I need to do laundry. BUT FIRST. God, it must've been weeks ago, I mentioned to just_katarin how apparently a bunch of dudes were hitting Sunrise for the Habs game to hang out with Ellerby and Carey and her response was to demand fic where Ellerby makes fun of Carey for how into PK he is. I sketched something out, but I've come to accept that it isn't going past 500 words of something I wouldn't actually call proper fic about them chilling somewhere after the NYE game, so here that is so that it gets out of my googledocs. :|

( Cousins being dicks to each other is kind of my lifeblood, even if it is weird writing cousins who aren't boning. Oh, Tolkien fandom. )

Internet, Markstrom is healthy and he and Backstrom are tweeting at each other. I can die happy now. &Swedes; Other than that, I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT MY TEAM because I'm going to be a crazy person if I do. I think I might actually surpass Shane Doan levels of crazy right now. Oh, Doan. Way to be my metric of sanity. ♥

:(

I had an excellent meeting with my supervisor yesterday! He made a really weird metaphor about water-skiing and told me I didn't need to keep my head above water. A's response? "As a lifeguard, I strongly disagree with that."

Speaking of A, uh. We've been called an old married couple about three times so far this week. Just because we have a system for opening the doors at dinner and eat at least half our meals together and bicker about the weather. >:( Whatever, whatever. We're great. I'm really glad I made good friends here, especially the pair of them I have in my building. What lovely girls!

Jessica and Sarah are coming to visit this weekend. I expect all of the snuggles, probably them yelling at me, and probably ice cream. The trouble with living across the street from one of the best ice cream places ever is ... I live right across the street from one of the best ice cream places ever.

I think it is bedtime. OH WAIT, NO. FIRST. Everyone who's watching needs to come talk to me about Once Upon A Time. Especially the most recent episode. HOLY. FUCKING. SHITMONKEYS. <-- pretty much everything I was capable of saying to Sarah after I watched it the other day. HOLY SHITMONKEYS. (Also I'm at the point where I don't like David/Mary Margaret. My adultery squick, let me show you it!)

I really love sleep. My relationship with sleep was once tempestuous at best, but now I am super enthusiastic about it. So much so that I apparently injured my left shoulder and right knee in my sleep last night. I rock. Ibuprofen hasn't touched it, so I may need to go out and buy something stronger. I don't mind doing that, though, because medicine is so cheap here! My friends in the United States, have you ever dreamed of getting Tylenol for less than two cents per pill? Blah blah blah exchange rates, but YOU CAN DO THAT HERE. *______*

Today, I helped my mother start a passive-aggressive argument (some mutual friends of ours were posting some really offensive and fatphobic things and my mother may be tiny, but she will cut you for that shit, probably because of having two daughters who were underweight when they DEVELOPED their eating disorders) on Facebook. It was the greatest thing we've done together since my dad died and is making me think we may have our normal relationship again. As much as I miss her, I think having an ocean between us is the best thing that's happened to our relationship.

Other than that, real life is boring, the Jets AND Lightning lost last night, I'm going to work the word "cunning" into this paper on the linguistic turn sometime tonight (people I talk to elsewhere should yell at me if I'm not working from now until Sunday, btw), I need to finish Youngblood in hopes that the guy will do something that doesn't remind me of Patrick Kane (about all he's done so far that hasn't is he was kind of bad at drinking, but whatever, RPF doesn't have canon anyway!!!), and I need to reread the paper I have a meeting about tomorrow. And somewhere in there I might write some really self-indulgent fic because I do not give a fuck.