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Samstag, 30. März 2013

Almost Easter

Saturday means almost Easter!

In order to congratulate Katrinle, as it was her birthday today, I woke up really early - way too early. I could have slept at least until 11 o'clock, so half past eight was a torture.

While I was waiting for them to arrive at my parents' house, we coloured eggs:






 And then I skyped with seemingly everyone who was at my parents' house (it wasn't everyone, but more people than I am used to) and then I grabbed my kindle, had some ice cream and let the sun shine down on me on the patio.



26°C the thermometer said, but in the sun it was a lot hotter - I actually put on sunscreen because it was so sunny!

It was really beautiful, and I've finally had cause to unpack my three-quarter pants, or Capri pants, as I was just informed they're called (thanks!).

Yeah, and my eyes are almost closing right now (it's a quarter to seven), so I'm only waiting for dessert to arrive (ice cream!) and then I'm off to bed, I guess.

Enjoy your snow, German friends!

Freitag, 29. März 2013

History

Since today was pretty uneventful - I watched some hockey and was outside with Jenna and Bob, and wrote a bit, but that was it (Hawks lost against Anaheim again and Edmonton Oil Kings are in the second round of WHL playoffs), have something I just stumbled over on tumblr.

It's about history, evilness and Hitler, and I will point out my comment (it's the last one, of course).



Picture Source Source for last comment

My comment to this:


The scary thing about humans is
that we’re capable of doing these atrocities all on our own.
This is so absolutely true, and that is what is especially scary about the whole thing. That we don’t need aliens, don’t need mind control, that we’re perfectly capable of destroying ourselves without any external help. 
That that monster is sleeping in many, if not all of us, and only our up-bringing is the deciding factor in whether who we become.
I always have to think of something I read in “The Self Illusion: Why There is No ‘You’ Inside Your Head”, which briefly discusses nature vs. nurture:
Natural Born Killers

If early abuse turns on the effects of the warrior genes [a gene abnormality linked to aggression], can these negative attributes also be turned off? Neuroscientist Jim Fallon studies what makes psychopath tick by looking at their brain activity and genes. One day, as was sorting though lots of scans of psychopathic murderers, he noted that they all seemed to lack inactivity [possibly meant ‘lach activity’? Would make more sense…] in the orbital cortex, a region of the prefrontal cortex. The orbital cortex is related to social behaviours such as smiling, and is also a region associated with moral decision-making and control of impulsive antisocial behaviour. People with low activity in this region tend to be free-wheeling types or psychopaths. Perhaps these psychopaths had bad brains?

At the time, Jim was also working on Alzheimer’s disease and needed control data to compare with patients. He persuaded members of his family to have their brains scanned and provide blood samples to match against the clinical sample. Every one of his relatives’ brain scans was normal - except one - his own. Jim discovered that he had the identical lack of activity in the orbital cortex that he had observes in the psychopathic killers. The irony of the neuroscientist discovering that he also had the same abnormal brain pattern as the killers was not lost on Jim.

About a month later at the family barbecue, he was pointing this irony out to the other family members when his eighty-eight-year-old mother, Jenny, suggested that maybe he should do a little research into the family history, as he might be surprised. What Jim discovered was truly shocking. It turned out that his ancestor, Thomas Cornell, was infamous in American history as the killer of his own mother in 1667, the first documented case of matricide. But it didn’t stop there. There were another seven murderers in the line of the family from which Jim was directly descended! This was worrying. Jim looked for other evidence. Did he have the genes associated with aggression and violence? He had the blood taken from the Alzheimer study analysed. Jim’s blood was positive for the warrior gene and he had all the genetic risk factors that could predispose him to become a killer. At the time, geneticists likened the odds of Jim possessing this constellation of genes to walking into a casino and throwing double-six fifteen times in a row.

According to the biology, Jim should have been a natural born killer and a menace to society, but he wasn’t. Why not? Dr Him Fallon used to be the type of scientist who followed a failry genetic determinist line, believing that your genes pretty much determine your outcome, but his discoveries in brain imaging and genetics forced him to rethink his own rigid view of human nature. He had to accept that in his case the role of the environment had protected him, and in particular the nurturing from his own parents had played a major part in the way he turned out. This is because, from the very start, Jim was a special birth for his parents. His mother had four miscarriages in a row before Jim was finally born. It would be a long time before his mother had any more children and so Him was treated as a precious child with a lot of attention and affection directed towards him. He believes that all this nurturing offset the warrior gene that could have sent him off on a path of destruction.
This is probably the opposite of what happened to Hitler, but it shows that even the most respected people in your life could have been evil.
You never know. You can’t know. Evil isn’t just some stereotype. Evil is human. And that is what’s so scary.

And that's it for today. Some food for thoughts :)
That book I quoted is really interesting, by the way - I enjoyed it a lot!

And I'm off to bed now, seems like I am finally getting into a normal rhythm!

Passed

So, I passed my self-imposed test:

I went into our Math chapter test without doing really anything and I passed my stress test!
Yes, I was a bit anxious, but believe me, my teacher didn't help me in that regard:

"If you did all the homework, the test will be easy. If you did half the questions, you will be struggling. If you did less than half - good luck."

I can't say anything about stupid mistakes I have done - because I tend to do those a lot - but at least I didn't have to hesitate with a single exercise.
But it might have taken me seven months, and yet I finally came to the realization that the grades truly and honestly don't matter.

Let's just say that my performance probably wasn't helped by the headache I had ...

I am almost done with my Creative Writing project. De facto I am done, but I want to finish up the fourth (okay, it is on third place but I'm writing it as the fourth piece) chapter. Without it I have 22 pages, which fully satisfies the required 20-30 pages, and with it (unfinished) the count comes to 27 pages. I want to finish that up though and I really wouldn't mind going over the required amount of writing.

Maybe I'll start the next chapter, too.

The rest of the day was spent reading/on tumblr&facebook and even in Journalism I couldn't do anything - for one thing I had three articles in the last issue so I've only got a small assignment, and two I have to get some information in order to write the short notice which I couldn't get as the teacher had already left.

Jenna and Bob took me to the duck pond I passed while jogging - I actually had wanted to go to the tennis court with them, but my knees are hurting so bad (and I don't even know what I've done :/ ) I didn't want to run.

I'm heading to bed now, I'm gonna stand up (relatively) early tomorrow since I wanna catch the Blackhawks Morning Skate Life that they broadcast every last Friday of the month. Usually it's right during the period in the morning (the exactly 30 minutes) I have absolutely no access to the internet: From 10:30 am to 11:00 am Chicago Time, which means 8:30 am to 9:00 am here - right while I'm on the bus. But tomorrow we have a holiday, just like you (extended weekend!) so I want to be up and watching when it's on!

So good night!


Mittwoch, 27. März 2013

Spare

My whole (school) day can be summarized by a single word: Spare.

No kidding, guys - first block:
Math. Independent review as we have our test tomorrow. I have done half-heartedly half of my homework, but I'm not expecting too much, since I will never ever again need this approach - and that is the reason why I haven't really done much. I will be trying tomorrow, but I don't see the use in memorizing stupid special triangles that only work for a few limited cases when our German approach can be transferred to all cases with very little problems.
Well, we'll see how the test goes tomorrow!
But since it was independent studies, it was basically nothing but a spare.

Second Block Creative Writing.
Independent writing. Considering this is nothing I don't do on my own outside of the schedule, it was basically a spare.

Lunch: Spare. Nothing to do.

Entrepreneurship: Anyway only a glorified spare since we were in the middle between two tasks (we received the next instructions today in the afternoon), so I spent my time on my own laptop on facebook (like the rest of the class) and tumblr.

Last Block: Legitimate spare.
I played around on tumblr for a bit and then did Math. I keep making stupid mistakes, but I think I generally have understood everything - which is my main (and only) goal.

Andy picked me up after school and dropped me off at Hollywood road for the introduction to the next part and a Mentor meeting, and my mentor and shared a great conversation and I ate too much pizza (three slices... but it was my dinner!)
Afterwards, we were "forced" to take some pizza home with us - Bob and I will be taking it to school tomorrow!

And I'm heading off to bed now because my eyes are burning because I'm so tired!

And the Rockets finally won!
Now it's 3-1 Seattle - 4 are needed to win! Go Rockets Go!!!

G'night!

Sun again

The sun is coming back up, everything is beautiful and nothing hurts - not literally, unfortunately, as both my tailbone and my knees are bothering me, but at least I feel better again!

So today was pretty unremarkable - I didn't do Math again, because it's so irrelevant for Germany, even my English Math teacher said so, we're just doing it differently, and I'm never gonna use this ever again!
I'm tempted not to do anything, as I'm gonna review that stuff again in Germany, but I'm not sure I want to destroy my overall score like that!

Anyway, once I got back from school, I took advantage of the sunlight still shining!

Here, this is my neighbourhood!

That's the drive way to the houses off the main street

looks unremarkable? That's my busstop.
No signs, no nothing - just the bus stopping every morning!

One of the many parks

Water fountains at every corner!

And a lot of trees. A lot.

And the newly installed play ground very near our house!

And this is so true - "Life doesn't have "pause"-button.
Dreams don't have a expiry date.
Time doesn't do vacations."

I forgot about that, and how ironic it is that it was
printed on the March calendar when it is so relevant right now!

And that's it from me - I found this wonderful song (ke$ha, you might want to listen to it) which is absolutely awesome!

And a short hockey update:

Out of seven games today, there were four shutouts. (The goalie denied any goals for the other team) Technically, there were five, because in the Vancouver game there were zero goals for both sides - both goalies had a save percentage of 100%, which is pretty rare - and the game was decided in a shootout, which doesn't factor into the actual goals per game, and there was another game where two goalies had 100%:
Edmonton vs. St Louis Blues.
But the Oilers finally snapped their loosing streak and chased starting goalie Jack Allen after only 7 shots on goal - it was 4 saves on 7 SOG, while Khabibulen (Oilers Goalie) made 43 (!!!) saves and the Halak, Allen's replacement, made 12.
Yes, the Oilers won 3-0 with only 19 SOG. Khabibulen was terrific!
And Jordan Eberle and Taylor Hall both had 3 points, while the Nuge (Ryan Jeremy Noel Nugent-Hopkins, I'm not kidding!) had 2 points (1. Goal: Eberle from Hall and Nugent-Hopkins, 2. Goal Eberle from the Nuge and Hall and 3. Goal Taylor Hall rebound from Jordan Eberle). So to summarize, out of 40 players (on both sides) only three had points: the Kid Line! (that's what they're called)

Patrick Kane extended his point streak with two assists tonight - he assisted on both goals the Hawks shot to shutout the Flames!
The Hawks, who didn't have a single shutout since almost 2 years and none last year, have had 4 (!!) this season!

And the Rockets lost again in Overtime :/ They were so great in the regular season, and now in the post season they've lost 3/3 in Overtime! :/
They have to win tomorrow or they're done for the season! :o
Love from me,

Julia

Montag, 25. März 2013

Spare

Okay, I'm super tired - I actually overslept this morning and Bob had to come and wake me up, and then I forgot half my school supplies - calculator, journal - and yeah... I almost couldn't find my lunch.

I dropped MMA, since I'd have to sit out for about 4-6 weeks with my tailbone - that's literally a pain in the ass and yeah... I'm having a spare now.

And that's it, I'm seriously off to bed now!

Weekend

Hiya guys!

I'm back!
And tired, even though I slept eight and a half hours ...

Well, I met Laura at the mall and we had lunch and spent two hours or so there, and then her mom picked us up and drove us to her house, were we talked a bit and where I taught her how to make those bracelets :)

We had Lasagna for dinner, and it was a super nice evening :D

We went to bed, but I read for another hour or so with a flashlight - it's a super interesting book Laura's mom has given me, My Stroke of Insight, by a Neurologist from Harvard University who suffered a stroke and was able to regain her whole brain and stuff and it's awesome!

Anyway, today Laura and me made chocolate chip pancakes - and I might have put too much choco chips into it; never though I'd say that! - and then her mom drove me home, I packed up my stuff and we drove to Big White.

We wanted to go skating, but the rink was already thawed due to the spring weather, so we just walked around for a bit, before the tubing hill opened.

Tubing was fun - but:
I injured my tailbone while horseback riding - I never did anything about it, but sitting hurt something fierce the first couple weeks, and I still can't put all my weight on my tailbone for extended lengths of time. But it was getting better...
And now I probably re-injured it. The the ground beneath the lift up was bumpy, and my tailbone hurts so bad ...
I looked it up, it's probably bruised, so I shouldn't do any sports for the next weeks. And since I'm anyway so far behind on the MMA schedule, I'll probably have to drop it.
It's not so bad, I need that period for studying chemistry anyway, but still.
It's kinda unfortunate...










On the way back from tubing, I almost fell asleep, I was so relaxed and felt awesome and had orange that was delicious ...

yeah, and since I'm like super tired, I'm gonna go to bed again

(Oh, the Rockets lost again :/ but the Ducks lost, too! So now only the Hawks have to win against the Kings tomorrow and I'm super happy all around!)

See ya!

Samstag, 23. März 2013

PSA

Public Service Announcement

(just kidding)

Anyways, just wanted to let you know that there won't be an update tonight, as I will be leaving my laptop when I am going to my sleepover (read: now)
The next update will be ready for your reading pleasure Sunday evening here or Monday morning in Germany.

See you then!

Scared

Okay, I'm like officially totally scared right now.

There's a spider in my room (a relatively big one) and it was sitting on the ceiling (after crawling past me), but while I was psyching myself up to go and kill it, it disappeared and it's so gross and I don't know where it is and ugh.

So, I get shivers every time I think about going into my room, but I have to because I'm drop dead tired and yeah :/
And on my floor it's close to impossible to see a grey/brown spider, because the floor is grey/brown, too.
I'm sitting in the living room, listening to music ... so let me share a couple of things with you:




You know Just Dance?
Here it is for the xBox, if you want to laugh really hard - my favourite out of the three wearing sweaters is the blond one, although I'm a bit confused by his short hair...




And here something cute :D

Oh yeah, about the rest of my day:
I spent a good chunk reading, tanking up on the last solitude before being thrust into a whirlwind of activity - Sleepover tomorrow, Big White on Sunday, school on Monday (god) - and then we went to Pizza Hut.

Bob and I were dropped of at Prospera Place for the first playoff game.

Wow - it was intense.

And barely any of the playoffs today went according to expectations:

The Rockets played awesome hockey, but lost - after 79:10 mins.
Wait!, I hope some of you think, Didn't she say a hockey game has three times twenty minutes and five minutes of overtime before it goes into a shootout?
Well, yeah - regular season games at least.
Playoff games don't go into shootouts, they just continue on and on and on until somebody finally scores a goal - Andy said the longest game he's been to was 5 Overtimes of each 20 minutes!

The Rockets were defeated with 50.6 seconds remaining, but I can't even be too pissed, because it was some of the best hockey I've seen, with both sides coming out strong.
But it wasn't the goalies fault, that's for sure:
He made 45 saves, letting 5 shots in (That's really good still).

But Portland, the Winterhawks, had also a less than stellar result. It wasn't their fault for not trying, surely - the SOG (Shots on Goal) were 58-31 in favour of the Winterhawks - and the Everett Silvertips still beat them 4-3! As a comparison: We beat the Tips 4-1 (on Feb. 14, I watched that game!) and the Hawks beat us 5-2 or something like that. (Okay, we beat the Seattle Thunderbirds against whom we lost today 8-0, so that doesn't really say a lot, but still, the Hawks should have won ... the goalie was stellar with 55 saves - that's more than almost all NHL goalies make in their games!)

And the Edmonton Oil Kings at least got expected results - although they said "Go big or go home," defeating 8th seed in the East Kootenay Ice with 9-0.
One guy had 7 points, tying a WHL record for most points in a playoff game - 3G, 4A, and he was congratulated on it by Sam Gagner, who himself scored 4G 4A in a 8-1 defeat of the Blackhawks last year.

And Anaheim finally lost today! They were getting annoying and threateningly close to the Blackhawks after defeating them on Wednesday - or was it Thursday?

Either way, I'm gonna go and shake up my bed now, because I'm really super tired (and still spider-scared)

Good night!

Donnerstag, 21. März 2013

Sleep?

At the moment all I want is sleep. I am so tired - I guess I will sleep all day tomorrow and do my homework in the afternoon/evening/night because of course I'm still not done. Stupid Math.

Today was just another eventless day where I read, so I won't bore you.

Just know I'm still alive :)

Instead I have a couple of links for you with pictures/things I thought were cool!

Look at that dog. He looks just like Dustin, don't you agree? It's Marshall Seguin, Tyler Seguin's dog (Seguin played for EHC Biel during the lockout), and the dude is of course Tyler Seguin.
Aaaaand: more of Marshall! This time with Seguins room mate Fred Gervasi, who likes to play instruments in just his boxer shorts and send pictures/videos to Tyler! (not joking)
See, he plays the Harmonica (even though Marshall doesn't appreciate it), or here is the video, posted by Gervasi on his twitter, and here he is with a guitar, posted by Seguin while he was in Switzerland (and Gervasi back in Boston)


Then I found this (just like all of this, on tumblr - awesome page!)

You know, if a kid says "tummy", it may sound more like "tubby" :D

Also super interesting: This picture and what the people wrote beneath it - I hadn't know that!

This short post about gender equality is also great. I guess the guy never saw that coming! 

And seeing as I am slightly hungry and it looks delicious, have some bacon!

And did you know this about Hogwarts?

Here something for you:


And truly amazing - I saw her performance life on TSN:

Can you see the black puck on his white stick tape?

And that's it from me for today!

Sleep well, guys!

Down

So not just are pretty much exactly 200 days down, but I am also, because my team lost and they were up by one but they were sloppy most of the first and the end of the third period and it was just one single game (they still hold the best record) but it was against the second best team in the league right now who are just behind them and I'm trying console myself with the thought that the team that wins the President's Trophy (for best in the West) hardly ever wins the Cup (the only thing that matter), and since hockey players are like the most superstitious people in the world, they actually refuse to touch that Trophy or stuff like that because it brings bad luck...

And then the guy who worked the hardest - taking not just his own shifts, but also those of Hossa; it's called double-shifting and damn stupid because he got slower the more exhausted he got and his greatest strength is is his speed along with his stick handling ability and yeah, it wasn't wise of him - but that's not his fault, because it's Coach who decides who gets how long on the ice.

Anyway, in his post-game interview he said. "I obviously wasn't good enough out there and I'm the reason we lost" (verbatim - wörtlich!!!), which prompted me to write the following (and I was complimented on my articulation for it, which kinda - no, definitely - made my night):


This is probably a horribly unpopular opinion, but I was watching the Patrick Kane post-game interview and it makes me kinda mad to hear him spout off things like “Obviously I wasn’t good enough and that’s the reason we lost the game,” because no, hockey is a team sport for a reason and one guy doesn’t win or loose a game. 
He might make a difference either way, but it’s never his fault alone.
There are goalies and other players who contribute, also either way; to winning or to loosing, and saying stuff like that feels to me like looking down on those other players.
Because what does it say when Patrick Kane, who spent more time on the ice than any other forward, who has an assist and skated his life out for his team, says what he did wasn’t enough? 
How can what any other player did just approach being enough?
And when he says he is the reason they lost - would he say, if they won, he was the reason they won? No, he would say it was a team effort. 
So how and why does loosing become his fault and winning a team effort?
He may be a PART of the reason they lost - maybe even a large part, if it settles his mind, because I think I remember a turnover of his leading to the first goal and he was on ice for three of the four goals, but in what universe is that enough to make him the one at fault to loose the game? 
There is a goalie, and Crow usually posts higher numbers, so maybe Kaner is part of the reason they lost, but he certainly isn’t the reason he lost, and I’m pretty sure he would be severely unhappy with anybody else suggesting they were at fault. 
Bourdreau was right, he is becoming more and more like Toews, because that was the attitude Toews had when he got the C, and we all know how much that weighed him down until he settled in it. 
If Kane starts with this responsibility and thinking he’s more important than he is (and I don’t mean that in a mean or bad way, but he kinda makes himself pretty important stating so matter of factly that he’s the reason they lost) and manages to tamp down on his scoring, then I don’t see the Hawks getting very far in the playoffs.
Anyway, that was my rant. 
I mean, I think it is kinda great that he’s starting to take responsibility, but  it’s not his job to carry the team on his back and he shouldn’t try and break doing exactly that - trying to carry the team - because he’s not putting enough faith into the rest of the team. 
If he says he was not good enough out there, I hope he means he wasn’t good enough in gauging his stamina, because he looked pretty tired a couple of times - but maybe that’s just me. Let’s hope he hasn’t exhausted himself too much and that he will use the next four days to rest up. 
And let’s face it, the first period was pretty bad, especially the beginning. Plus, the Ducks are a bloody strong team, otherwise they wouldn’t have posted these numbers they have.
So, responsibility is fine, but not too much.
There are a lot of capable players on this team. 
Okay, so after reading impertinence’s post I do realize that he might really just have been spouting off the usual media platitudes.
But still…

So yeah... good to have that off my chest...
Other than that, I didn't do a lot - tidied my room and wrote my interim report for kulturLife ... Just waiting for input from Dorothea and my mother and then I'mma send that thing off.

That was my day, pretty much :) For my 200th post after 200 days, look below!

200 Days Down

200 Days Down - or: A Look at the Last Seven Months, the Purpose and the Future


200 Days Down. 100 Days Remaining.

Since my last post at the (almost) halfway mark, a lot has shifted.
I feel listless, depleted, tired and there is a bone-deep weariness that is hard to shake off.

I was always in favour of the full ten months, I can't even count how often I shot my mother down when she suggested I only go for half a year. And now I wish I had listened to her.

Don't get me wrong, I really love it here.
But I have accomplished what I came to do, even if this list was mostly unconscious.

In this list, kind of like a To-Do List, there were questions.

  • Can I stand up for myself?
  • Can I overcome adversity?
  • Can I achieve my grades in a second language?
And a lot more which I don't what to bore you with, but I have answered most of these with a Yes.

I was able to overcome my first hostfamily, I was on top of the class in all of my subjects - I know for a fact that my grade in English was the best, my Spanish score with 101.5% was also the best in both of the classes she taught, I had a high A in Japanese and my Biology grade was only topped by a student in one of his other Bio 12 classes (by one percent?).

I saw that I could make new friends (keeping them is something else, but that's a whole other can of worms that I really don't want to open here).

The only "loose end" I have right now is San Francisco, and if it weren't for that, I would probably be looking into flights back home by now.
I can't, for one because I paid ~$800 just for "entertainment" from mid-April to mid-June (San Francisco + sports classes) plus cancelling the flights my parents booked would be pretty expensive, so I gotta stick it out.

I'm restless, though, because the next project (now that project exchange year is completed successfully in mind) is looming on the horizon, and while I can start on it, it would be way easier if I were back home.

So yeah, the 200 mark is kind of a relief ...

But one thing is for sure:
I will always cherish the memories and experiences gained here and will do my very best to not forget anything.

Mittwoch, 20. März 2013


Mind: Blown. Seriously, look at it!

And I found this website ... well, not quite :)


So yeah ... what did I do today? Woke up at 10:20 a.m., read til eleven, had lunch (no breakfast, didn't know what to make and the pasta from last dinner was still there), read some more, went for a run and read some more ... that's basically it.

And I'm going to the first playoff game Friday evening with Bob, Kelowna Rockets vs. Seattle Thunderbirds!
Tanya participated in a listener's drawing of AM 1150, the Rockets radio station, and won two tickets! And she let me choose who I wanted to go with, so I picked Bob - she's only been to one game, so yeah.

And now I'm unable to sleep - I hope I'll manage to write up why tomorrow, as I'm guessing some of you might find that interesting :)

See yah!

Dienstag, 19. März 2013

Monday

I'm so tired it's not even funny anymore, but all the more unable to sleep.

Like, my eyes are burning, but I just can't go to bed :/

Anyway, I didn't do much exciting today; I wanted to go outside but then there was hail [Hagel] coming down so I went inside again, starting writing my - well, not really midterm, but still - midterm report for KulturLife. In German, too, and I already have five houndred words or so and hope to get it out by the time the countdown says 200.

And then I watched the Blackhawks game, which was brilliant.
After they were basically killed last week at Denver, Colorado, they killed Colorado today.
The Avalanche had no chance with the Hawks being everywhere, and even though Patrick Sharp had been taken out by Ryan O'Bryan previously and that same player took out Marián Hossa tonight, the Hawks won 5-2, with three points each from Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews.
And they were put on a line together today and made magic happen, like so often when they're out there together!

Toews has now exactly 1 point per game, 29 in 29 with 14 goals and 15 assists, and Kaner as 1.27 ppg; 37 points with 16 goals and 21 assists in 29 games - which is fifth best in the whole league.
Tazer jumped from 26th to 16th and the game was amazing.

We had one goal from the guy called up as Sharpy's replacement, one goal set up by Patrick Kane, then Hossa got boarded and Jonathan Toews tried to net the puck, but it rebounded and Kane scored from an impossible angle - he was almost on the goal line, it was really flat, so Toews got an assist and then the two of them got the assists on Seabrooks goal and Toews got one goal of his own - he'd been trying hard enough!
It's pretty unsurprising then that Toews was named second star of the game with 1 goal 2 assists and Kane got named first star also with 1 goal 2 assists and all of 22 minutes of ice time - as compared to Toews's 17-something minutes. And he also got named NHL second star of the day, so second best player of all of today's games, just behind a goalie who had gotten a shutout.

And now I'm off, just gonna lie in bed because I can't keep my eyes open anymore!

Sonntag, 17. März 2013

Game Day

I'm running out of blog titles, guys, seriously!

So yeah, today there wasn't much - after I was still awake at 5 a.m., I put my alarm clock on 8 o'clock in the hope of waking up early and being tired in the evening, and of course slept straight through it.

I woke at around half past ten, still not too bad, and had a banana-peanut-butter-wrap, because they're delicious.

And then I played around on tumblr and twitter, chatting with Dorothea and Vroni, when suddenly on my twitter dash a tweet from the Rockets appeared: The awards ceremony was live-streamed!

So I plugged my headphones in, pulled my Math book to me and listened to the ceremony.
And believe it or not, but I got the most Math done - although I am seriously tempted to only do half of the exercises in each number, as they're so much repetition, and too much repetition makes me screw up (plus it's a lot of work).

A few things ... Colton Sissons, team captain, got MVP (most valuable player) and best defensive forward, I think, Tyrell Goulbourne got unsung hero - valuable guy whose points don't reflect that -, Damon Severson with top defenseman, and since I realize that all those names don't tell you much, here two which might be halfway interesting:
Myles Bell got top scorer with 92 points - and it's his draft year - and Rourke Chartier, who was the guy I talked to for the Censor This article, got Scholastic Player award and Rookie of the Year. He's mostly taking grade 12 courses as a grade 11.

And oh. My. God. was the embarrassment factor high with some of their speeches. Not that they messed up, but they were just so awkward... and yes, I realize that they're my age and that I'd be nervous as heck too, but that doesn't change the fact that I thought it was almost unbearable in certain moments.
I'm too emphatic in such situations, I just ... I don't even know. It's been pretty extreme all my life, though.

After that was done, we went to the grandparents, where we had ham for dinner and date rectangles and brownies for dessert and played Shangri-la - like the German Phase 10, and I didn't just win, I obliterated the others.

I had 20 minus points (2-8 count as -5, 9-K as -10, Ace as -20 and Joker as -50 and you have to fulfill a more difficult task in each round, from two sets of three up to three runs of four), and I had gone out four out of six times. I lost pretty badly the last time we played, so I was especially happy today (plus I was super tired, so loosing would have made me unbearable, probably...)

Yes, and I'm off to bed now, since my eyes are almost closing and burning...

G'night guys!

Kangaroos and Hockey Saturday!

So guys, just a warning up front, I did exactly two things today:
Pet kangaroos and watch hockey.
A lot of the latter, to be honest.

Today were an unbelievable 13 hockey games (so 26 out of 30 teams played today), amongst others my Blackhawks vs. the Dallas Stars, who edged them into Over Time the last time they played - but Chicago won 3-2.

But let's do this chronological (but stick around for pool tweets! :D).

I woke up this morning and left my bed pretty grudgingly at ten o'clock after about ten hours of sleep (and now I'm not tired anymore, although I could have slept until three in the afternoon again ... but it shouldn't be. I don't know what's up with my sleeping rhythm -_-), stood up, had the last waffle from last dinner with syrup for breakfast, holed up in my room and did ... I don't even know what I did.
I couldn't tell you, honestly.
Oh, right, I weeded out the tumblr and twitter blogs I follow and unfollowed eleven out of my previously 60 blogs and two out of my previously 102 twitters.

Then I trolled a blog about hockey and laughed at a couple of old pic spams with guys making idiotic faces (check out that tumblr, toewsface, for stupid faces my favourite player makes during games) and started watching the 2011 All Star Skill Competition, when Tanya came into my room and told me it was time to go - to a kangaroo farm!

It's run by a Canadian and his British wife, and they do have a couple of kangaroos and wallabies, smaller kangaroos. And they are, for the most part, tame! So you can actually pet them!

Me with a Joey :) It was a girl, I think Sidney was her name
And that joey up close

A really tame kangaroo - can you see her joey in her pouch?

And one of the slightly more wild kangaroos - or wallabies?
I honestly don't know.

We only stayed out for an hour, but we had ice cream on the way back!
And then it started raining, and I didn't know what to do, so I screwed around on facebook a bit, stumbling over this article in Die Süddeutsche (so it's in German, sorry!), which, while interesting, just horribly, horribly badly written.
The things I have the most problems with:
  1. The author didn't even try.
    Most of that is just haphazardly thrown together like "Oh, my, deadline is tomorrow and I need to write that," without any regard for the flow of the piece, which in my opinion is atrocious.
  2. The aforementioned flow.
    Maybe that's just me and my dislike of formal German language that so often still sounds so informal, but it sounds both too informal and too stilted at the same time.
  3. Punctuation
    Oh My God.
    It seems like the author never has heard of a semicolon - ';'.
    Semicolons are used, both in English and in German, to separate two equal sentence parts. It is stronger than a colon ',', but stronger than a dot '.'.
    This author uses solely colons, which makes the article super confusing to read. He is being paid for this. Usually, an editor reads through this.
    How come they don't know this?
    Yes, I didn't know how exactly to use a semicolon either until my English lessons here, but I'm fifteen and he's a professional writer. Seriously, though, he should know how to use the semicolon; it is his job, after all. 
  4. Wrap-up.
    He says the boy was told by apple not to go public with his story - but he's writing an article about it? Why?
    The wrap-up of the article is made even worse by the fact that the wrong punctuation makes it very confusing.
Maybe you don't agree with me on all these points, but I like my clearly structured language, so the wrong punctuation is the worst for me.
I just wonder HOW? Why doesn't anybody catch that stuff?

After I was done thrashing that article on my tumblr, I watched the Blackhawks game.
I didn't want to watch it at first, but I didn't have anything better to do and the players had clearly had a great time yesterday, if their tweets are anything to go by (from two guys, Andrew Shaw and Viktor Stalberg

@Shawz15er: Nice day in Dallas!
@Shawz15er: Relaxing by the pool in Dallas















I'm not quite sure whether they did it to actually troll each other or because management said "You gotta engage more with the fans, just look at Paul Bissonette" a.k.a BizNasty2point0, who's really hilarious, but it was great.
Oh, and then Shawzy tweeted that picture:
- Jimmy Hayes was recalled from their American Hockey League or Minors affiliate, the Rockford IceHogs, because Patrick Sharp is injured, and I'm guessing Toews voted for sushi (he's known for liking sushi, although his teammates don't seem exactly repulsed by it)...

Aaaaanyway, so they started the game against Dallas, and I was a bit afraid, because they went to Over Time the last time, as I mentioned, but then I saw on my twitter feed that Toews had scored, and started the game - just in time to catch the replay of his second goal of the night!

By the time I had to leave, in the middle of the second period, the Hawks were up 5-0 and had chased the starting goal tender Kari Lehtonen, who allowed four goals on 17 shots for a save percentage of 75%, which is bad.
But then there was the Rockets game!
This is the setup where the Rockets come out of the tunnel (and I'm sorry, but that guy decided to walk through just at that moment -_-):
The first Rocket streaking out of the tunnel!


Well, during the first intermission, I asked Andy to check the Hawks score for me, as I'd left them with 5-0, and Andy says to me "8-1" and I'm like "WHAT?! SERIOUSLY?!?!?!?" And yes, seriously.
I looked at the boxscore, and I've hardly ever seen something more beautiful.

Anyway, the Rockets started it really up after that and finished the game with 4-2, which was completed by Zach Franko, who'd been checked into the boards really badly right in front of our seat and taken two or three minutes just to get up (and he still looked super shaky), who scored an empty netter to make the last game of the regular season 5-2.

And with this 52nd win the Rockets have the franchise record for most wins in a season with 52-16-3-1!

After the game, I finished the Blackhawks game, and Oh, My, God.
8-1 is the game with the most goals since they played Edmonton on October 10, 2008, I believe (I'm not quite sure about the date) and it was an all around perfect game, except for that one Power Play goal Dallas got.
But anyway, it was awesome.
Especially since Jonathan Toews (2 Goals, 1 Assist), Patrick Kane and Nick Leddy (each 1G 2A), Viktor Stalberg and Brian Bickel (each 3A), had three point nights, and 11 out of 18 field players had points - 8 of them with at least 2 points!


And not just did Toews score two with 95 seconds apart, but Kane added the ninth goal as a Kane-o-Rama - one of his famous spin-o-rama moves:

I hope that works!

So, and now I'm skyping with my mom, kind of planning our trip!

See ya!

Freitag, 15. März 2013

Forgotten Blog

I don't believe it!
I didn't post yesterday - I am so sorry, but I totally forgot, and by the time I remembered it was 4 a.m. and I was in bed already with my alarm set for 8 a.m.

I'm actually just kinda waiting for the Rockets score - they're up 6-1 against Vancouver, so I think you'll get some pictures from me today!

I didn't do much yesterday or today, but I got outside for more than an hour each day!

Yesterday I went down to the shore, and today we went for a walk along the lake.

Since that was all - except that we had breakfast for dinner again today (I love it; there's nothing better than waffles with syrup, scrambled eggs and turkey bacon, not matter for what meal time) - here are the pictures.
Isn't Lake Okanagan beautiful?

Mission Creek park a week or two ago

Ducks in Mission Creek!


Kelowna from Knox Mountain

More Kelowna from Knox Mountain


Lake Okanagan and the Valley from Knox Mountain

industrial Kelowna from Knox Mountain

Sunset on Lake Okanagan!

Lake Okanagan Shore

very tiny: The bridge over to West Kelowna

The Ogopogo! Like the monster of Loch Ness :)

They must be so nice in the summer ...

The famous Sails :) They are a water fountain
in the summer

This bear is alight during the night!















So, I hope you liked the pictures!
And I'm super tired now, so I'm heading off to brush my teeth and stuff and then to bed.

Have a great weekend, guys!