Not To Be Trusted With Knives

I’ve been incredibly lazy in my hockey pool and haven’t changed my picks since the first week. And I’ve suffered the consequences, as I now sit in last place in my pool! *hangs head in shame*

So I decided that it was time to shake things up, which meant I had to actually look at my list and see who was underperforming and who I should replace them with, which, of course, meant I had to make a spreadsheet¹. And after this in depth analysis, I made the following changes to my roster.

Kicked Off The Team

• Benoit Pouliot
• Dustin Brown²
• Shea Weber
• Brent Seabrook
• Victor Hedman³
• Carey Price

New Recruits

I should point out that I have adapted my definition of “hottie” for the purposes of this pool. If I can find just one photo of a player on the Internet in which they look hot, they now qualify as a hottie⁴.

Thomas Vanek

Ryan Nugent-Hopkins

I scouted out Ryan as a hottie in my analysis of the new draftees earlier this year, and while I realize his good numbers have a lot to do with the hat trick he got against the Canucks, I decided to take a gamble on him that he’ll keep playing this well – and that he won’t get sent down to the minors for development.

Erik Karlsson

Christian Erhoff

Former Canuck. Current hottie.

Sheldon Souray

Kari Lehtonen

Here’s hoping the new recruits bring me up from my sad little last place existence!

1. I do love a good spreadsheet. [↩]
2. Although Dustin actually has more points than Alex Burrows, who I’m keeping, Alex in my only Canuck. [↩]
3. Probably the hottest guy on my team, but just not performing at the actual hockey playing part. [↩]
4. As opposed to my previous definition where they had to look hot in most of their photos on the Internet. [↩]

Tags: hockey, hockey hotties, hotties, NHL, sports, vwxpool, VWXY Hockey Pool

So the hockey pool has started! And since “week 1″ only constituted two days¹, Cath decided that she’d start doing the weekly updates next week. Well, bollocks to that I say! I’m doing well and need to brag, because you never know how long you’ll be on top! I could be in last place by the time next Saturday rolls around! And with that, I give you this shiny line graph of the hockey pool’s standings as of the end of Week 1:

Also, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that, as of this writing, I am currently #1 in the pool, with a cool 26 points after last night’s games. Take that, everyone!

1. Thursday and Friday, since the CBC hockey pool that we are using starts it’s “weeks” on Saturdays. [↩]

Tags: fantasty hockey team, hockey, hockey pool, NHL, sports, VWXY Hockey Pool

Since the NHL regular season starts tonight (huzzah!), I had to pick my players for Cath’s fantasy hockey pool last night. The pool is a little different than the one I was in last year, where there was a draft and then that was your team for the whole year. In the pool I’m in now, the rules are a little more complicated.

The Rules

• We are required to pick: 6 forwards, 4 defencemen, 2 goalies
• You pick 3 “star” players (1 of your forwards, 1 of your defencemen, and 1 of your goalies). For those three players, you get double points for all the points they score for you (based on goals/assists for forwards and D-men, and wins/shutouts for goalies).
• Each player is assigned a point value (1-4) based on how good they are predicted to be and the “salary cap” for your team is 30 points.
• You can change your picks every week.

Anyhoo, I decided that I should probably make a list of hotties from which to draw. I started by going through the leading scorers from last season, picking out the hotties, which gave me the following list to start from (format: name – team – position – # points last year):

• Martin St. Louis – Tampa Bay – right wing – 99 points
• Jarome Iginla - Calgary – right wing – 86 points
• Brad Richards – Dallas – centre – 77 points
• Jonathan Toews – Chicago – centre – 76 points
• Ryan Kesler ((I don’t actually find Kesler’s face all that attractive, but those abs alone make him a hottie!  In fact, I wanted to just pick “Ryan Kesler’s abs,” but that doesn’t seem to be an option.)) – Vancouver – centre – 73 points
• Patrick Kane – Chicago – centre – 73 points
• Ryane Clowe - San Jose -left wing – 62 points
• Mikko Koivu - Minnesota – centre – 62 points
• Dustin Brown – LA – right wing – 57  points
• Devin Setoguchi – Minnesota – right wing – 41 points¹

From this list, I went onto the hockey pool website and made some choices. I had to do some juggling because of the stupid salary cap, but this is what I ultimately ended up with for this week:

And now in photographic form:

Martin St. Louis

Brad Richards

Dustin Brown

Jonathan Toews

Alex Burrows

Benoit Pouliot

Kris Letang

Shea Weber

Brent Seabrook

Victor Hedman

Pekka Rinne

Carey Price

1. he’s not at the top, but I had to include him as a possibility ‘cuz he’s so damn cute! [↩]
2. Only hot sans beard. [↩]

Tags: fantasy hockey team, hockey, hockey hotties, hotties, vwxpool

http://runforyourlives.com/

Props to Dr. Erika for passing that along to me!

Tags: race, running, sports, zombie sports, zombies

Yes folks, it’s that time of year again. Time to pick hotties for my fantasy hockey team! This year I’m joining Cath’s Hockey Pool where, apparently, I have to pick a fresh batch of hotties every week. Which I’ve only just realized is a lot more work than just picking a pile of hotties and then ignoring my team for the rest of the season, as I usually do in hockey pools. It also means that I need to select a large roster of hotties from which to choose each week, based on which teams are playing who, and which hotties are injured or on a hot streak (in the hockey-playing sense) in any given week.

As in the past, I’m going to start with my previous lists of hockey hotties (see here, here, here, here, here and here), but will do my due diligence to look up their most recent stats as well as search for other potential hotties. And this, my friends, is where you come in. Please provide your suggestions for potential hotties in the comments section. I do, of course, reserve the right to be the arbiter of hotness for my team, but all suggestions are welcome and I will judge them accordingly.

In the meantime, let’s all ogle Scottie Upshall:

Tags: fantasy hockey team, hockey, hockey hotties, hockey pool, sports, vwxpool

Tags: awesomeness, hockey, sports

When I first started fundraising for the Longest Game, the online system used for donations wasn’t equipped to provide us with the names of the people who were donating. Once we got an updated system, names of donors were published immediately on the fundraising page ((If the donor gave permission, that is!)) So while I know the majority of the people who donated – and I love you all more than you can know! – there are some people who donated who I just have no idea who they are!

My fundraising page lists “Anonymous Pledges prior to July 15, 2011″ of “$587.60″ – these are the donations received on the older system that didn’t give us names of donors. I know some of that money was from Sarah and some was from Dan, and some was from another friend (who wants to be anonymous), because I talked to all of them about it, and that some of it was from the, um, Electronic Device Buying Party for Charity that I held at my friend Lianna’s place. But I don’t know where the rest of it came from! Also, on the newer fundraising page, there is an “Anonymous,” a “DG,” and a “Vera Hossack” – I don’t know who these are either!

So, if you happened to donate some money to me and don’t see your name listed on my fundraising page (or you aren’t my “Fuck Yeah” donor – I know who *you* are!), please let me know (you can email me or use my contact page, if you aren’t comfortable with talking about your donation in the comments section)! I want to send a special thank you to all my fabulous donors and I can’t do that if I don’t know who you are. Also – you rock!

Image Credit: Posted by Matthew Burpee on Flickr.

Tags: CF, charity, Cystic Fibrosis, doing good, events, fundraising, hockey, LG4CF, Longest Game, Longest Game For CF, sports, Vancouver

It’s been almost a week since the game ended and since I have magical healing powers, my blisters and abrasions were mostly under control, so I decided that I would, in fact, play in this afternoon’s season opener for the Coquitlam hockey team. (My Burnaby hockey team’s season opener was the day after the LG4CF ended, so there was *no way* I was going to be playing in that one!)

It was a bit unusual getting back into playing in a real hockey game – I had to remember that I could go all out because there were two full lines, so I wouldn’t have to wait for 15 minutes before my next chance to get off the ice happened. I also had to remind myself that it was OK to block a shot – something I didn’t do in the LG4Cf because it wasn’t worth the risk of injury¹. And mostly, it was very weird not to have sandwiches, granola bars and bananas on the bench. And I was *so* hungry!

Anyhoo, those 243 hours of practice must have done me some good because I scored a goal in tonight’s game! It was a lovely goal, if I do say so myself – I was parked in the doctor’s office and ready to shovel in the rebound when my linemates made some fancy moves to get the puck on net.

On a less happy note, one of our players had to be taken off the ice on a stretcher – probable concussion. It’s so awful to see that happen – I really hope she’s OK!

1. Of course, my shin, which I used to block a shot in the game today, disagrees with me. [↩]

Tags: bragging, hockey, regular season, sports

Apparently my ability to blog about anything but the game lasted all of one day.

It’s been four days since the game ended and I’m feeling both like I may never fully recover and like it was all just a dream! My physical injuries are all very surface – blisters and abrasions  - and I’m a fast healer when it comes to stuff like that and my sausage fingers only lasted for about a day after the game. I had dinner with about 25 of the players last night¹ and many people have much more serious issues – groin pulls, toes that are still numb, etc.! But I also am still having trouble temperature regulating – I’m hot, then I’m cold – and I can’t seem to get hydrated. Despite the fact that I am drinking crazy amounts of water all day long, none of it seems to want to stay in my body²! I feel like I’m ever so slightly more hydrated than yesterday, but my mouth and my eyes still feel super dry! If we do this again, I feel like we should have physiologists follow us around to study the effects of insane amounts of physical activity³. On the plus side, I have regained the ability to sweat, which I lost around Day 5 of the game. So that’s got to be a good thing, right?

My main problem now is that I’m still suffering from the sleep deprivation – hence why I’m at home writing a blog posting on a Friday night instead of partying it up like a respectable 30-something should be. Now, I’m no stranger to sleep-deprivation. I usually only sleep about 5 hours a night during the week, so getting only 5 hours sleep per day during the hockey game wasn’t as much a problem for me as it was for some others… for a few days. But in the real world, I typically make up for my insufficient sleep during the week by sleeping 10 or 12 hours per night on the weekends, something I certainly didn’t do during the game! I’m also not usually physically active for 9 hours per day while getting only 5 hours of sleep per night, so the sleep deprivation *definitely* caught up with me. And since I went back to work the day after the game ended, I haven’t gotten nearly enough sleep to start catching up. In fact, I was in a meeting today and the chair asked us to talk about our goals for the meeting – her example was “By the end of the meeting, I want a consensus on this document so that we can submit it to the Director – and I said, “My goal is to stay awake for the next two hours”⁴.

My plan for the weekend is to take it easy – early to bed tonight, a day on the beach tomorrow and definitely sleeping in big time on Sunday. Hopefully by Sunday I’ll have enough energy to actually get groceries – something I just haven’t had the strength to do as of yet. Maybe next week I’ll even unpack all my stuff from the game, which is currently sitting in a giant pile in my living room!

1. Big time props to Richport Ford Lincoln who kicked in a bunch of money for dinner! [↩]
2. I’ve also tried beer, but that doesn’t seem to work either [↩]
3. Yeah, I just suggested that we might do this again. Near the end of the game, when people would ask me if I’d ever do this again, I would say, “No way. I’ll volunteer, but playing in a 10 day long hockey game is a once-in-a-lifetime experience.” Now that we are a few days out, I feel like I might do it again if they were to plan another game like this! [↩]
4. Fortunately, my coworkers have a sense of humour and are sympathetic to my plight! [↩]

Tags: CF, Cystic Fibrosis, events, hockey, LG4CF, Longest Game, Longest Game For CF, recovery, sports, Vancouver

• There was a dent in centre ice from having dropped the puck more than 2,300 times over 10 days. Seriously.
• I got two new nicknames during the course of the game. One was “The Hobbit” – because I would come into the rink from RV World wrapped in my blanket. It was just too damn cold to get out of my bed without my blanket. The other was “Timbit” – this was what Bree started calling Sarah Willie and I due to our short statures (and the fact that I play like a Timbit!).
• The arena was freaking cold. Apparently they had to keep it that way in order to zamboni the ice is less than 10 minutes, which was the maximum amount of break time we were allowed according to Guinness rules. Freaking cold.
• Scott liked all my witty tshirts. Every day he’s ask “What shirt do you have on today?”  Over the course of the 10 days, I rocked such shirts as “I’m blogging this,” “Not that kind of doctor,” “Zombie Research Society” and, of course, “BETH HUNGRY.”
• A lot of people have asked if we lost weight by playing so much hockey, but no one really seems to have lost much, if any. In fact, one of the women gained 12 lbs! When I got home after the game, I stepped on the scale and weighed exactly the same as when I left. However, when I stepped on the scale the next day, I was down 3 lbs. I’m pretty sure those 3lbs were 3 lbs of water that I’d been retaining in my sausage-like fingers after the game ended!
• Weird things happened to all of our bodies over the course of three days. I mean, there were lots of things you’d expect to happen from playing a ridiculous amount of hockey – blisters, bruises, a concussion, a torn MCL, swollen knees and such, but then there was weird stuff. For example, Bree randomly had a fat wrist. No pain, no particular reason and it was just one wrist. Why would water be retained just in one wrist? We have no idea. Later, the wrist went back to normal and one ankle got fat. Why? No clue. Frankie got TMJ. How does one get TMJ from playing hockey?? I stopped sweating after about day 5. That’s not normal when you play hockey.
• The next time we do this, we should get some physiologists to follow us around to document the effects on our physiology. I think that would make an awesome journal article!
• It’s now two days later and I’m still unable to rehydrate, despite drinking water all day long. It’s like the water just goes right through me and I’m still all dry mouthed and unhydratable!
• Every person who has watched the clip of me on Breakfast Television has said to me, “You look really tired.”
• My six year old niece watched the clip of me on Breakfast Television, which also had an interview with Desneige, who made a very striking piece of artwork featuring the syringes and pill casings of all the drugs that her young son, Beckett (who has CF), had to take in one year. After watching it, my niece said to my sister, “I think I should give my donation money to those kids. They need it.” And she got her jar that she saves money for donations in and counted up how much she had and she donated. What a sweet kid she is!
• Very quickly after the game started, we lost all sense of time. By Day 2, all we knew was “It’s Day 2.” I could not have told you the date or even what day of the week it was, but I knew which of the 10 days we were on.
• For the last two hours of the game, all 40 players were dressed and on the benches. It was the first time since the first hour of the game that we had more than one sub at a time! I was actually on the ice when we tied the record at 10 am. When we set our new record of 10 days, 3 hours and 5 minutes, I was standing by the door and thus would have been the next to go on – you know, like if the game had gone to overtime. =)
• I remember when I was working on my PhD, when I got experimental results, I would sit for a moment and reflect on the fact that I was the only person on Earth who knew the fact that I had just discovered. It’s pretty staggering to think that out of more than 6 billion people, you are the only person who knows something. I can tell you that being one of only 40 people in history to have completed such a momentous feat is just as thrilling.
• A little while ago, Dr. Dan wrote a posting about how he didn’t see himself as an athlete, despite all his running, biking, yoga-ing, etc.¹. He is, of course, but he doesn’t see himself that way. I used to have that problem too, but I feel like completing this epic game has earned me the right to always and forever be able to call myself an athlete.
• My final medical count:
• blisters: 12
• fingers with skin that cracked right open: 4
• major abrasions (i.e., ~1 inch x 1/2 inch): 2
• I wasn’t too worried that I would get injured on the ice, but I was constantly worried that I would do something really stupid, like fall coming out of my RV or take a tumble down the stairs and break a bone. Because that would be such a Beth thing to do. I’m pretty surprised it didn’t happen, actually.

• “Taking off my skates feels better than sex.”
• “Beth, you have such a nice personality, you could say the most asshole thing and people would just say, ‘Oh, I’m sure she didn’t mean it that way!’”
• “I really hope this game doesn’t go into overtime!”
• “Sleep deprivation, physical pain, and isolation. Isn’t that what people do to torture prisoners of war?”
• I was known as the girl with the blog who was also constantly tweeting. A few days into the game, Sarah W said to me “You keep having real people come to visit you. I didn’t think Internet people had friends in real life. YOU ARE MAKING ME QUESTION ALL MY STEREOTYPES!!” A few days later, she asked me, “Are you friends with Miss 604?”, but when I replied “Yes,” she went, “Oh. I was being sarcastic.”

1. I’d link to the article, but I’m too tired to go searching for it [↩]

Tags: CF, char, Cystic Fibrosis, events, friends, fundraising, hockey, LG4CF, Longest Game, Longest Game For CF, sports, Vancouver