This weekend was sort of a whirlwind of events - lots of stuff happened, nothing too spectacular in-and-of-itself, but all of it added up to one thing: busy.

Friday night the Winter Hawks kicked ass in game one of the playoffs against Seattle. It was good to see them win, and I had faith they’d waste Seattle in the first four games (it’s a best-of-seven series).

Saturday night, not so good. One of our players got suspended because he checked a Seattle guy and the Seattle guy got hurt pretty bad. I don’t think it was entirely our guy’s fault, but they have to suspend anyone involved in accidents like that. Anyway, that was sort of foreshadowing for the rest of the evening.

The ref was way too sympathetic towards the “poor Seattle players.” If we checked someone, we got called for interference. If they checked us, we got called for roughing. The linesmen even called offsides incorrectly. How you can mess that one up, I couldn’t tell you. Everything basically just worked in favor of Seattle, and they trounced us, 6 - 2. Granted, they did deserve a couple of the goals they got. But not all of them. I think we got screwed.

During the day on Saturday was chore day - did some laundry, vaccuuming, etc. Played a good share of Grand Theft Auto, which I now have to admit is a full addiction. It’s actually sort of nice - it’s been so long since a game has sucked me in like that, I feel a sense of relief that people can still design innovative and fun games. I had lost faith there for a second.

I also went shopping on Saturday at the local Tower Records and picked up my copy of Tom Jones’s Reload. I’m groovin’ to it right now. If you ain’t got it, get it. My hunger for Tom is finally sated. At least, for now.

Sunday I fixed my Dual 1215S turntable. Mostly. I had one, but something came disconnected underneath and required a new part. Well, I couldn’t find the part anywhere, but I did find someone selling a functional version on a mailing list. So I bought that one for $55 (cheap compared to buying a new turntable) and planned on cannibalizing it to fix the one I already had. Why not just go with the functional version and trash the broken one? Except for the one piece on the broken one, the rest of the turntable is in mint condition, like it’s new out of the box. The functional one I just bought is well loved and there are some pieces rusting on it, some pieces not in the best of shape, but, yeah, it’s functional.

Anyway, I got the new one in the mail, flipped both turntables over, and started to take the broken piece off the old turntable when I realized that Dual redesigned the stupid part sometime in the manufacturing process and, while I have in my possession two turntables of identical make and model, the one stupid part that I need is not the same. Everything else on it is absolutely identical. That just figures, doesn’t it? So I ended up swapping as much as I could without disassembling the whole turntable - The functional turntable now has a nice case on it and a nice stylus, but the rest of it is the well-loved, slightly rusting turntable I just bought; the non-functional one is still non-functional.

Since my dad and I figured that the non-functional one was basically lost anyway, Dad’s going to take the part and try to re-solder it back together in a roundabout fashion. If it works, we’ll have two working turntables. If not, no harm, no foul.

Sunday night I went to a party for Jenn’s aunt-who-isn’t-really-an-aunt-but-just-a-long-time-family-friend. If that confuses you, don’t worry. I’m in the same boat. You should see Christmas around their place - everyone’s a cousin. If you don’t know what relation someone is to someone else, they’re cousins. I still don’t even know all of their names; every time I go over there it’s a different 50 cousins.

It was a surprise party for Jenn’s aunt’s birthday. We got there at 5:00p, when the aunt was supposed to arrive.

At 6:30p the aunt finally showed up. She was happy that everyone was able to make it, but I was pretty much ready to go by that time. If you’ve ever had to wait an hour and a half to surprise a person you really don’t know, you’ll know what I mean. There was a lot of television watching going on. I think maybe someone needs to smack the person who was driving the aunt around and was supposed to be there at 5:00p. Or at least buy them a watch.

Oh, well. Chillin’ with Jenn’s parents isn’t as bad as all that. It was more the “hurry up and wait” state of things that got to me than anything. Besides, Jenn’s dad lets me wear his fez. Aw, yeah.