It’s been a strange couple weeks. I spent a lot of it sick and yet more of it on the road to Denver to see Dir en grey, a band I’ve loved for well over a decade. I ended up in major tooth pain and had an extraction yesterday due to a pretty severe infection that nothing else was going to solve. I can easily tell you that was the worst pain of my life and I’ve had some pretty extensive pains.

Beyond that (horrible) adventure, I’d like to take a minute to at least catch everyone up on where I’m at. I haven’t been doing hockey reviews because the boys are on the road and I feel a little weird writing reviews for games I’m watching on HockeyTV instead of in person. That said, if you’re still interested in reviews for those games, let me know and I’ll do them while I’m subscribed this month!

Writing has taken a break. I did an extensive review of my already written 71K worth of words early this month and ended up re-writing around 3K worth, which really wasn’t bad given how much I thought I’d need to change after meeting with three of the players from the NM Ice Wolves to ensure I was correct in all I was writing. (Fantastic people with so much patience. They’re truly great dudes and I wish the world for them.)

I plan to start writing again during my winter break from work and haul ass through the rest of the novel. That should give me time to pick up any lose ends, bounce any further potential issues off the hockey dudes, and shovel more of my work toward my editor for the first round in what is sure to be multiple edits.

The concert was amazing. It’s so hard to get the words out to describe how I feel about it and anyone that’s known me for long enough to have been right there with me when I was a huge part of that fandom knows how near and dear that band is to me. Great people with amazing talent, look them up if you get a chance (and if you don’t like the first song, skip a few years and listen again, they’ve changed so much over the years it’s amazing). I smiled until my face hurt, I screamed lyrics until my throat hurt, and I cried until all that stored up anxiety and stress had drained out of me. That’s what their shows have always done and this year was no different.

Hockey-wise, I’d like to take a second to congratulate Josh Graziano, our (now former) goalie from the NM Ice Wolves on his commit to Union College. They have a rep of feeding players up into the NHL and I have my fingers crossed real hard for him. We’ll all miss him like hell, but we always want progress for our team, so here we are. Henrik Laursen has been stepping up real well and I think he’ll shine as our main goalie and here’s hoping whoever we pull on board will steal our hearts, too!

Also… was anyone else watching that ‘come at me bro’ moment 2 games ago involving Grazino? I had some legit glee up in this joint. Just sayin’. 😉