2006, eh??

Well, I guess it has to be said... Happy New Year! We all knew it was gonna come... unless you're like Nostradamus or something and put all your eggs into the 'World's Gonna End' basket.
It has been an interesting few days... well, interesting is a little bit of an exaggeration, but it'll have to do.

Closing out the old year, I filled my boots with hockey... which is the best way to close out the year, even if the team you cheer for doesn't exactly dominate.

On Thursday, had the benefit of watching the Flames/Wild game at the dome. There is a good chance that'll be my only NHL game I'll go to this season and it was quite a bit of fun. Lee and I went with Troy's tickets, after he was nice enough to give them to us. I was in my Gaborik jersey and Lee was in his Stephane Yelle jersey and we had an excellent laugh at a less-than-exciting game. Before hand, Lee and I sat in the lounge and watched the Canada/Norway junior game. So that was a couple games that night. It was a shame that the Flames won 3-2, but whattya gonna do, right?

Friday, was back at the dome to see the Kelowna Rockets take on the Hitmen. This game was supposed to be a gift for Josh & Graham from me for Xmas... but neither of them showed. Josh had gotten a "better offer" of a movie with a buddy of his and Graham was up quite late the night before and was off to Edmonton for New Years yesterday. So Dad and I took Dale to see the game, saw Julie in the dome, thanked her for getting the tickets for me and watched a pretty good hockey game. Kelowna's win in overtime was icing on the cake on that night.

Last night, before heading to the Wildfire for the New Year's celebration... Benny and I watched Canada beat the US 3-2. You know it was a big result for Canada, but I would only consider it the 2-2 tie that the game really was. The empty-net goal to win it was only a technicality 'cuz the US needed to win that game to get the bye through the quarter-finals. Nevertheless, Canada has got themselves the bye and hopefully we get the marquee matchup for Gold with the US again this year. I am looking forward to that matchup, greatly.

So those have been my last hockey drenched days of 2005... I've gotta say that I'm really impressed with all that hockey.

So last night was a tad bit of a gong show... but at least this time I remember it all. Benny, John and I all got to the pub just after 9pm... and it just went to a good time in a hurry. Chatted with quite a few people and had quite a good time. Closed down the place and just laughed ourselves silly. Geez... we must have been drunk, 'cuz I still feel it now and it's almost 2pm. Woo wee!

I also got a positive sign from Barbara over the last few days... had a phone chat with her Friday night... hopefully gonna get together after work on Tuesday. She also texted me last night, 'Happy new year hun.' I will take that as an exceptionally good sign. I think I texted her back last night... nothing quite as out there as 'hun,' although I possibly should have. I'm quite excited about the possibility of seeing her again. Shame it's not 'til Tuesday and it's only Sunday now. Argh! Ha ha. Gonna have to text her again today and leave her a nice little message.

Benny and I were having a good laugh about Theresa last night before heading to the bar. I'm sure some of you remember that one night where Benny and myself were chatting about her and that he fancied her as well. Well, we've been pretty good about talking about that sort of thing and Benny is pretty up-to-date with Barbara and such, so we can really laugh about fancying Theresa. He came up with the idea of him taking her out to a movie and me just showing up... making things really uncomfortable for her. She's pretty uncomfortable as it is when she serves the two of us at the pub... so it'd just be a good laugh to do it away from the pub. That was sort of memorable last night.

Well, here's to the first day off in the new year without a drink. Gonna see how long that lasts. It needs to be done. I'm hoping Barbara will be okay with that... if not, I figure she's worth breaking a resolution for.

Happy New Year again everyone... hopin' for a good 2006 for all!!