If you'll remember, back in August, I quit my long-time job and returned to school full-time.  I then took forever to find a new part-time, lower-paying job.  One of the saddest side effects of that plan has been not having any money.  One of the saddest side effects of that has been having to cancel Christmas.  Mark and I managed to scrape a little bit together for each other but our families are out in the cold which makes me sad.  I love giving people things!  While I don't have a lot of money, I do have this blog.  So for the next four days, I'll be writing a post about a member of my immediate family.  A declaration of love and admiration or something.  These posts are really for them so you don't have to read them.  But feel free.  Like everyone else in the world, I'm partly who I am because of my family.  Anyway, first up, brother John.

Here's a quick breakdown of my family.  My brother John is the oldest.  Chris followed a mere thirteen months later.  My mom and dad took a ten year break before having me, their only daughter.  (They had to save up their energy, I guess.)  Lee came in to close things out two and a half years later.  Even though John and Chris are pretty close in age, John always loomed a little larger in my mind.  As evidence, I offer this essay I wrote in the fifth grade.  If I remember correctly, we were told we could write about anyone.  I chose John.

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I don't know about you, but I'm kind of hoping that game blurs into the seasons around it.  Ouch. no comments

I'm not a Drew Stafford fan.  I've always found his sarcastic, hipster personality more annoying than entertaining and like many Sabres fans, I gave up on him being any kind of consistent star long ago.  Really he's pretty emblematic of a lot of the Sabres current roster: talented but lacking in hunger.  He's missing whatever it is that makes a guy live and breathe hockey, that desire to be truly great.

So when he plays like he did tonight, it REALLY pisses me off.  Heh.  For now I'll put aside questions about why he can't do this all the time and whether or not he'll do this the rest of the season or disappear again in a few games and just be happy.  Because man, it felt good to win that game, didn't it?  I admit, I thought we were going to lose.  And then I thought we were maybe going to win while giving up a third point.  (Or lose and pick up one while giving up two.)  But we didn't.  We won.  So yay for us.

I have a really weird relationship with the Sabres right now.  I'm not really that down on them.  I certainly don't hate them.  I'm still not even really convinced that they're not going to make the playoffs.  I think they will.  But I'm also not in love with them and I don't feel super into the season.  I don't know what exactly it is - Feeling stalled while the whole ownership change is (hopefully) going down?  Distracted by too much change going on in Real Life? - but I can already feel that in five or six years, this is going to be one of those lost seasons that blurs into the seasons around it.  "Oh, yeah, 2010-2011.  Was Tim Connolly still here that year?  I can't quite remember."  That might be more of a reflection on me than them, and goodness knows there's plenty of time left for that to change.  We're not even halfway through the season.  I don't know.  That's kind of how I feel right now though.

I'm also loaded up on cold and sinus medication and have been for the last few days so fuzzy brain might be affecting things too.  When I'm all clear, maybe I'll post something that makes sense. no comments

CLIFF LEE IS NOT A YANKEE!  CLIFF LEE IS NOT A

YANKEE!  MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE BUT

NEW YORK!  MERRY CHRISTMAS!  MERRY

CHRISTMAS, MOVIE HOUSE!  MERRY CHRISTMAS,

EMPORIUM!  MERRY CHRISTMAS, YOU

WONDERFUL OLD BUILDING AND LOAN!  HEY!  

MERRY CHRISTMAS, STEINBRENNER FAMILY!

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I didn't watch the Bills game today - I guess most people didn't actually - but I did glance over Jerry Sullivan's column.  Check out the first couple of paragraphs:

Look, I don't mean to come off as a Grinch. The Bills won another home game Sunday. They finally beat the Browns, 13-6, after three years of excruciating losses. They were the tougher, more resilient team. The usual cast of plucky upstarts played their hearts out. People who were blacked out might have missed something, after all.

Still, I feel strangely unmoved by it all. Maybe it's the long season, or the oppression of the holidays. This online shopping has my head all twisted around. But really, what does it mean? In the big picture, what is the long-term significance of the Bills beating another mediocre opponent and raising their record to 3-10?

I love it.  God bless, Jerry Sullivan, he is such a cartoon character sometimes.  Only Sully could say, here in 2010, that online shopping has his head all twisted around because it's certainly not a complicated process.  And the oppression of the holidays?  I think he might be doing something wrong.

I realize I've been a pretty erratic blogger lately, and for that I apologize.  I finally got a part-time job (I'm THE finest grocery bagger you will ever have bag your groceries) and between that, babysitting, and the papers and finals that come with the end of the semester, things have been a bit busy and I've been missing most of the hockey.  I didn't see any of the Penguins game at all so anything commentary I made would just be stuff I was copying from somewhere else.  But I feel like blogging so here are some odds and ends, floating through my head:

-- College is a rip-off.  I'm a little whiny now anyway because I'm at the point where I'm taking required courses but ones that don't really apply to my actual major.  As an adult, I have to admit, I have much less patience for that than I might have as a youngster.  But even setting that aside, most of my professors have just not been very good and I've learned shockingly little.  Maybe my expectations are too high but now that I'm old enough to really understand just how much money I'm borrowing and just how long it's going to take me to pay those loans off - and I'm going to a community college and then a state school so I'm at the lower end of the financial spectrum here - I'm a little appalled at the cost of a college education especially considering how uninspiring most of my teachers have been at this point.  The classes in my major better be darn good.

That said, the semester went well, and I am once again, rocking a 4.0.  Go me.  Wish there was some way to speed up this process.

-- Last night I stayed up way too late watching "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade."  Every time I watch this movie, I find a few more flaws with it, but I love it anyway.  I think one of the most underrated moments is when the Head Nazi guy drinks out of the wrong grail.  He rapidly ages, his flesh melts away from his bones, and his skeleton slams into the wall, shattering into pieces.  The knight guarding the grail then says, very straight-faced, "He chose... poorly."  Really, you don't say? 

But last night, for some reason, I cracked up when Indy was doing the part of the path to the grail where the clue was "Only the penitent man shall pass."  Indy suddenly realizes it means he should kneel but then he also ducks and rolls.  While I have kneeled in prayer before, I've never added all the acrobatics after.  I never would have made it to the grail and I don't think that's very fair.

-- I'm currently reading "One Day" by David Nicholls.  I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a good read over the holidays.  It starts with a meeting between a boy and a girl, the night they graduate from college and it checks in on their relationship on the same day every year, July 15th, every year from 1999 to 2007.  The gimmick is kind of cool and the story is sweet, and sad, and funny, all in a really good way.

I'm really looking forward to catching up on some fun reading while school is on break so if anyone has read anything good lately, feel free to hit me up in the comments or on Twitter.  I love book recommendations.

-- Kudos to those who went to the Bills game today.  Snow is one thing but rain is quite another.  We went to a game a couple of years ago that featured cold, stinging rain and it was truly one of the most miserable experiences of my life.  It also featured really terrible football from both sides if I remember correctly, but yeah, I was cold for hours and hours after we got home.  Never again.

-- I am EXTREMELY excited about Top Chef All-Stars.  Anyone else watching this?  Jen was one of my favorites (partly because of her relationship to Eric Ripert who is adorable) so I was sad to not only see her go out early but go out in a terrible, terrible way.  Now I'm with Carla and Richard.  I think Richard is going to win.

-- I'm really, really pulling for Cliff Lee to stay with the Rangers or at least sign with someone who isn't the Yankees or the Red Sox.  The Rangers were a better team than the Yankees this season and probably will be for the next few years at least as currently constructed.  If you want to win and it's between the Rangers and the Yanks, I don't know, to my eyes the Rangers look more promising.  

And, like many baseball fans, I'm just sick of the Yankees and the Red Sox, who are now every bit as Evil Empire-y as the Yanks whether they want to admit it or not.  I will fully admit that the Pirates are largely where they are right now because they were crippled by a very, very bad GM who left a disaster of a franchise for the current GM to clean up.  That said, even if a small market team drafts and develops well, once their talent blossoms, they can't keep them, not the way larger markets can.  That kind of sucks.  In every sport, things have to break just right for championship season to come to fruition but it takes even more of a miracle in baseball.  I just want one guy who is being actively recruited by the Yankees or Sox to say, thanks but no thanks.  That would make my day.

What's everyone out there up to?  Watching anything good on TV?  Seen any good movies?  Read any good books?  Anything interesting going on in your lives?

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Luke Adam is my favorite of the new wave of babies.  There are a few reasons for this.  One, I saw him drafted IN PERSON.  (Though I did also see both Tylers drafted that same year.  Best draft ever or BEST DRAFT EVER?)  Two, in his official draft interview, he said his favorite book was Mr. Popper's Penguins which is freaking AWESOME.  I love that book.  And finally, he's built like a robot.  I don't know if it's just his pads or if it's his actual body, but Luke is a very boxy fella.  His shoulders and chest are way wider than the rest of him kind of like old school Optimus Prime toys.

                                                                                          LUKE ADAM

There comes a point where professional athletes learn to play it cool in postgame interviews.  Scored the game winning goal?  Hey, whatever, man.  It's what I'm supposed to do.  Five points in one game?  I'm just glad the team won, you know?  But for Luke Adam that time has not yet arrived and so it was that his intermission interview after his goal was completely and totally adorable.  He was grinning from ear to ear and I was sure he was going to hug the interviewer.  For a few moments, he even managed to make the missing tooth look cute.  Luke Adam, you are a doll.  If I was attracted to things like goals and points, I'd put you on the jersey short list.  As it is, I like you very much even with the game-ending penalty.

* If you happen to click on the link that goes to the old post about going to the draft (and it's a fun post, I think, so you should consider it), please excuse the mess that is the photos and captions.  All the formatting got screwed up when my blog moved over here and I don't have time to fix it right now.  Maybe in the morning.
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I hate to keep coming back to Terry Pegulanbecause everything seems to be at a stand-still right now, but I've been thinking about an ownership change pretty much non-stop.  I won't feel too bad blogging about this since I don't think I'm in the minority.  Let's be honest, as exciting as Friday night's offensive outpouring was, the Sabres as currently assembled just aren't very exciting.  Maybe they make the playoffs, maybe they don't.  To be frank, right now, I just don't care that much.  So here's what bouncing around in my brain.
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I've liked Mike Weber since I first laid eyes on him.  When he and Andrej Sekera showed up in Sabres jerseys, near the end of the 2008 season, he jumped out at me.  (I even said he and Reggie were reasons to hope in those dark days of missing the playoffs.  Because um, those days are TOTALLY over.)  When Kate and I went to rookie camp in 2009 - the year she was trying to keep Chris Butler all to herself (those days ARE totally over) - he jumped out at me again.  Butler had looked really good in his first season up and Tyler Myers was there but it was still Weber that I ended up watching the most.  I don't know exactly what it was, I just liked the feel of him.  He was a d-man obviously, and I do like that, but he was also the kind of d-man I like.  Nothing fancy, just effective.  A little more Jay McKee than Henrik Tallinder probably but still, my kind of guy.  And the fact is, sometimes guys just have that thing.  It's not necessarily amazing skill or ability, but it's just something that makes you - maybe even you alone - take notice.

Don't get me wrong, I do really and truly love Jochen Hecht and his two tiny little goals, but at this point, he's a place-holder.  He's not going to be here much longer even if he makes it to the end of his current contract.  I've had a niggling ever since Weber showed up that he was going to be my next favorite.  Every post I've written about picking a new guy has said, "I want to see Weber up for a full season before deciding for sure."  I've been very impatiently waiting for him.  Every time he got injured in Portand, I got annoyed.  At least a hundred times this season I've yelled to the room, "WHAT DOES MIKE WEBER HAVE TO DO TO GET IN THE LINE-UP?!"  I've ranted about how pretty much every single d-man could come out so that he could get a chance and I've gone on and on about how in the off-season, one of the justifications for letting Hank and Toni Lydman both walk was that we had Weber in the wings, ready to go.

So I'm glad Weber is here, I'm glad he's playing, and I'm glad he's playing well.  I'm glad the feedback on him from pretty much everyone has been positive.  For now, he's earned his spot in the starting line-up.  Will he earn the spot in my heart?  Stay tuned!  no comments

As someone who came to the Sabres later in life, I have three regrets regarding things that I missed.  One is that I came around to hockey after Empire and Hockey Hotline were gone.  As I said a couple of weeks ago when talking about Mike Robitaille, I would love to have something like that in Buffalo now.  Two, I really wish I'd seen Mike Ramsey play.  Every year that I've written Top Shelf, I've gotten at least three emails, usually out of the blue, that say, "You know who you would have loved?  Mike Ramsey."  And from what I've read of him, he totally seems like my kind of player.  And last but not least, I really wish I'd been here when Jim Kelley was on the hockey beat at The Buffalo News.  I read some of his post-TBN work, of course, but judging by some of the excerpts I've seen of his work here, I think I really would have enjoyed picking up the paper and reading him.  All the wonderful things I've read about him certainly seem to suggest that's true.

Speaking of the paper, I've been mulling over this whole new owner thing, and if Terry Pegula does buy the team, one of the more minor side benefits might be an improved relationship between the Sabres and TBN.  Right now, with Tom Golisano and Larry Quinn in charge, it appears to be pretty dysfunctional on both sides especially in regards to Golisano.  I believe that any criticism of Darcy Regier and Lindy Ruff, whether I agree or not, is just business, but I don't believe that about Golisano.  Even when the criticism of him is justified, it seems to be coming from a more personal level.  (Jerry Sullivan titling a blog about Golisano with "Slimy Tom" was definitely not one of his finer professional moments just as one example.)  Do you know how much I'd love to pick up the paper without cringing?  That'd be nice.  I'm not suggesting that an ownership change would fix everything I dislike about TBN's hockey coverage, but I do think it might help.

I've been trying to stay relatively mellow about all the Pegula rumors, but I have to admit, I'm totally stoked.  If this falls apart or turns out to not be true, I'm going to be PISSED.  Can we get this done in time to have some new faces on the ice Friday night? no comments

I was hanging out on Twitter this evening when Mike Harrington started teasing us all with an upcoming story about the rumors that the Sabres are going to be sold.  He ditched us and left us hanging but shortly after, this Bucky Gleason story went live on TBN's website.  You should probably just go read it if you haven't already, but the basic gist is that the rumors that have been floating around on the Internet about Terry Pegula having some interest in buying the Sabres might have some truth in them.  You can find out more info about Pegula in the article but he's really rich, his wife is from Buffalo, he loves hockey, more or less paid for Penn State's hockey program and rinks, and he claims to be a fan of the Sabres and the Flyers.  I'm not sure exactly how that last part works, but hey, the heart wants what the heart wants, even if it's dirty ol' Flyers.  

The only definitive facts in Bucky's story that I haven't seen elsewhere already are the quotes from Larry Quinn and while they're interesting, they're the same "Golisano listens to all offers and we don't comment on any of them" remarks that we always get when rumors of a sale start up.  There's some business about sources indicating that this is more than just a rumor, that Pegula's interest is sincere, but it's hard to know how seriously to take that when you don't know who the sources are (although knowing Bucky, I'm going to guess it was some combination of Stan Bowman and/or Rick Dudley since he seems to harbor more than a mild crush on both of them).

It's definitely an intriguing story though.   If the big hang-up with past offers has been the potential new owner wanting to move the team, Pegula seems like a definite possibility since he would almost surely want to keep the Sabres in Buffalo.  He also obviously loves the game of hockey which is pretty cool.  I appreciate Golisano coming along and scooping up the Sabres when he did, but he's never pretended that the Sabres were anything but an investment to him.  He doesn't love hockey.  I don't know if I'd go as far as saying that it's impossible for a owner who doesn't care about the sport to win, but I would probably say that an owner who does care about the sport is more likely to win.  I suppose some of that just comes down to personality too.

It's an interesting season for an ownership change.  There's a core of young talent and potential (Tyler Ennis, Luke Adam, Mike Weber, Zack Kassian, Jhonas Enroth) and there's a fairly sizable amount of money coming off the books at the end of this season (Tim Connolly, Drew Stafford, and Craig Rivet for sure with a few smaller possibilities).  There'll be some flexibility with money and with the roster.  A new guy coming in and either making a clean sweep of the front office or giving the front office more freedom than Golisano allegedly does could make a difference pretty quickly.  (Note to Pegula since I know he's probably checking out Sabres blogs for suggestions: I'd make a terrific GM and I have the perfect head coach in mind.  We make a great team, trust me.)

I don't know.  I do know that this is the first ownership rumor that's made me sit up and take notice though.  Any other thoughts out there?  no comments