A Mix of Heavy and Light Topics

Looking at the heart-rending photos from Japan (such as found here, and similarly here), a few things come to mind:

• When your house is swept away by a tsunami and then manages to catch on fire in the midst of all that water, how do you not feel that something is out to get you? I guess objectively, once you've lost your house, it's gone, and it doesn't really matter how or how often, but. I don't know. Insult to injury, cubed?
  
• All those people who went to work one morning, just as usual, survived this massive unbelievable earthquake, and then can't get home ... how do you deal with that? Wait and see? Try to walk? I work 20 miles from home, and I don't even know how many days it would take me to walk that distance. I can't wrap my head around the realities of the situation.
  

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Strangely enough, I'm going on a yarn crawl tomorrow (it's the North Shore Yarn Crawl, again). I say strangely because I'm still feeling the aftereffects of my Webs trip a few weeks ago, a cross between high and sated. I still love yarn, don't get me wrong; I'm just not feeling any great compulsion to buy yarn right now. I have so much I'm dying to play with already!

So for me, it's more of a recon trip, to see some stores I haven't been to before. A fun road trip with knitting friends. Maybe a nice project bag, or some fun yarn tool will come home with me? I don't know.

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I don't always understand why I am the way I am, why sometimes the part of me that doesn't want to try something new overrules the part that can see it would be fun or worthwhile or valuable in some way. Sometimes, I'm just along for the ride.

This is prefatory to telling you that I can't explain why it took me four and a half years after getting a recommendation for a shop not terribly far away from me, I finally went this week, and only because I was under the gun of an about-to-expire Groupon. If you sigh at me, I sigh with you.

The reason I know exactly how long ago I was told about this shop is that the guy who recommended it was doing the home inspection on the condo I ended up buying. "If you do move to this area," he said, in September of 2006, "you should go to Dom's Sausage*, their marinated steak tips are great." I made appropriately appreciative noises, noted the name, and sometimes in the intervening years I cut their ads out of the paper, and ... I never went. I don't know why. It's new, and something in my wiring is deeply suspicious of new. (I like to think that this is the instinct that would protect me from trying the unfamiliar thing that turns out to be poisonous ... but probably not.)

*Why, yes, he included the hyperlink when he spoke. Of course!

Then last Fall, there was a Groupon for Dom's, pay $10 and get $20. Excellent! I told myself. Only four years later, this will get you there! I bought it.

And meant to go. Really.

And never did.

Two weeks ago, I pulled it out and confirmed that the expiration date was coming up. I didn't make it that weekend, though. They close at 6 on weeknights, so I didn't get there after work (by which I mean that I didn't try, because--spoiler--it's possible!). I didn't make it last Saturday. And on Sunday, the Sleeping Sickness felled me completely.

Thursday at work, I pulled it out and saw that it was the last day. Last chance to not throw $10 in the recycling bin. Come on ...

And I did it! (What a pathetic thing to celebrate.) Still, the main reason I'm telling you this is because I tried the marinated steak tips last night, and if you are in the area, you need to go there and get some. Now. Mercy. I had leftovers for lunch, and whew! So good!

When I opened the package, I was dubious, because there wasn't a particularly strong odor from the marinade, and I was worried I'd picked up some plain ones by mistake. Nope! I used the little Foreman grill, and though it was a messy operation, it was totally worth it, and I'm already wondering when I can get back there. Soon, I think. Now that I've been there, it isn't so scary (boy, am I a special kind of nuts).

I also got some teriyaki chicken, so I'll report in if that's worth it, too. I tried sides (rice pilaf and potato salad), which were fine and perfectly average, nothing special, merely convenient. But the steak was sweet and tender, worth going out of your way for. Or, you know, going in the first place.

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The Bruins have been up and down lately, never more so than this week. They were losing back in mind-February, then went on a seven-game-winning-streak on their Western road trip. They got home and started losing again. On Tuesday they went to Montreal, and not only did they not resume their road-game-winning ways, they rocked the hockey world with a serious injury to one of the Canadiens, resulting from a Bruin hit. (Zdeno Chara hit Max Pacioretty into the boards, where he slammed into the stanchion at the end of the bench and fell to the ice. He has a concussion and a broken cervical vertebrae, so yeah: it's serious.)

In my opinion, it was a bad play by Chara, a hit well after the player had moved the puck, but not an attempt to injure. It happened in just the wrong place, making the result far worse than the action intended. The NHL's disciplinarians agreed, and Chara was not suspended, but that just fanned the flames. Major hits and injuries are a hot topic in the NHL these days, and of course with the long, emotional history between Montreal and the Bruins ... still, it seems to me that it's getting out of hand. The fans were calling 911 to have Chara arrested! Excuse me, it's a hockey game. The police were quoted as saying that people should leave the lines open for actual emergencies. but have since announced they're investigating the incident. Seriously. And Air Canada announced that they are considering withdrawing their NHL sponsorship ... un-huh.

If I sound callous, I don't mean to. I'm sorry that Pacioretty is hurt, and glad it wasn't any worse. You just don't want to see any player, on any team, go down like that, wonder if he'll be all right, if he'll ever play again, if he'll ever walk again. Hell, I watched it happen to Patrice Bergeron a few years ago (it took him almost a year to come back, and the best part of another to return to form) and Marc Savard last year (who knows if he will return).

Anyway! The Bruins played again last night, against Buffalo, and what a crazy game! It seemed like every time a Bruin moved, a Sabre fell down, and a referee's arm went up. Officiating varies, the refs are only human, but that was just a badly called game, period. They gave Chara a boarding penalty for hitting a guy in open ice ten feet from the boards, and the Bruins were down 5-on-3 for almost two minutes, not once but twice. I know I'm partisan, but seriously, that was ridiculous.

They're on the island tonight (Nassau Mausoleum, I heard it called, pretty funny considering how the Islanders are doing, and the crowds they're drawing, this year). How will it go? I'm off to watch. Cross your fingers!