What Today Should Have Been

Today, I should have been excited to think about the Bruins starting training camp. I would have probably gone to Wilmington last weekend to see the rookie camp, and I would be planning when to go this weekend for the full camp. To see hockey again! I mean, come on, I've gone before*, and I went there to see the development camp in July, you know I'd be going now. I'd be checking the calendar for exhibition games, hoping they might be on the radio at least, and studying the rosters, looking at names and heights and birthdates and hometowns.
 *and here, where I show Tuukka Rask the first time I saw him, and mention how "hockey pucks make good paperweights", just like I did last week.

Instead, I'm reading about Tyler Seguin going to play in Switzerland. Seidenburg will go to Germany to play on a team with his brother, and Krejci and Andrew Ference are reportedly going to the Czech Republic, and that's just the beginning. Some big names around the NHL are moving on: Jagr's gone to the Czech Republic too, and Ovechkin is already playing in Russia, and he's saying that if salaries and contracts get cut too much, why come back? I have no confidence that the sides will resolve this any time soon anyway. And that is totally depressing. To quote from Backhand Shelf today, "There’s a business deal to be done here, and it feels like both sides are more concerned with the PR battle. Get in a room and get to work, please."

More than one hockey blogger has pointed out that not all hockey is off, just because the NHL has their panties in a wad (I'm paraphrasing here), and that's true. I hope to go to one or two minor league games; the P-Bruins don't play Saturday nights at home (the perils of sharing an arena), but they play Sunday matinee games, so maybe in November or later I'll get to one of those (October's too busy for me, of course). And there are teams in Worcester, and Manchester ... it's not super-close to me, but totally possible.

The thing is, going to games in person, while great fun, is not what I'll miss about the NHL. There are years when I don't get to a single game--it's expensive! But I watch almost every game on TV, and that's what I'll miss. Two, three, four nights a week, sitting down with a cat and my knitting and watching my guys play, seeing what Bergeron does this year and if Tuukka can carry the number-one spot, getting to know the new ones by who makes the announcer's voice rise ... streaming video of a minor league or overseas game on the computer is not going to replace that.

Maybe if my TV wasn't over 20 years old, it would be able to show internet-based things (I think that's possible, isn't it?), and I could be on the couch and watching a game halfway around the world. I don't think it would be the same, though, and sitting at my computer to do it certainly wouldn't be.

Sooo.... there's that. What else?

Well, as we all know, my October is pretty full of plans, and I've marked my calendar for the weekends around trips, especially the weekend between, to try and keep them, if not empty, at least event-light for rest and recovery. Just the same, I've just made plans for the Saturday after Rhinebeck, and I don't think I'll regret it. It started when one of my coworkers asked if I knew anyone in the area who does babysitting, since a few couples who are coming to her wedding are looking for some help*. I said that I'm good for babies but not older kids, and she said that there's a six-month-old and a one-and-a-half-year-old, and that I could just do the baby if I wanted**. Well, you know how I am about babies! It's an afternoon wedding/evening reception, and I'll be hanging out with a baby ... maybe I'm weird, but it sounds good to me. More restful than stressful.
*And apparently, even though she told them they could bring the kids to the events, they'd rather not!
**Which I do, since six months and 18 months are likely to have wildly different needs and schedules--not to mention how I'm better with them under a year old.

I've had people tell me that they much prefer the older ages to the baby stage, even with their own kids, but I'm the opposite (not that I have my own kids, but you know what I mean). It's funny, isn't it, the ways we're different?  

*****
I've decided to pause in my Doctor Who Catch-Up Marathon. I've been working my way through Season Six, the first Matt Smith season, but I'm having some issues, so I though a break would give me a chance to see if I'm actually not liking it, or if it's from watching too much in too short a time. (This discussion will contain spoilers, if you consider discussion of plot points from three or more years ago spoilers.)

It isn't just the adjustment to the new Doctor, Matt Smith, either. Toward the end of the David Tennant era, I was unhappy with the resolution of the Donna storyline: she saved all those worlds, and not only doesn't she get to remember it, she has to go back to her no-self-respect days? And then the Doctor got less like himself, and tried to save people he knew he shouldn't, and was all emotional, and it was just wrong. Even the past-companions tour, entertaining as it was (Captain Jack and Alonzo, why not?), was on the maudlin side.

Then we get Matt Smith, and he has such problems with his regeneration that he promises Amelia he'll be back in five minutes and returns years later. It's a time machine: effing up the time travel part is getting overdone. I like Amy, and Rory too, but how many times has one of them "died" except oops, not really!? Come on. And the Doctor died, except did he really, and they can't tell him they saw him die, and he knows who's in the space suit, and how long do we wait to find out how this will resolve?

Then we take the bad guys who you can't remember when you don't see them, so you don't know what just happened because they characters don't know what just happened, and now that's affecting other stories to the point where if I hadn't seen that, I wouldn't know what the hell was going on. I watched The Almost People and the end doesn't make any sense to the episode, only to the overarching storyline (as Wikipedia says of the reviews for this episode, "many noting that the cliffhanger overshadowed the actual story of the episode." Exactly!). You know what? Sometimes I would like to step back from the overarching storyline. Why not look back to the first "new" season, with Christopher Eccleston*, for example? There were little hints scattered throughout, things that only made sense when the storyline wrapped up at the end of the season, but it wouldn't make you feel left out of the joke to see them out of order (which I know for sure because that is, of course, just how I saw them the first time). Only at the end do all the little "Bad Wolf" notes come together. I liked it much better that way.
*He's still my favorite ... damn it.

I don't know, maybe I just burned out a little, but it feels a little too "clever for the sake of being clever". After all, my favorite episode, Blink, probably has less of the Doctor than any, but it's how it all fits together that impresses me. I also loved The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, which is partly for putting the pieces together and partly for the characters. And someone who had never heard of Doctor Who could understand it after only a 30-second elevator speech about the basic premise of the show.

Definitely time for a break. And for a weekend! Off to enjoy the rest of my Friday night. Hope you enjoy yours!