Team USA men’s hockey team just had a huge win and is now in the gold medal game on Sunday.  They will face-off with either Canada or Slovakia, who play in three and half hours from now.  I’ll try to watch the game tonight, but will definitely be tuned into the final game on Sunday.  I watched the end of the women’s game last night, where the Canadian women beat team USA 2-0 to take the gold medals.  Today everyone is all upset about the celebration the players had after most of the crowd had left the arena.  Fourteen players returned to the ice with beer, champagne, and cigars.

I really don’t think it’s that big of deal, though smoking cigars on the ice seems pretty strange.  There is a poll on nbcolymics.com and currently the vote is split right down the middle whether the celebration went to far or not.  The only thing I thought was really strange was that some of the players appears to be drinking Coors Light.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that finely made Colorado product, but shouldn’t they all be having Molson’s or Labatt’s?  What do you all think, did they take it too far or should we just let them have their fourteen minutes of fame?

I just wrapped up another uneventful trip to the dentist, which is a good thing, right?  I had a quick cleaning and evaluation with no problems found.  I really like this dentist that I’ve been seeing for the past year.  The office is pretty much a two women shop, obviously one is the dentist and the other is just the receptionist.  That’s right, there are no hygienists in this office.  Instead, the dentist is the one who actually cleans teeth, while doing the evaluation at the same time.  So rather than just seeing the dentist for a few minutes at the end of your appointment, you get to spend your entire visit with one.  I think this leads to a great quality of care, not to mention that she is really nice and efficient.  If you are in the Denver area, I highly recommend seeing Pamela Rotwein.

In addition to my curling addiction, I’ve tried to keep up with as much of the Olympic hockey action as I possibly can. Fortunately, nbcolympics.com has a very nice Silverlight player that is available for streaming lots of live events, especially hockey and curling. I was able to follow along with the USA hockey game this afternoon, even if I only listened to the audio most of the time. The really cool thing is that the video player seems to automatically adjust the quality based on your connection. So rather than dropping out and buffering the video, it can simply display a lower bit-rate and then automatically switch to a higher one when the connection improves. I’m not really too familiar with Silverlight, but this feature seems really desirable compared to current flash video players.

Kim and I headed down to the Pepsi Center last night for the rescheduled Billy Joel and Elton John show.  The “Face To Face” show was originally scheduled for November 22nd, but it was later rescheduled.  We bough some of the cheapest tickets in the arena, which were still $50, and we were pleasantly surprised when we found our seats.  We were slightly behind the stage, but felt the view must have been better than from the far side of the arena.  We could easily see both performers and their entire bands and only really missed out on the large video screen across the top of the stage setup.

The show started with both performers trading verses on Elton John’s “Your Song.”  They then moved through “Just the Way You Are,” “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me,” and “My Life” in the same manner.  It was neat to hear each sing on the others songs.  And their voices actually complimented each other really well.  From there, Elton John’s backing band arose from the stage trap-doors to accompany him in an hour-long set of hits.  I had honestly forgotten how many hits he had.  Some of the songs in the set included “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” “Crocodile Rock,” “Tiny Dancer,” “Levon,” and “Rocket Man.”

From there, the backing bands switched spots, and it was Billy Joel’s turn to run through some of his hits.  Kim has always been a huge fan of his music, and has helped introduce me to more songs than just the hits.  However he stuck to mostly the hits in his hour-long set, which included “Allentown,” “Don’t Ask Me Why,” “She’s Always a Woman,” “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song),” “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” (Kim’s personal favorite), and “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me.”  Though Elton John appeared a little reserved in his performance, Billy Joel was up dancing and even grabbed the guitar for “We Didn’t Start the Fire.”

Rather than taking a drawn-out encore break, Elton John simply joined Billy Joel up on stage at the end of his set for another round of duets.  This medley of songs was especially good, including “I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues,” “Uptown Girl,” “Bennie and the Jets,” “Candle in the Wind” and “Piano Man.”  Every one knew “Piano Man” was going to end the show, but it was still a perfect ending to a great three-hour night of music.

Finally!  I had my first real powder day of this snowboarding season.  Actually, I had two.  Kim and I spent the weekend at Copper Mountain with her sister and her boyfriend.  I had never been to Copper before, though I’ve wanted to for a while, so we finally found a good excuse to go.  We picked up our visitors on Friday after work and headed straight up into the mountains.  We reserved a last-minute condo immediately next to a couple of lifts at the center village of Copper.  After a rather long and snowy drive, we finally arrived at the condo and rested up for the next morning.

Saturday morning, we had an early start on the slopes.  Though the first couple of runs were mostly groomed with a little powder on top, we quickly found some other runs with tons of powder.  Over the past week they had received nearly two feet of snow, so the conditions were the best we’ve seen all season.  After taking a run down a steep and mogul filled slope, we didn’t quite make it a full day.  We had a couple of après-ski ski drinks before dinner and Olympics viewing at Endo’s.  I must admit that Copper isn’t the most happening town I’ve ever stayed in, but there was enough to keep us busy for a couple of days.

Kim and I got another early start on Sunday, while our visitors went out for breakfast and enjoyed their vacation.  With the snow continuing to fall, we headed immediately for some of the bowls hoping for lots of powder.  And we were rewarded handsomely!  This was definitely the best day we have had all season.  We spent most of our time around the Union Peak area.  After a draining ten runs, we headed back toward the front-side of the mountains to meet up with the others.  We somehow managed to stay out all the way until the lifts closed at four.  What a weekend!

Copper Mountain on Dwellable

My hockey team faced-off with the third place team in the league on Wednesday night.  We had previously lost to this team 2-6 in the fifth week of the season.  Fortunately things have started to turn around for my team recently.  We were able to hang in this game, and we actually had more shots on goal than our opponents.  Unfortunately, with the score tied at two late in the game, one of the referees called in a goal.  Not only did the puck not cross the line, our goalie made an amazing save, he wasn’t even in position to make the call.  Instead of letting the game go to overtime, we were handed a 2-3 loss.  I assisted on one of our goals, though I wasn’t given credit.  My team can still make it to .500 as long as we win the last five games of the season.  Time to lower our goals.

Today has been a hectic day!  If you didn’t already know, I’m in the process of moving to a new position with my company.  My current position is actually being outsourced, so I consider myself lucky to have found another opportunity so quickly.  I’m in a transition phase with my current position, and haven’t started moving into my new role yet.  The project lead for my new position was in town today and he scheduled a meeting to welcome myself and two others into the group.  The problem was that I had planned to work from home today.  I didn’t find out about the meeting until half hour into my work day, with only about an hour and half notice.  So I had to rush to get down to the office in time to attend the meeting.  My work from home days may be numbered, but I’m excited for my new opportunity!

Today is Ash Wednesday, the start of the Lenten season.  Traditionally, it is the day to officially give something up for forty days.  Unfortunately I don’t have any good ideas for myself.  I can’t think of too many vices that I could easily do away with.  I don’t really snack or eat chocolate.  I’m not a big soda drinker and haven’t been drinking caffeine much at all recently.  I feel like those are the big items that most people usually fall back on, but none of them really apply.  A cousin of mine is giving up alcohol, but I’m already drinking much less than I had previously.  I don’t really want to cut it out completely, especially with my 30th birthday falling before Easter.  So, does anyone else have any good ideas or want to comment on what they are giving up?  I haven’t eaten meat today, which is not normally a tradition I take part in.  Maybe I’ll actually give up meat on Fridays for once, though that’s a bunch of pizza between now and Easter.

My Olympic addiction is back in full effect.  It’s been four years since I last filled up the DVR will so much sports recordings.  I’ve never really watched that much of the summer games, but I love the winter games.  I guess my years of playing hockey and my recent snowboard addiction help to fuel this.  So far I watched most of the opening ceremonies on our flight to KC on Friday.  We were tuned into speed skating, ski jumping, luge, and freestyle skiing during our KC pub crawl on Saturday.  Sunday was spent glued to the TV watching biathlon, nordic combined, and women’s hockey, along with more luge and freestyle skiing.

I stayed up to date on the events yesterday on nbcolympics.com and watched snowboard cross, men’s downhill, and figure skating pairs last night after work.  Today I’m working remote which allowed me to watch the USA curling match over lunch.  I also have the USA men’s hockey game on in the other room so I can listen to it for the rest of the day.  So far I have really enjoyed watching these games, and have been surprised by the curling action along with the freestyle skiing.  Not to mention the snowboard cross, which is something I’d love to try.  I can’t wait for more of the snowboard action to start up either.

Kim and I took a last-minute flight to Kansas City over the weekend.  We didn’t get in until after nine on Friday, and left yesterday evening, so our time was very limited, but I think we made the most of it.  We hadn’t seen our friends Phil and Doni for a while, and since they can’t make my upcoming birthday weekend trip, we decided to hang with them in KC for the weekend.  The excitement of the trip was primarily contained to Saturday, when we took an all day pub crawl throughout the city.  Phil put together a list of bars to hit this summer with other visitors and we decided to give it a trial run.  We ended up at a couple of spots I’ve never been to before as well as some old watering holes that we used to frequent when living in KC.  Check out Phil’s blog for a full recap of the events.  It was a great weekend trip!