Not-stalking Lundqvist

Yesterday was a whirlwind but it certainly was interesting. Started out with a workout (yeah baby, almost done with week 3 and therefore Phase 1!) and baking some delicious muffins, and then I headed out to the Monkey Sports store that just opened in Woodbridge, NJ. As part of their grand opening they've had player appearances the last two weekends, and yesterday Lundqvist was there. I've never gone to one of these things so I wasn't sure what to expect, but it pretty much was what I thought it would be; crowded, stuffy, hard to see/hear, but hey, you don't get the opportunity to see the King in person very often so what the heck. I think the most memorable part about it though was getting there. I'd only been there once before and got hopelessly lost, but I blame that on Tom Tom.

I wrote down directions from Google Maps and it seemed pretty straightforward, so after a quick chat with Hkygrl12 on Twitter (who had completely forgotten about it and was going to go to a skate with Ron Duguay instead, HELLO???), I hit the road. It's about an hour from where I live, so I was having a good time relaxing and rocking out to some tunes, and when I got closer and had to start paying attention to my directions, it still seemed pretty easy. I was even getting all cocky about how much better Google Maps was than Tom Tom. I was stopped at a light when a car in the next lane caught my attention. It had a puck-shaped magnet that said "Hockey Rules". Yes, indeed it does, I thought. Then I noticed the Quarry Cat magnet. Huh, I thought, interesting. And then I saw the Red Sox sticker. Heeeyy waitaminnit that's gotta be Hckygrl12! As luck would have it, I ended up right behind her when we got off the exit. Driving along, I got a text from her asking if there were a lot of people there. "Im behind u", I texted back. I figured great, I'll just follow her. Except it wasn't long before we were in another town and knew we were completely lost. We pulled over to laugh about it and figure out what to do and hit the road again. After MANY u-turns on Route 9 (and a few calls to GoalieHusband, who knows the area a little and was meeting me there) we finally made it to the store. Google gave us some really ass-backward directions, involving taking a side street with no street sign that looked kind of like a scary back alley, so I guess my cocky "ha! Google Maps kicks Tom Tom's ass!" moment was premature.

Regardless, we made it, had some good laughs about the fact that we were jammed up against the jock display while waiting, and tried to take pictures of Hank through some dude's really big greasy head. I have to say, he may be a fantastic goalie, but he's a hell of a boring interview. And the Bauer rep who was with him spent about 10 minutes asking him about why he liked Bauer, etc. Ok, we get it. Bauer's great and there's a sale on all Bauer equipment. Let's move on to the real stuff. I think the best question from the crowd was the first one, from a young kid who blurted out "When you retire are you going to become a US citizen???!???" (Hank very diplomatically answered that he loves NY and will probably always have a place here but also loves Sweden.)

It was kind of interesting to go and check one of these things out, but I don't think I'd do it again. If he was some kind of goalie thing, and he was going to be talking about goaltending, I'd probably go. But otherwise? Just don't really see the point. I also felt a little bad for him, because it was obvious he still wasn't feeling all that great after having the flu two nights before. (I only know this because Biron got an unscheduled start, and the TV announcers kept talking about how Hank had the flu and wasn't even on the bench. Really. I don't have a camera in his bathroom or anything. Come on, that's gross.)

That's the extent of hockey for me this weekend, other than watching games on TV. The Hawks don't play until Wednesday night- interestingly, right after Quarry Cat practice. That'll be a nice exhausting night. It feels kind of weird to not have a game on a Sunday night. What am I going to do with myself from 11pm - 1am? Ohhh yeah... I'll be asleep. Nice!