Apparently we had a bit of an outage last night. My apologies to anyone this affected.

I’m considering a couple of things right now. 1) A movie night, and 2) The second annual table hockey championships. Any interest in either of those out there? They’re not mutually exclusive. I think I’m going to have a movie night regardless, I just have to pick a movie. The table hockey thing takes a little more time and organization though. Let me know, either by commenting, or emailing me.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Sir, I’m afraid we have a bad image, people see you as a bit of an ogre.” - Smithers

As of right now, there have been 96 ties in the NHL this season, and another 65 decided in overtime. This out of a total of 603 games. That’s over a quarter of all games going to OT.

To put that in perspective, the average team this year has played around 40 games, of which slightly over 10 have gone to OT. The average team has 6 ties, 2 overtime losses and 2 overtime wins already this year. It’s disturbing to me somehow to see a team with 10+ ties already (there are three teams with 11, and one with 10.)

Just thought I’d throw that out there. This has been this month’s edition of The Numbers

Simpson’s quote of the day: “I’m studying for the math fair. If I win, I bring home a new protractor.” - Lisa

I managed to avoid most news of the World Junior Hockey Championships finals yesterday, which was good, because I had recorded the game, and watched it last night. My take on it - the Canadians probably should have won, but they did some things poorly that resulted in them not winning.

They played pretty poorly in the first, but at least defensively they were fairly tight in their own end. Crosby showed that he’s still a 16 year old kid in getting knocked around a bit at times, and looking a little shaky in his own end. The second was much better, the Canadians came out looking pretty good, and managed to score a couple to take a 3-1 lead into the locker room for the second intermission.

Then the third period happened. I think the US was playing a bit of rope-a-dope. The puck was in the US end for most of the first half of the third period, and the Canadians were pressing. Pressing a little too much, it turns out, because they wound up giving up some chances that should have been stopped by good defensive play, and instead wound up as goals for the US. Odd man rushes, and defensive zone coverage breakdowns turned ugly in a hurry. Once the unfortunate third goal went in, the Canadian team looked defeated. At that point, they stopped playing a team game, and started playing a bunch of individual games - defensemen trying to rush end to end, forwards trying to stickhandle through three defenders, no passing, no heads up play. A lot of kids trying to do it all themselves.

It was too bad, really, because other than taking too many chances with a 3-1 lead, they played a pretty good game until they were down. Oh well, congratulations to the US squad, because they kept their heads about them, and continued to play the game plan even when down 3-1. There was a lot of hustle and a lot of selfless play from that team. I’d say they won because they kept their composure better.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Son, when you participate in sporting events, it’s not whether you win or lose — it’s how drunk you get.” - Homer

As Jason mentioned today, he and Amy went to see Return of the King on Saturday. Erin and I were also at the same showing - in fact, Erin sat next to Amy. The theatre was probably over half full, but we were worried that we wouldn’t get tickets at all. As it turned out, we had no problems, and even got decent seats. I went in ahead and saved some seats while Erin waited in the lobby for Jason and Amy to show up. Just as they walked into the theatre, the lights dimmed, and the previews started. That’s what I call good timing.

So, I’ve avoided talking about the movie thus far… You might conclude that I didn’t like it. That’s not the case. I liked it - I even liked it a lot. I still think the first movie was the best of the bunch, mainly because it was forced to focus on things like character development, and setting the tone. Despite the obvious technical brilliance of the large battle scenes, I found them to be more distracting than integral to the story. I realize that people wouldn’t sit through a three+ hour movie without any big action scenes, but honestly, I think the movies could have stood up well without a lot of the special effects in the battle scenes. Obviously the battles had to be there, and if they weren’t as grand as the rest of the movie, lots of people would have been disappointed. I don’t think I would have been one of those people though. There were some cheesy parts, and some fantasic parts. The set design was fantastic, the costumes were right up there too. The music was well done, though at points I felt it was overused to mask the lack of emotion being created by the acting. The actors all did a credible job, I guess.

The one thing that made me chuckle was when Frodo was picked up by the orcs after being stung by Shelob - his face went from very very dirty, to very very clean, back to very very dirty. At one point it looked like he’d gone goth on us.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “First some ground rules. Number one, we get bathroom breaks every half-hour.” - Lionel Hutz

Happy 2004 everyone. Well, everyone who uses the Gregorian calendar anyway.

Erin and I spend New Year’s eve at home, we watched “Swiss Toni” on BBC Canada, which is pretty funny, as it turns out. I’m disappointed to see that there are only six episodes thus far - which means that we’ve seen them all. That’s what the origin of the slightly provocative title of today’s post is though…go here for Swiss Toni quotes to somewhat explain it to you…Basically, that’s Toni’s catchphrase.

Yesterday, William and I went to my parent’s place in the afternoon, while Erin stayed home and cleaned. Don’t bug me about it - it was her request :) Erin came over at supper time, and we played games all night. We wound up playing a little Eye Toy: Play, then some “99″ and a little “2 by 2″ (both card games.) Oh yeah - we played Scotland Yard before I went to pick up Erin - I was a rather lacklustre Mr. X, getting caught before the second reveal.

I think Erin and I are going to try and see The Return of the King this weekend. We’ll see if it works out for us or not.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “I have an unorthodox solution, a ‘Fantastic Voyage’ if you will. Mwa-hey. Three scientists, one a beautiful woman, will be shrunk to microscopic size.” - Professor Frink