Happy couple of days after paczi day!

I hope you enjoyed your custard-filled lard bombs while you could because yesterday was Ash Wednesday and now it's nothing but soggy fish sticks from here to Easter!

So I've had a pretty good weekend. Flip called on Friday to ask if we wanted to road trip out to ND for a hockey game. This, much like "Do you want to come over to Doc's and drain the wine cellar," is one of those questions that only has one answer. We hit the road Saturday afternoon, landed on campus in time to have dinner at the BrewCo, and still made it to the arena more or less around the time the puck dropped.

NJ, I am happy to report that this year, the Irish suck. No, really, they are dead last in the CCHA. This Guy and Flip and J9 were cheering and yelling and heckling and having a grand old time and I was kind of sitting there in wide-eyed dismay. Every once and a while I'd lean back and look at TG pityingly and say, "No, really, you guys are bad." But bad hockey is better than no hockey, and it's not like we didn't used to have that same look on my face when the Falcons took the ice, back in the day.

Going to a hockey game at Notre Dame is less about watching the hockey game, though, and more about watching This Guy and Flip watching hockey. Watching them yell and pun on player's names and abuse the officials and chat up the ushers. The ushers love them. Seriously. There was hugging.

At the second halftime, Flip and This Guy wandered off to the Varsity Shop, leaving J9 and I in the stands to, well, talk about them. Which we did, in between the rather pleasant getting-to-know-each-other. Anyway, Flip came wandering back wearing an ND Hockey jersey that he wasn't wearing before and looking like the king of the world. "It's got a fighting strap!" He yelled, overjoyed. He hooked it to his belt and, true enough, could not be jerseyed with any ammount of tugging.

"Roger," he yelled to Roger The Coolest Usher In The World, "I've got a jersey! With a fighting strap! I'm a real hockey fan!"

Roger The Coolest Usher In The World: "You're a putz!" Looks at the scoreboard where Nebraska's just gone up by another point. "And a jinx!"