Ryan Morlok’s Blog

First game of the adult rec hockey league last night. The “Individuals” (a name that doesn’t really reflect the team aspect of play) came out shooting last night winning 7-0 over the opposition. Ok, I’ll grant you that they were a team of girls (should have seen that one coming with a name like “Hot Tamales”), but after playing against Sarah and her friends when I go home to Minnesota, I realize that I’m bad enough at hockey that sex doesn’t matter — a win’s a win. The Hot Tamales actually had a couple guys on their team, but they were mostly composed of the UIUC women’s club team — they even wore their same jerseys. Next week we’re up against the formatable Ice Dogs who, ironically, are actually a roller hockey team that moved to ice for this league.

Just got back from my first hockey practice for the league I’m playing in this spring. League might be a bit of an overstatement — it’s 3 games + playoffs, though for $20, that’s still not too bad. Team seems like a perfect fit. I’m right around the average skill level, though the rest of the league could be better. I’m on the team composed of individuals who didn’t have a team of their own, so perhaps the more serious players are on other teams.

Got to try out my new skates for the first time. I have no idea what they are (they’re Mission something or others). I’m sure Steve can tell you their entire life story, from the basis for all the technologies in them to the quality of the deal I received at Hockey Giant, but honestly, I just don’t care.* I seem to be able to hold my outer right edge a little better, which is nice, and my feet aren’t killing me when I get off the ice, which is great.

Regardless, it just feels great to be back on the ice.

*haha, I know I can make jabs at Steve because he doesn’t read this blog — to which Shoe will now promptly point him to give rebuttal.

Amazingly, plugging the Comcast router into a non-UPS outlet didn’t work. They will be replacing the router sometime tomorrow. There may be minor outages throughout the day.

In other news, Hill won this evening 5-1 against Roseville, moving them one step closer to the state tourney. GO HILL!

I might as well take some of the information that’s been buried deep in the comments to some of my other posts and bring them out in the open for all 3 of my readers to see.

Hill is taking on taking on Roseville this evening at the Colosseum. As Shoe pointed out, Holy Angels (the top team in the state) has already been eliminated in section play, so if Hill can squeeze their way into the State Tourney, they may well have a chance to go all the way. Keep up-to-date on their status with Shanley’s Hockey Website. His site also features the full brackets for section and state tournament play.

Well, I’m back from Madison. We ended up taking a tour of the Wisconsin capital (found out it was several feet taller than the national capital, and the largest state capital by square footage). The rest of the afternoon was spent hanging out in a microbrewery (one of the benefits of being in Wisconsin — Minnesota and Illinois just don’t have as many of those kind of places).

We weren’t able to get tickets to the Gopher game, scalpers were asking $50 per ticket, so we ended up watching the game in a local bar (gotta love the no-smoking rules, makes my life much more enjoyable). Great game, gophers managed to sweep the badgers, securing a 3-way tie for first in the WCHA conference. The yearly Madison trip is always a party.

Well, I’m now exporing the world of real time blogging. The people who would actually read this blog are sitting right in front of me. We’re trying to decide what to do today before the Gopher hockey game this evening (Gophs wont last night BTW 5-4, enduring an impressive 3 goal rally from the Badgers). The two big choices on the table are a New Glarus brewing company tour (self-guided) and going to House on The Rock. New Glarus is somewhat suspect because the self-guided nature of the tour likely lends itself to no free samples. House on the rock has received some resentment because Shoe thinks it’s “weird”. Shanley’s pushing the capital tour, we were in that part of town last year on this trip (though we didn’t actually see the capital). Who knows where this day of craziness will lead us…

Gophers completed the sweep of Colorado College 3-2 this afternoon. I didn’t get to see any of the game (heard some of it), but from what I was able to gather, they played rather poorly early in the game. Hopefully the evening will continue in a positive hockey fashion as Hill-Murray goes head-to-head with Holy Angels tonight at Aldrich. More to come on that game this evening.

In response to Shoes incessant pestering me about “pulling a shoe” (creating a blog and then not posting to it) I apologize. I’ve been insanely busy this last week and will likely continue to be for the next few months. School has just started, but that really has little bearing on my schedule. I’ve begun doing some consulting work with the company for which my wife works (Kim Labs). This is putting an extra 20-30 hours a week on top of my schedule, and has me literally working on things from that, to ACM, to TAing from about 9 a.m. to 2 a.m. (the long way around). Hopefully things will lighten up a bit as we get settled into the semester. I’m actually planning on scaling back my class load to accommodate. I don’t really need the classes, and they are just getting in the way.

In hockey related news, last weekend turned into a mixed outcome. North Dakota managed to win the Saturday night game 4-2. Gophers outplayed them most of the game, but oh well. Hill Murray continues its absolute domination of the Classic suburban Conference, and remains lossless. They’ve outscored their opponents 34-0 in the last 3 games, while out shooting them 138-19. The real test comes this Saturday at 8:00 p.m. when they play first in state Holy Angels. That will be a great game to see. If Minnesota runs through your blood, you’ll be at Aldrich on Saturday night. Unfortunately for me, I’m stuck in Illinois.

Finally, I’ve secured my thesis advisor and have gotten aproval to work on my CS 105 gradebook project. At the rate things are going, I very well may not get started on it until March, but I’ve already told my advisor that I’m not expecting to complete it until the end of summer. Such is life.

Do you like classless hockey? Do you try to counterfeit money using your personal computer? Do you prefer to employ the use of overage Canadians? If so, you were sadly disappointed this evening as the Gophers smoked North Dakota 6-1.