Sometimes sports are pretty scary, though.  Richard Zednik throat was cut by a teammate’s skate during a game this weekend (article).  He’s going to be okay but it’s scary to from rooting on a team to praying someone is able to make it off the ice before they bleed to death.

Scary stuff.  Really scary.

A few things of note this week – I saw an ad for the John Adams mini-series on HBO this spring. Mom and Dad aren’t big fans of HBO (and how can I really complain about that) but I’m hoping I can talk them into finding somebody to tape it or maybe getting it for a month so I can see it. I’m a history freak and the movie is based on the book so I really want to see it. I have two months to work on Mom and Dad, I’ll have to be extra good. It’s 100 below zero outside so I can’t get into too much trouble.

All the frenzy about the Super Bowl makes me glad I’m not a football fan. At least, not enough of a fan to dissect every single angle for two weeks before the game. To me, football season is over. People make the Super Bowl out to be almost a holiday which I don’t like – it makes holidays less special if you have them all the time. And honestly, if I was a holiday like Christmas or Thanksgiving I would be offended to be lumped in with crappy pseudo-holiday like the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl is just an excuse for people to argue, drink too much and eat Little Smokies in BBQ sauce. Now, I like Little Smokies but not so much that I want to deal with the other two. I know lots of churches and youth groups organize Super Bowl parties but I don’t know if they do that around here.

Speaking of…we’re still searching for a church. Mom and Dad think it’s really important to have one with a good youth group and the rest of us agree with that. So we continue to look.

It helps when the home team wins and wins big. The Arena they play in is crap but the game was fun, the food was good and I found out one of my very own Buffalo Sabres Thomas Vanek played for this team a few years ago.

There’s this guy who stands up at a dead point in the game and dances around while they play “Cotton-Eyed Joe” on the PA system. He evidently does this every game and even my mom laughed and clapped along.

So now I’m officially hooked on Stampede hockey.

Sioux Falls Stampede hockey homepage

My family just moved to South Dakota from the East Coast. The town we live in is small so there aren’t many chances to get out there and meet new people – other than church. My sister and I have been homeschooled since we were little kids so we can’t lean on the new kid in school bit. So I made a deal with the folks – they would let me set up a web site if I didn’t give too much personal information out. Now when they say too much I’m not sure what they mean but I’m thinking posting addresses and Social Security numbers wouldn’t be a good idea. So there you go.

Anyway, I tried to sign up for a Facebook page the other day. It’s the big thing these days as many of you might know. The dude who invented it was on TV the other night. Most of the people who work for him look like they need a good shower and a shave. There was actually this guy riding a unicycle through the office. If he wiped out that would be really, really painful.

To get back to my subject… I signed up for a Facebook page the other day but I stupidly put the wrong birthdate on my account. I didn’t want anybody to think I was this 26-year-old guy so I wrote to their customer service people and asked them to change the date. They wrote back and said they changed it but they disabled my account because I didn’t sign up under a school when I registered. I told them I couldn’t because I was homeschooled. The gal wrote back and said they didn’t have a homeschool group and I couldn’t have an account.

Sure, it’s a stupid rule. If there was a group kids out there who would like to get to meet people online more, I would have to say homeschoolers like me are it. But since we aren’t affiliated with a school district we can’t have an account.

I went on Google yesterday and found bunches of people who worked around the rules by signing up under a friend’s school or lied about their age or something like that. I wouldn’t do that because that’s lying – I don’t lie and I shouldn’t have to lie to get a dumb Facebook page. So I don’t have a Facebook page – and I don’t think it’s a huge deal but it’s wrong that I have to lie in order to participate in a stupid web site.

I’m not bummed out or anything but our fam is slowly learning that moving here in the dead of winter isn’t exactly the best way to meet people.  We are searching for a church right now too, hopefully we find one we like soon.   We have faith that things will work out and mom thinks our attitude will change once our extremities thaw out.

On another note…

For all of you who didn’t already know, I am a big hockey fan – the Buffalo Sabres are my favorite team.  It was a lot easier being a Sabres fan last season than it is this season (that happens when a big chunk of your offense signs with the NY Rangers in the off-season) but that outdoor game on New Year’s Day was massively awesome.

So to help us out of our doldrums, my mom and dad thought it would be fun to go see our local minor league hockey team play – so we’re going to a game on Sunday night in Sioux Falls. I hope it’s a good game, hockey isn’t very big around here.

Des Moines mother walks the walk

Why do I feel the need to blog? Lots of reasons.

1. I just moved to my new home in South Dakota. I struck a deal with mom and dad that I wouldn’t reveal much personal info on my web stuff other than that so the gobs of people from South Dakota who flock to the web to talk to people probably won’t know me or where I’m from. Because I just moved here and because I’m not telling.

2. That wasn’t very nice. I’m sorry.

3. My friends back east want to stay in touch with me and I figured a blog would be a great way to keep them in the loop. Maybe they’ll want to stop by once in a while and argue with me or agree with me. More arguing than agreeing but maybe they’ll be cooler about not picking at me since they won’t see me as much.

4. I think that people want to hear what I have to say.

5. Well, I care what I have to say.

So thanks for stopping and I hope you visit sometimes.