The weekend

We had a fun and productive weekend. As is our habit, we opted for the fun part first and helped Laura (Dave's co-worker) celebrate her 30th birthday. Quite a few people gathered at Mellow Mushroom for the party. She opened gifts (from the Bouldins, courtesy of Dave, she received what every girl wants: an angle grinder), made a wish, blew out her candles and, oh yeah, announced that she's three months pregnant! Yeah for Laura and Brooks! Well, Double Yeah for Laura. Although they took forever to arrive, our calzones were yummy and we had fun talking with Jacene and Clay.
Afterwards, we went to the Knoxville Ice Bears game against the Columbus Cottonmouths and watched the Ice Bears win. The promotion that night was a hockey game between various TV, radio and print personalities here in Knoxville. I wish I had taken my camera to get pictures. Several of the players were such poor skaters they had to be helped onto and off the ice. Hee. There were only a few fights, but two of them were really spectacular.
On Sunday, we worked to get the living room put together.
The rug had developed a huge ridge. So we flattened that out and now have boards and chairs keeping pressure on the spot.

We hung up the pictures we knew we wanted in the living room.
(We still need drapes, but are having philosophical differences as to the color.)Any ideas for the space over the fireplace? We need a placeholder until we get our flat panel TV monitor. :)Dave worked hard to replace the outlets with GFCI outlets. Now we just have to figure out why the two on either side of the window don't work! (update: I'm a goob. The outlets do work.)

Even though we might be re-arranging the setup soon, we felt pretty good about our accomplishments this weekend! We even finished work in time to watch the Steelers win the Super Bowl.

We won, but where were the fights?

We went to the Knoxville Ice Bears game with our friends Steve and Gianna and Josh and his girlfriend. It was a very fast-paced game in the first period with the Ice Bears scoring 7 goals and the Pee Dee Cyclones (I know, I don't understand the name either) scoring once.
The Ice Bears won with a final score of 9 to 3, but I still felt gypped. Eleven bucks a seat, crappy view and we only got to see TWO fights! Even the two fights felt staged. Very karate movie like. I don't really understand the rules to hockey at all, so I go for the corny promotions and the fights!

Friday night was Hospital Bed Race night which wasn't too bad. No one fell off the hospital bed, though.

My favorite part is the Puck Throw. This happens at every game (or at least the two I've attended). The arena sells squishy orange pucks with a space to write your name and phone number for a dollar apiece. Between the second and third periods, the ice girls set out black dots on the ice and everyone chucks the pucks aiming for the dots. Various prizes are won depending on which dot your puck lands on.

The best part comes after the throwing and prize awarding. The promoters managed to convince the kids of Knoxville that they can have the best time of all running around on the ice and picking up the pucks. There are no prizes for the person who snags the most pucks, just the sheer joy of being on the ice and a job well done, I suppose. Genius.