Hockey fan (M), meet blogger (T)

I think I'm still high on happy from this weekend. It was epic. Not in the "party down while shedding leaves" kind of way, but in the "sleeping is the best thing in the world and oh my goodness we just got an extra hour of it for FREE" kind of way. Mellow magic, you might say.

It all started Friday, with my first-ever Caps game. So you know, attending hockey games (much less sort-of knowing what's going on and cheering) is fairly new for me. When I left NC to go off to college in the brrrrrcold Northeast, my home state didn't yet have a professional hockey team. I don't think I'd ever even seen the sport played on television. I went to a few games in college not so much because I was interested, but because our pal Alan got so riled up yelling at the refs from the stands that we basically went in order to laugh at him. But you know, the Beanpot does have a lot of charm, and it's tough not to be at least a little intrigued by the icy rivalries.

Flash-forward to 2006 when I met an ex-goalie and came to realize that our life together would be more fun if I developed at least a passing interest in the sport. Not to mention, by falling for a North Carolinian, T had to surmount his personal hatred of the state that stole his beloved Hartford Whalers, so I felt I owed it to him. There's more: T's former teammate is now married to his sister and playing in Europe, so there really is no escaping hockey in this family. I paid my dues doing things like attending Men's League games in suburban Dallas at 10 pm on a Monday, so these days, watching the Caps is a total treat.

So Hockey Is Fun, what of it? Well, this entire preface is actually a long-winded excuse to brag about T's new blog 50 Mission Caps. See, there was me, Mate of Hockey Guy. And there was T, Mate of Blogger. And in a stunning display of "maybe we like each other a little too much," Girl now enjoys hockey while Guy takes up blogging ... genius!



I introduced T's blog to you by joking that it was a blog perfectly suited to Virgo hockey goalies, which is to say, probably not well-suited to many of you. But I couldn't be prouder that my favorite guy's analytical think pieces about Caps goaltending are getting linked to throughout the Caps and hockey blogosphere. There is an audience for this guy of mine, and it thrills me to no end. (Though you wouldn't know it by comments... links are the currency in his blogging world, it turns out.) We actually have a J&G dinner riding on possible blogging outcomes of the Caps season, so I'm quite invested in his success. I mean seriously, over brunch yesterday I caught myself asking him informed hockey questions about team goalie management. INSANITY.

With any luck, we'll one day become that annoying Blogging Couple who attends blogging conferences together, ignores our children, and burns dinner because we're too busy live-tweeting election returns and the Oscars (me) or the stock market and the NHL draft (him). Who needs real jobs when we could just sit at home and expound instead, right? Heck, maybe we'll just morph into the same person. Pretty soon you'll be asking him for a new cleanser recommendation (Bliss Clog Dissolving Cleansing Milk, even though the product name is incorrectly un-hyphenated) and me what the current ranking of the house college hockey team is (#3 in the country).

By the way, all future Obnoxious Couples Tweeting will be done with this phone, which Blogger is demanding that I display vertically for some reason:

That's right ...  a near-dead Blackberry combined with my previously explained need for keys pushed me toward a Droid 2 this weekend. It only took months of hand-wringing and a 30-minute bout of paralysis inside the store. Maybe I'll even issue a hockey tweet or two on it soon. Time can play funny tricks on a person, after all.