Scrawling in my skin!

Todd Bertuzzi

“On March 8, 2004, Todd Bertuzzi sucker-punched Steve Moore, drove his face into the ice, concussed him and broke his neck. But you know that.”

Todd Bertuzzi, sadly, made a goon move and can never go back. He followed Crawford’s orders, and while that’s not justification, at least you have your reason as to “WHY”.

His actions would have been less severe had Moore taken responsibility for what he did to Naslund in the teams previous matchup, where Moore himself, had been the goon, delivering a cheap shot of his own, which seems to have been widely forgotten about, because in the end, he is the one that got hurt the most..

Don’t get me wrong, I am certainly NOT justifying the behavior, but that is still a fact. Today’s hockey players KNOW that if they throw a cheap hit into a star player, there is a “possibility” that they can be punished by the NHL’s disciplinary board for the act… It’s a pretty small chance, in reality…

What they ALSO know, is that the days of teammates being allowed to protect one another are over. It’s a shame too. Think all the way back through the history of professional NHL hockey. How many incidents like this occurred BEFORE this one that literally EVERYONE knew about? Not many… Granted, there were plenty of ugly hits and cheap shots, but only as the “Barbaric” image of the NHL started becoming an issue, and the enforcers were beginning to become “punished” for protecting their own, did this kind of behavior elevate.

NHL is trying desperately to replace the role of the enforcers with the role of the disciplinary board. It can’t be done if you want to maintain the true spirit of the sport, however, in times where media is so abundant, covering every move on the ice, making every molehill into a mountain, it’s impossible NOT to change the sport. Hockey SHOULD be physical… fighting SHOULD be allowed, and even encouraged at times (by that, I mean one on one, two grown men who make a choice to settle their differences, because THAT is the best way to keep aggression from building in the game), but hard hitting, physical, aggressive and fast paced does not have to mean “Violent”.

Violence in hockey, in this modern day, could be the means to an end of the sport… I agree that there has to be a trade off, but I just hope in the end, that trade off doesn’t ruin the game completely.

OK, I’m not one of those people that is able to sit in the bathroom, taking care of business, using the phone, or reading a book, or facebooking on the iPad… My deepest thoughts and realizations, unlike some, do not occur during the most private of moments… Having said that, for some reason, one of the two most likely places for me to have an epiphany is in the shower.

Today, I had just such an experience. I was showering, shaving my bald ass head, and thinking about the events of the past few days. I’m feeling seriously disappointed in myself and have decided to get myself back into the swing of things.

My disappointment is largely due to the fact that I have gained nearly 6 pounds back, as I’ve been very lazy and dismissive about my dieting habits. I got to an obtainable weight, and got lazy. It’s as simple as that. I always knew that the hard part wouldn’t be losing the weight, but rather keeping the weight off. I have failed at that part in the past, and I am going back on the same path recently. 6 pounds? Are you kidding me? All that hard work and Im going to throw it away? No thank you. I’m back on the diet and strict about it as of first thing this morning.

Issue number 2 is the result of a visit to the dentist yesterday. I have been lazy/too busy to make a dentist appointment every 6 months like I’m supposed to, and yesterday I was served up a big glass of “Wake Up Call” juice. To look at my teeth, one would see a pretty decent looking mouth. One crooked tooth as a result of waiting till I was almost 30 to get my wisdom teeth removed, but aside from that, not too shabby. Not as white as I’d like, but not yellow or gross… I brush daily, and pretty much always have… Looking at my teeth, one would never guess that I have EIGHT FUCKING CAVITIES…. WHAT????? DAMMIT!

That’s not OK, and it’s mostly the result of not flossing. I have always been lazy about flossing, and every dentist visit, I’m told that I have nice teeth, it looks like Ive taken good care of them, but make sure you floss more regularly… On top of 8 cavities, I am going to have to have a root canal on my back bottom right molar. To top it all off, the other root canal I had a few years ago is “deteriorating” or something and needs to be fixed before it becomes an issue. WONDERFUL… After insurance takes care of it’s part, I’m looking at almost a $4,000 bill.

Granted, the cavities are all small and unnoticeable at this time, and correcting them now would prevent a bad situation, so there is no question as to my next move… fix them, plain and simple… start flossing after every meal, and go into obsessive mode over tooth care. I have all of my teeth, and that is something I cannot say for most of my friends, especially the ones my age or older. I plan on keeping them for a long time… I want them to outlive me.

What was the epiphany? Why did I rant on for this long and not even get to my main topic? I don’t know why I rambled, probably just because I’m pissed, but this is what I realized:

It’s super easy to give 100% at one thing if you are taking away from your efforts in other places, allowing something to suffer so that other things can prosper. The toughest part of becoming an adult is being able to find ways to give 100% to everything you do. I haven’t been doing that, and know that I can…

Nick is NOT amused...

It all started when Jonathan, being his usual A-hole self during one of our little “mini-meetings” had instinctively decided to draw a mock picture of Nick. He has drawn most of us already, some of us in less flattering representations than others… and some far more frequently than others.

Since this was Nick’s first rodeo with the “Restum Dry Erase Board”, I decided (a little too late) to capture some video of the intense drawing action.

The best part of all this, in my opinion, is that we were clearly discussing work issues, resolving some requirements for some forms for the new Service Request System, as part of our “paperless Wayne county” initiative… and out of the blue, Jonathan gets up and leaves the discussion without saying a word, grabs the dry erase marker, and starts drawing a caricature of Nick… Totally random, and yet totally expected.

From the photo, you can tell how funny it all was to Nick… This was the only time, since he started working with me, that he stopped laughing and giggling for more than 30 seconds at a time…

SIGH! I was taking a shower and my wife shouts, “Honey!”….

“What?” I shout back….

“Sorry to be the bearer of bad news”, she says… “Something is leaking in the basement.”

“Crap”, I muttered, as I let out a long, winded, defeated sigh…

I toweled off, went downstairs, and in the basement bathroom, I look up above the sink at the drop ceiling tiles, and there was the evidence that gave away the sneaky leak that was occurring from upstairs bathroom, dripping down into the sink below.

Fortunately, from what I could see, most of the water is, as I said, dripping into the sink… but there is some obvious damage to the flooring underneath the tile in the bathroom. This is gonna be fun to deal with.

WTF is that? A big ass hole in the floorboards near the outer edge of the tub, where I pulled a piece of cinder block out, and there are pieces of wood that look to be “crammed” in there… ????? It looks like there is water leaking out of the pipes, as well as from the floorboards under the tub. CRAP