rien ne pèse tant
que un secret.

Because I took a four hour nap today... nothing happened.

Oh, except I might have set a record for more times having to go to the bathroom. My arm doesn't hurt as much now - just the crook of my elbow twinges and aches when I bend my arm too fast. Because of the lack of anything today, I'm going to recount training camp.

First of all... waking up at five thirty to shower at Shawnee's place went a lot better than it goes when I'm at my house... and this after going to bed at 2:30am. Also, having steamy dreams at your friends house can lead to very confusing waking upage. She can fit up to six people in her shower... comfortably and I totally broke my record: 12 minutes showered and dressed. We picked up Kriszelle and hauled butt to the United Center where we took advantage of the free official parking... and by the way, it was seven when we arrived there. The LifeSource people were barely getting there so we hung out with this really nice lady that told us we were officially the first three people to show up.

I know most things never go according to schedule but... this was a bit obnoxious.

(Umm.... confession! Since I was spending the night at Shawnee's, I was sort of at her mercy for whatever was going down with her and the boys. Food at Chili's and met up with Shawnee at the shadiest Korean karaoke bar that ever graced North Park. It was the birthday of a friend of the boy's and since I'm the newest member for 'group' (not really, I've been there for a while, just never met this particular guy) it was about time I went there. They know my just-Mike's policy but... its impossible to say no to five guys that wont shut up about how its a festive occasion and you must do shots of Soldier. Mango flavored, just for me. Sigh. 


They were delicious. 


I only had three! ... and a birthday J-Bomb. ANYWAY. )

Umm... right. They finally allowed us in to the second level where I had to fill out a questionnaire after confirming my address, birthdate, name and age basically stating that my blood is clean of all nasty vermin. For some reason they asked which continent I was born in. Hmm. And they asked if I was or had been pregnant like four times. After I filled that out, this awesome lady gave us our tickets. We were expecting like... section 600, way up in the clouds seats. No. Level 100, row three. Those are plastered-up-against-the-glass seats.  Got my finger pricked to check iron content (nice and high), blood pressure (awesomely normal), cholesterol level (awesomely low) and my pulse. I forget what it was.

The actual procedure made me nervous after she poked around my right arm with her fingertips trying to find my vein and said, "Wow, you have deep veins." She set me up with the ball to squeeze and taped the lines to my arm.

She finally found it on my left arm and I got a good glimpse at the needle before shutting my eyes. It didn't hurt as much actually but the one thing I did notice that kinda weirded me out was when my eyes were closed, I knew my blood was coming out when the lines warmed up almost instantly. I was freakish. Then I looked down and saw the lines were red and ugh.

It only lasted ten minutes and I wasn't allowed to have my hat or my jersey on during. Tommy Hawk, the mascot, came around started goofing off and I offered him my crackers. What happened after is a 'you had to be there' story.

Anyway, some guy was hanging out and he told us that if you walked out that one door, you could walk onto the 200 level seats and that they had the Stanley Cup out on center ice.

We decided that the seats on 200 level were amazing and we should stay there after peeking at the lower level and seeing how crowded it was down there.

So, after Shawnee donated we scooted out of there, got some sweet shots of the Q, the white board and the team doing drills... and of course Toews doing his thing on the ice. It was kinda interesting, not as intense as I thought it was going to be. To be the defending champs I figured these guys had to be training hard... but I guess they're getting used to playing with each other.

I think I might have screamed, "Turn around!" out loud thinking it was in my head during this.