My TSC hockey team, the Red Menace, won the division championships this past summer. However, many of our strongest players moved up a division, leaving us in what you might call a rebuilding year. As of yesterday, we were under .500 for the season with a record of 3-4. Yet somehow, we managed to defeat the first place Marauders last night by a score of 6-2. I had a sweet one-timer goal in front of the net off a beautiful pass from Napoleon Flamenco. It was an unusually fun game - that team is notoriously chippy, and one of their "18 year old" players is a kid who looks 15, wears Jr. Kings pants, and has been playing in the league for three seasons (with his dad), insisting every year that he is, in fact, 18. Despite that, only one ref and no scorekeepers showing up, it was a fun night.


On the recommendation of a friend, I watched Paula Poundstone's new special on Bravo yesterday. I hadn't seen Paula do anything for a long time, probably due to her very public battle with alcoholism and rehab. I found her newest show to be as entertaining as always, and you will probably enjoy it, as well. You'll find it particularly funny if you have a) been to a 12 step meeting, or b) tend to lean toward the left, politically. She had an especially funny bit about Intelligent Design being taught in schools in lieu of Evolution science.

On the topic of evolution, I read an interesting article in National Geographic this week. The cover article was about the Dikika baby, a new fossil unearthed in Ethiopia's Rift Valley, very close to the area where 3.2 million year old "Lucy" was uncovered in 1974. Until now, Lucy had been the most complete skeleton of Australopithecus afarensis, a species that Homo Sapiens eventually evolved from. The Australopithecines were an early species somewhere between the ancestor we share with modern apes and modern man. They walked upright, but shared many characteristics with apes, including the shape of their skull.

At any rate, the Dikika baby is another A. Afarensis but older - 3.3 million years - and is the skeleton of what appears to have been a 3 year old child. It is now the most complete skeletal remains we have from that time period, inlcuding a nearly complete torso. The cover of the magazine depicts the hypothetical look of this 3 year old child. For the whole article, go to National Geographic.

For the song of the day, I believe I'll go straight to the iPod and see what's currently playing. I should be embarassed to say it, but I'm not - it's "Bang Your Head (Mental Health)" by Quiet Riot. This song must have come out in 1983. The reason I remember it is this - I had been watching the song on MTV at the end of summer and it rocked my socks off. In the fall of '83, I was starting at a new school as a 7th grader - Lewis Junior High. There were students there from my old elementary school, along with a few other schools. On one of the first days of school, in "Block" (a 2 period class consisting of social studies and geography), I saw a boy wearing a Quiet Riot button on his t-shirt. I thought, "How cool!" No one else really knew who they were yet. I said, jokinly, "Hey, that's a cool button. Can I have it?" The boy thought for a moment, shrugged, and said, "Sure." To my astonishment, he took the button off, and handed it to me. That boy was Jason LeMaster, and 23 years later, we are still good friends. Sadly, I don't know whatever happened to the button.