Hockey season

Hockey season has begun.  In the past week, I've played in no less than 5 hockey games.  Sunday, I stopped a very hard slapshot just inside my right thigh just above the knee where there's no pad, so I have a very impressive scabby abrasion surrounded by an equally impressive purple bruise about the size of my hand.  I have a pretty high tolerance for pain, but that one made my eyes water.  To add insult to injury, we lost that game.  Tuesday night, I stopped a wrist shot with my soleus, so I have a bruise there. . . same leg.  Tonight, I played through the pain, but I had to use tape on my ankles where the skates tend to rub the skin raw.  I winced when I removed the tape, because hair was also removed.  Despite all the pain, I have had a LOT of fun and made a bunch of new friends.  In the adult league, I'm playing for the Whiteman Bombers again, and the makeup of the team is somewhat different.  Some of the good players are back from Iraq, and there are some new faces who have skills.  We have a 1-1 record, but due to some scheduling mishap we had a bye week followed by a double header right out of the gate.  We won the first game, and lost the second game because A) it's the beginning of the season and most of the team hadn't skated since the Spring, and B) we were pretty tired following a hard fought first game while the other team had fresh legs.

So far, I like my Project Management class.  It's pretty intuitive to me, after having seen successful (and unsuccessful) projects at Time Warner Cable.  The real lessons I learned were from the crash and burn projects that got hobbled together and then reworked from scratch, or projects that were DOA and never got off the ground, or the projects that only survived to completion because of the technical ability of the people in the field doing whatever it took to make it work despite a half-baked idea and really crappy documentation.  With that experience, I can clearly tell who in my class have glassy eyes and believe the project management hype, and the one's who work for dysfunctional companies where projects are salvaged by a few smart people.  That said, I'm learning the tricks of the trade with regard to keeping a project on track, because the professor clearly recognizes the difference between textbook project management and reality.