The rarely updated Blog

I have finally created my new blog site - so don't go here anymore.

New site: http://www.joeldixon.com/

Enjoy!

I would say I'm a cat person, mainly because of our childhood cat Coco (short for Coconut). It was only a matter of time before Bell and I got us some purty cats of our own. We've had them for about 6 months now (they've already lasted longer than some of our poor fish) and I've finally gotten the photo's off Bell's camera. Allow me to formally introduce them:

Crosby

Yes, we have named another pet after my favourite ice hockey player (and recently named youngest ever NHL captain) Sidney Crosby. (To be fair - the fish's name was "Crosby Scores" which is a lot different from plain old Crosby). Crosby is probably the runt of his litter (even thought he eats like some kind of pig-cat) - but while he is tiny, his snow white fur is incredibly soft and his eyes are a brilliant blue. Crosby loves human interaction, and will waltz up to Belinda and I, meow, then lie down on his back awaiting pats. Crosby is an attention seeker, and because Belinda can give him attention most days Crosby would probably be Belinda's cat.

Oscar

Belinda wanted a dignified name for our cats, but was really stuck on Oscar. I was happy with the name too, but mainly because of the Sesame Street connection (though my number one choice for a Sesame Street name was Frazzle). Oscar must be one of the biggest cats from his litter, he can always be heard plodding up the hallway. Oscar loves playing underneath things such as boxes and sheets and has a silver streak in his fur as well as a goatie (a centimeter or so long tuff of hair under his chin). Oscar isn't as openly affectionate as Crosby, but starts his loud purrs when you look at him, and will always come and lie right next to me before going bed to get some pattings. Oscar has bonded better to me and would probably be my cat.

Both cats are Ragdolls, a placid and docile breed that tend to go floppy when held upsidedown (hence the name). They're very cute, and have made me look forward to going home that little bit more. Belinda has taken heaps of photos of course:


The first photo taken - I think this is Crosby (the only way I could tell the difference at this age was Oscar's goatie which is not visible here)


Pretty sure this is Oscar - goatie is barely visible


Crosby loved this little tunnell in their scratching post (he can't fit in there anymore)


They both loved little pieces of rope or string - just like the cartoons!


Even a brief iron didn't straighten Crosby's fur


The boys wrestle a fair bit - and used to love fighting on the scratching post


Chillin'


We have small chairs with mesh bottoms that they would use to fight between


Crosby Clause


Oscar was not amused


No, this is not the reason we lost all of our fishies


They love each other


Oscar's dirty little secret


Yes?


Oscar is our very own Bonsai Kitten


They hardly ever sleep together like this anymore - so Belinda took a quick photo

It may be a bit girly, but our kittens are cool!

Well, our honeymoon was finishing up, and Belinda and I were both looking forward to getting home. A quick recap shows we got a fair bit done in our 19 days:

• 33,000 Kilometers of air travel


• More than 18 hours of train travel


• Spent at least 5 hours sitting in a taxi cab


• Took 891 photos (probably 691 of them of animals)


• Far, far too much money spent on memorabilia (then again, it was not really enough)


• 15 short hours watching ice hockey games


• 3 different kinds of cheese


• Visited 1 very special pond

The morning of day 19 was spent in a taxi driving towards the Pittsburgh airport. We squeezed each other's hands and left a winter wonderland (*sniff*).

A friend of mine had warned me that a fair amount of time was required when transferring planes at Los Angeles Airport, so I think we allowed around 3 hours between flights. It wasn't enough. We arrived in LAX after a 5 hour trip from the East Coast, so we were a little tired and grumpy to begin with. We discovered the gate we needed to get to (and the bus we needed to catch to get there) and made our way immediately. When we eventually got through the first check-in gate as saw "the line".

There was hundreds of people in "the line", and our flight had just started being announced. Both very worried that we'd be stuck in LA for the rest of our marriage, we were lucky enough to find a very helpful airport staff that allowed us to cut "the line". A very small drama that probably happens all the time, but we were amazingly relieved when we were boarding on our plane in time!

When we eventually sat down in our Qantas plane, we immediately heard Crocodile Dundee. I guess we must have adjusted to the American's accents, as half the passengers sounded like they were putting on a killer Shannon Noll impressions. When the captain came over the PA system and went through a few of the formalities I finally started to experience how others countries' populous hear our accent. It was really funny, and took a while for Bell and I to get used to. Thankfully, we had a while on hand (during our 14 hour flight).

Even though we came back to Australia tired, hungry for real food and heavily in debt (and the situation hasn't really changed - although I'm not too hungry at the moment), we both agreed that it was definitely worth it.

We're currently planning another possible US trip, around the time of the next NHL playoffs. Until then - I have no Travel Blogs to complete (w00t).

I thought I provide an ending montage of the famous people we met on our honeymoon.


The happy couple


One of the first celebrities I had met, Blue was really nice in person too


More of a celebrity spotting with Super Grover, as he flew straight past us


He actually said to me: "Yes you deserve to die! And I hope you burn in hell!". Pretty harsh since I was just offering him a drink


A man that's really dragging the most out of a good situation, for as long as he can.


Surprisingly the foot odor wasn't that terrible


Down in front!


Four score and seven facelifts ago ...

It starts

Firstly, let me take you back. The year was 1994. I was about to start high school, and was probably thinking about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or playing Altered Beast on our Sega Mega Drive. My older brother brought home a few games for the aforementioned Mega Drive with a pooled resource of our Christmas / birthday money. One of them, I do not remember and obviously didn't have a huge impact on my life. The second was Sonic the Hedgehog II, a game that I was very excited about. I had played it a fair bit of Sonic at the local video game store, and it did take up a fair amount of my time during that year. The third game was seen as a little odd to me, as Gavin was more of a basketball fan back then, and I didn't think much of it at the time. That third game was NHL 94.


Notice how small the Electronic Arts branding is


I thought so


Oops, sorry about that


Lemieux to Jagr and he scores to tie it at one


He beat him like a rented mule, Mario Lemieux with the hat-trick.


Gretzky with three pitiful goals gets the third star

With all said and done, I think that that video game has probably had the most effect on my life, more than any other video game. Before NHL 94 I had never heard much about the sport of ice hockey, and only ice skated once when I was around 8 years old. Once I got sick of Sonic and Mr. Prowler I moved on to the NHL game. Initially I played as a few of the teams, and one of my first "favourites" were the Winnipeg Jets (I will buy their jersey one day) mostly due to Teemu Selanne, a gifted scorer. I never really settled on a team until I re-met an old primary school friend who's dad was a huge Penguins fan. The transition was simple for me, as Pittsburgh was also a team I would often play as, with both Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr lighting it up, almost at will.

From then on, my love for the Pittsburgh Penguins only increased. When my parents installed pay TV I was finally able to watch some of the games in full, and allowed my friends and I to watch Mario Lemieux's first comeback against the Toronto Maple Leafs at 3 am one December morning (it also introduced me to Mat Hoffman and the X Games, which kindled my love of rollerblading). Becoming a savvy interweb user helped a lot, as I was able to track my favourite team instantly and gain a lot of Penguin information quicker than I had previously encountered.

So that's why I like the Pittsburgh Penguins. Belinda, my lovely wife, on the other hand - chose her favourite NHL team (the Colorado Avalanche) because she likes the colour blue, and the Avs (with some blue on their jerseys) had recently won a Stanley Cup.

I provide this background information, so that you can understand why I deeply wished that the mighty Pens would crush my new wife's favourite team in their showdown match. This was the schedule for Day 18.

We might have done something during Day 18 that was non-hockey related. Perhaps we had a nice meal or saw some more of the town of Pittsburgh. I'm not 100% sure however, as I just thought about my last chance to see the Penguins win a regular season game. As always - dot point goodness:

• I noticed during my research into this fateful game that the Colorado Avalanche had played a game the night before this one. I looked a little deeper and saw that the Avs had only played back-to-back three times prior in this season. The other three times resulted in a loss in the second game. Hesitant confidence was gained!


• With Marc-Andre Fleury in net with his golden pads of goodness, I was feeling a little more confident about this match. That little nipper is just awesome to watch in goals.


• I noticed that once the game started, the Penguins were playing with energy that I had yet to see. They were running around and banging bodies - it was looking like the momentum was all theirs. Maxime Talbot (one of my favourites) was one of the main proponent of the physical play, and it was fun to watch


• Even more fun was watching the Penguins score the first goal of the game - the crowd was electric. I let myself get excited and started thinking about a win.


• It only took 6 minutes for me to crash down into depression as the Avalanche tied the score at 1. To the Penguins credit, they kept the pressure up and went ahead again with only a minute to go in the 1st period.


• After the Pens traded a goal a piece in the 2nd frame, I was still a little edgy being only 1 goal ahead to start the third period. My main man (after Crosby, Lemieux, Fleury etc) Max Talbot made me jump from my chair midway through the 3rd period with a well deserved insurance goal to put the Penguins up 4-2. It was great seeing Talbot's tough physical play rewarded with a goal in an important game.


• Colorado scored another goal to make it 4-3, but the Penguins held on and I saw my first ever Pittsburgh victory. It was sweet!

The dance begins!


Belinda got to see a few Colorado goals ...


... but I got to see an extra Pittsburgh goal


We winned!

Now, although the Penguin's record against the Av's was 0-9-1 in the last 10 games (we won 0, lost 9 and tied 1), the new record is 1-0-0 in the last 1 game! To Bell's credit, she did take the loss much better than I would have. Though I do admit I was a little worried about the plane ride home!

At the start of the 17th day overseas, I was starting to feel a little over travelling. The air travel, poor meals (involving a whole lot of cheese), lack of sleep and general running around was starting to catch up with Bell and I. I was also starting to get a little bit homesick, though this feeling was lessened by the impending show-down between the Mighty Penguins and the lowly Avalanches.

Due to a previous planning issue Day 17 was also a schedule packed with "bumming around". We went into town, and stumbled upon a toy store. It seemed like a proper, old fashioned, not-too-commercial toy store, and was a welcome change from some of the other, more commercialised sights.

The toy store was 3 levels of fun which was quite a feat, as unlike space crazy New York, the toy store had three decent sized levels. The items that interested Bell and I the most was the Christmas decorations.

Being that we were coming close to Christmas at this time, it was understandable that some holiday decorations would be on display. But these weren't just decorations, these were to-scale model representations of various Christmas themes. There were heaps of different varieties, many different ways to enjoy the holiday period with collectibles (here's some examples). The most we would ever see in Australia is a modest nativity scene model, but I must admit we snapped up some pretty cool items.


My parents have something that look just like this, I used to love pulling off the moss


The M&M Christmas themed decorations we bought in Pittsburgh


Where the magic happens (I'll resist my regular pants joke)


This one is just awesome, and note the winter M&M tree in the background


Such great detail - Yellow obviously needs to be persuaded by Red

As Day 17 was another light-on day for content, I'll post some other pictures of M&M toys Bell and I bought.


Red's quite the ladies man...


... but seems equally enthused when his partner is a scared, peanut-filled yellow male. Fair enough I guess


Yellow spins Red right 'round baby (etc)

I had originally made a huge plan for our honeymoon, the planes we would catch, hotels we would stay at, hockey games we would watch, tours we would take and the various tourist locations we would gander upon. I created it in HTML and hosted it on my website so I could make changes from work in the weeks leading up to the trip. After I added all of the staples (planes, games and tours etc that we had booked), I would add a few ideas of what we could do on our days without plans. The trips to the Bronx Zoo and the Disney Store were planned in my handy Honeymoon Itinerary before actually booking tickets. For each day we had free I would research the various things available and note down a few options. Unfortunately work got really busy leading up to the honeymoon, so I had only finished planning up to Washington. This all meant that Day 16 was essentially un-planned - and we didn't do much at all really.

But at the tail end of a very busy and exciting honeymoon, both Bell and I were ready for a bit of a change in pace. We were also a little sick of carrying a camera around everywhere we went - so this post will be lacking in photos. We've agreed that we'll have to buy Belinda a new, small camera for the next trip we take.

After waking up very late in the morning (or perhaps the afternoon) we had lunch at a very nice Chinese restaurant. It's a pity it wasn't closer to our house - because I'm sure Bell and I would eat there quite frequently if it were. Other than the very nice meal, we pretty much did nothing other than watch a hockey game - the Penguins vs Minnesota Wild. Speaking of which, here's the summary:

• Marc-Andre Fleury wasn't playing in net for this game, which was my first disappointment. This was very quickly followed up by another as the Wild scored the first goal just over a minute into the game. It certainly kept the crowd quiet.


• Crosby was held without a point in the game, but was definitely the best player on the ice. He seemed to be the only one trying.


• I was very upset by the way the Penguins were playing, they had few shots and were down 3-0 at the end of the second. But the behaviour of the other Penguins fans was unbelievably disgusting. I just cannot imagine a situation that would cause me to boo my own home team. Some of the fans were yelling out disparaging comments about our own players, and people were leaving the game from early in the third period (when Minnesota went up 4-0). I have trouble believing that any of the people booing their own team are true Pens fans. They really don't deserve to live so close!


• Even though the game was going terribly for the Pens (we were down 5-0) I was amazed with the crowd's response towards the end of the game (in a good way). There had been a minor scuffle earlier on in the game - but nothing I would call a real fight. With less than 5 minutes to go in the game, Brooks Orpik and Kyle Wanvig participated in the first NHL hockey fight that I had witnessed. The audience made the most noise I had ever heard as the Penguins defender clearly won the fight. Sure, most of the negative nellys had gone by this point, but the crowd just went wild. I guess it was a small victory considering, but it did put a slightly positive note at the end of the game.

After the loss we went back to our hotel room a little dejected, but it did raise an interesting point. I had yet to see my favourite team win a game of hockey, and they only had one chance remaining. Against my (now) wife's favourite hockey team. Belinda had hoped that the Penguins would have won the Minnesota game so that I could get the victory out of the way, and lessen the blow of a loss against Colorado. Whatever happened - we would have a long time to talk about it, as our flight home was scheduled for the next day!

I've been following an NHL Ice Hockey team for quite a while now (don't know if I've mentioned it before). Lately there has been some uncertainty about the future of my Pittsburgh Penguins, I'll save you the incredible amount of ups and downs the Pens fans have gone through in the last 7 years. See this hilarious site for extra information.

Anyway - all's well that ends well - the Penguins are apparently going to stay in the great city of Pittsburgh. My plan to spend 8 months in Pittsburgh watching the Pens win the Stanley Cup in the 2008 / 2009 season continue!

The Penguins got the deal done!


The above comic came from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review - link