November 4-7

Went to the rink after breakfast on Monday morning and spent about an hour at work, I emptied the bag on the Billy-Goat three times. Had lunch and walked around the mall for a while, then returned to the rink and finished the job. When I opened for the evening at 5:00 there was around round of fallen leaves to clean up but that was nothing compared to what I had dealt with earlier. When the rink was built in 1979 there were a lot of mistakes made, the biggest was putting it in a public park with one corner of it directly under a row of trees. I've been dealing with it for about forty years and looking back I sometimes wonder how I've done it and why I still do. This night marked the close of regular season play, winners were the Killbots over the Misfits via shootout, Risky Business over Dutchmaid, NTS over the Hammerheads and the Trashers over the Owls. Playoffs began on Tuesday night with the quarterfinal elimination games, these were one-and-done matchups featuring the #6 seed versus #3 and #5 versus #4. When the season started it was decided to take the top six finishers into playoffs with the top two receiving byes into the semifinals. On this night the Killbots booked their semifinal spot with an overtime win over the Owls, the Misfits claimed the other spot with a regulation-time verdict over the Trashers. Had lunch with Jenny and her mother on Wednesday, it was a pleasant day that unfortunately had little else going on. We could have used that weather on Thursday but Mother Nature didn't cooperate, in the afternoon the rain moved in and wiped out the evening's schedule at the rink. The semifinal series (NTS vs the Misfits, Risky Business vs the Killbots) begin on Monday the 11th, game #2 of each best-of-three series is on Tuesday the 12th. Take care, thanks for reading.