January 4-5

Saturday morning with Jenny for our weekend lunch date, in the afternoon we were back on the road north for game #2 with Worcester. This game was almost a carbon copy of Friday's game which for the Royals was unfortunate. The visitors scored twice in the first and added another early in the second for a 3-0 lead (sound familiar?). Goals late in the period by Matthew Strome and Steven Swavely got the Royals back in it but in the third Worcester scored twice (the last into an empty net) to win it 5-2. Kirill Ustemenko was the Royals' goalie of record as the club falls to 12-4-1 at home and 18-12-4 overall. This was the second consecutive year we played at home on January 4 and only the fourth time in the nineteen years the club has been in Reading, as they did in 2019 the organization Got Me. I was walking off the ice after the first period ended when Mike Keller (our excellent in-arena host) told the crowd it was my birthday, he then led the fans in singing that song you usually associate with such occasions. I knew something was going to happen but I didn't know how or when, it's nice that they acknowledged it but it was somewhat embarrassing. In 2021 it falls on a Monday which is a rare night for hockey so the streak of home games on that date should end (unless they schedule one just to Get Me again). JPM played at home on Saturday night in my absence and defeated Oxford in resounding fashion 69-26. I don't know if we're that good or if our opponent is that bad, maybe it's a little bit of both. The boys stand at 6-4 (as we were after ten games in 2019), they get back into league play on Tuesday the 7th which figures to be a busy day all the way around. The Royals are hosting a first-ever Education Day game starting at 10:30am (that's in the morning), by the time it's over and I'm back in town it will time to get on the bus at JPM for the ride to Millersville for the basketball game. I did junkets like that quite often in my younger years but these days they are less frequent, all I know is I'll be to bed a little earlier than usual on Monday night. Take care, thanks for reading.