AARs, Crime, Rain, and Ducks!

Laurie is back from the MilBlog conference in Dee See and has a narrative and pictures. Good stuff, there! It seems like all I’ve been doing this morning is reading After Action Reports from the conference. Lex has a good narrative, too, and lotsa links to others writing their own reports, as well. Partying went on well into the night this past Friday! Dang! Wish I woulda been there!

Damn. I committed an “eco-crime.” And what would that be, you ask? I have three children…one more than is good for the planet. How uncaring of me!

HAVING large families should be frowned upon as an environmental misdemeanour in the same way as frequent long-haul flights, driving a 4x4 car and failing to reuse plastic bags, according to a report to be published tomorrow by a green think tank.

The paper by the Optimum Population Trust (OPT) will say that if couples had two children instead of three they could cut their family’s carbon dioxide output by the equivalent of 620 return flights a year between London and New York.

John Guillebaud, co-chairman of OPT and emeritus professor of family planning at University College London, said: “The effect on the planet of having one child less is an order of magnitude greater than all these other things we might do, such as switching off lights. An extra child is the equivalent of a lot of flights across the planet.

“The greatest thing anyone in Britain could do to help the future of the planet would be to have one less child.”

In his latest comments the academic says that when couples are planning a family they should be encouraged to think about the environmental consequences. “The decision to have children should be seen as a very big one and one that should take the environment into account,” he added.

Guillebaud says that, as a general guideline, couples should produce no more than two offspring.

So. There you have it. I wonder if there’s a statute of limitations? Coz I committed my crime in the way-back (well, two out of three, anyway). Back then we were worrying about an impending Ice Age, not so much about global warming climate change. So I think I should get a dispensation. But then there are those plastic bags…

Watching the WX Channel with one eye while I take care of my Daily Reads with the other…it’s been raining—hard—all morning. I was awakened this morning by the sound of rain on my roof, which, as I’ve mentioned many times in the past, I dearly love. I drifted in and out of sleep for about an hour once I awoke since the rain was steady and not of the pounding variety. Bad move, that. I should have gotten up immediately…because then I could have prevented the soggy mess that is my bathroom. Yep…that pesky roof vent in the bathroom was wide-open. Again. No real damage, mind you. Just terribly, terribly soaked. Everything.

So anyway…that line of intense rain (the bright red bits) to the east of us is apparently causing quite a bit of havoc. No tornadoes (Thank God!), but 55 mph wind gusts. And VERY heavy rain. We’re under a flash-flood watch, and I’ll bet P-Town is awash. As usual. It’s a great day for ducks.

Speaking of Ducks…

The Ducks last faced the Red Wings in the first round of the 2003 playoffs. At the time, Detroit was the defending Stanley Cup champs and there was talk of dynasty in Hockeytown. But that talk was indefinitely put on hold after the Ducks, under then-coach Mike Babcock, swept the Red Wings. Babcock, of course, is now behind the Detroit bench and has helped the Wings beyond the second round for the first time since the team's last Cup win in 2002.

To get here, the Wings had to dispose of a San Jose team many picked to win the Cup. They did it without defenseman Mathieu Schneider, who broke his wrist early in Game 5 on Saturday, and did it with relative ease. It's a testament to the sand this Red Wings team possesses.

This series will feature three of the finest defensemen of their generation in Scott Niedermayer and Chris Pronger of Anaheim and Detroit's Nicklas Lidstrom. Then, there's Chris Chelios, who was one of the finest defensemen of the last generation, but refuses to acknowledge time and continues to be effective at age 45.

Both teams possess great goaltending in Hasek and Jean-Sebastien Giguere, and both are deep up front. In other words, this one should be a dandy.

Last night’s game was a dandy…the Wings were “large and in charge” from the moment the puck dropped at the beginning of the first period right up until the horn sounded at the end of the third. And Ladies and Gentlemen…what you see in the third scene in the video below is one of the finest defensive plays I’ve ever seen in hockey…bar none. Simply brilliant.

I’ll defer to Mitch Albom’s description of what happened in the vid above:

Here's what happened: The Sharks' Mike Grier chased a loose puck down the ice, with Lidstrom following in hot pursuit. The crowd rose. Goalie Dominik Hasek came out and swept the puck behind him, but Grier got to it and swooped around from behind the net, which was now as empty as a beggar's pocket.

And then Lidstrom. I don't know how he does it. Somehow he stretched that reedy body and surged his stick across the mouth of the goal a shaved instant before Grier released the puck. It hit Nick's stick and frittered away, and the Sharks' optimism frittered away with it.

"So you play goalie, too?" Lidstrom was asked in the locker room afterward.

"I try to help out a little," he said.

“I try to help out a little.” The defensive play of the century and it’s “helping out a little?” But that’s hockey players for you: supremely modest. Oh, and by the way…the rest of Albom’s column is very good today.

So now it’s the Ducks. Most all of the hockey writers are probably going to call this series for Anaheim…but haven’t we heard that one before, and recently, at that? San Jose was too big, too fast, too young for Detroit, right? And now the Sharks are lining up tee times while the Wings prepare for the Conference Final. To steal a football quote from Berman: “They could…go…all…the…WAY!!”

Let us pray.

Today’s Pic: One lonely iris blooming in the flower bed outside the door of El Casa Móvil De Pennington. That flower bed used to be a riot of color in late summer…until the “gardeners” came through last Fall and ripped out ALL of the perennials that previously graced my premises. Those idiots didn’t have the slightest idea about what they were doing…taking “weeding” to an entirely new, uninformed, and undeserved level. So now I’ll get weeds, and only weeds, later this year. Twits.

Yesterday. P-Town.

Update: Replaced the hockey video (originally from TheNewsRoom) with a highlight video I found on YouTube. I don't know about the rest of y'all, but I couldn't get the previous video to play consistently; the YouTube vid works fine. Lidstrom's play is now the third scene in this four-minute video...plus you get to see both Detroit goals, several saves by Hasek, and at least one brilliant save by Nabokov.