Saturday is the big day! The first fantasy football draft of the two leagues I’m in. My Saturday draft will be the first time I am NOT at a Disney resort with a cold beer in my hand, doing my draft, while the family is enjoying the heat, lines and crowds of the Magic Kingdom. We squeezed all that fun in last weekend. At least there will still be cold beer…

It’s the end of August and I can already feel the chill in the 86 degree night air. It’s the chill that only ice can bring, and tells us Tampa Bay Lightning hockey is only two weeks away from starting. Training camp begins in two short weeks! Go Bolts! I can’t wait for the upcoming season…

Only twenty more days until the Lightning report for the beginning of training camp. Physicals on September 13.

First full practice on September 15.

Ahhh, hockey season is just around the corner.

Recently, over the last couple of months, Wednesday night has become my favorite night of the week. I look forward to it for seven days. Why? Because it’s my hockey night!

I go to an adult clinic from 9-10 pm and work on skills and scrimmage. Chris (the owner of a marketing firm), Joe (the pharmacist), Carl (also a pharmacist), myself and others, we all look forward to our Wednesday nights. It’s like being a kid again! However, ice time is down and there will not be another clinic until the first Thursday in September. That will be three weeks between sessions. I will have to see when there is a pick up session that I can go to. I need my fix…

In the mean time, I will increase my jogging to keep my lungs going!

When Wife and I left the house to go to the school board meeting, it was a beautiful evening. Sun was out, but going down. It was still about 90 degrees. No clouds. We decided it would be a nice night to take the motorcycle. Champion choice - a beautiful ride to the board meeting!

When the meeting ended, which lasted longer than I anticipated, we went to Applebee’s for dinner. After meeting some hot momthere from our school, I noticed the weather getting bad, so off we went. As soon as we got to the stop light, the monsoon came. It was my first drive in the rain! It was only six miles and even at 80 degrees, I got cold quick. What a night…a couple of firsts in one night.

WOW, Tuesday night was my first time ever! Speaking at a school board meeting that is! Wife and I attended the meeting because the board is proposing a major rezoning that would impact our kids. I never intended to speak at the meeting, but after much prompting from the Wife, and knowing I would have the cooler head, I took the podium. I must say that my speech was a little bit scattered and not as focused as I would have preferred, but it was extemperaneous. Which plays to my strong suit. Also, it recieved several rounds of applause. PLUS, after the meeting, I pulled a couple of hot soccer moms at Applebee’s that attended the meeting. Wife loved it! Yup, that’s me. Involved parent. Rockstar.

Monday I had to sit through a meeting that lasted the entire afternoon. During part of the meeting, an external customer made a presentation, and that customer had an annoying habit. Here’s a little tip for you, if you happen to be an account manager / rep / salesperson. Before you begin your presentation, spit out the big wad of chewing gum. It is annoying and does nothing to enhance your speech or presentation. I had to endure 30 boring minutes of this ass clown’s gum chewing.

On my drive to work this morning, I almost choked on my coffee when I heard a sports break on my local WDAE. The Tampa Bay Lightning have been sold! WTF??!! I drove in disbelief for a moment, and then dialed the radio station. Sure enough, my ears did not lie. Needless to say I was in a pretty foul mood when I rolled into work. Unfortunately, some people felt a little wrath, oops. But it sounds like the new ownership group is definitely keeping the team in Tampa. Hopefully, they will be willing to spend a little more on payroll. I would love to see them get a deal with Dan Boyle done before the season starts. That would build a lot of good will with the fans. And possibly extend Vincent Lecavalier…

Well, now that the Hockey Dad is back talking sports, I’ve got to share with everyone something I started doing in April. It’s been a life long dream of mine, one difficult to achieve living in Florida, but here it is. I started playing ice hockey. And what a blast! I’ve always been able to ice skate, but not hockey skate. Now I can, but as any of you who play know, the hips and core feel it the next day.

I tried some new sports creme called Freeze It, to help with my aches and pains. It does a great job on them. I applied it to my elbow (I took a hard hit there during hockey practice) and it feels like a deep heating rub, and really works fast. But one of the things I like the most about it is the way it applies. It looks like an aloe gel, so it is not all thick and goopy like some cremes, and it doesn’t smell bad like some of those other cremes and rubs either. Plus, a little bit goes a long way.

Wednesday night is my hockey night and since we are the last group on the ice for the night, we usually get about 15-20 minutes of extra ice time for free. Which is great, but it just means more hard skating. Tomorrow morning I’ll be using my Freeze It again!

Thanks, Freeze It! Can I get a deal if I get my hockey team to start buying Freeze It in bulk? Free Freeze It for life?

Tuesday night I took my son to a parent/player skate n’ shoot, which is like an open session of ice skating for hockey players. You can take your stick and pucks out onto the ice and just have fun. We had a blast. The little guy had his best skate n’ shoot night yet! We’ve gone on the last couple of Tuesday nights for the parent/player skate n’ shoot and the little guy has been losing interest about twenty minutes into it. But this time he was gung ho the whole skate! Plus, before the skate we saw his coach, who had a game of his own to play in and invited us to watch the end of it. So after out skate n’ shoot, we bought some pizza slices and coke and watched his coach play. The little gut loved it, and talked to his coach when he came off the ice.