It was a pretty big shock to see that Dennis Savard was fired as the Blackhawk’s head coach only 4 games into the season, but by replacing him with Quenneville it is hard to see the maneuver as anything but an upgrade. I was used to watching coach Quenneville across the Hawk bench while tapping on Blues shoulders to send them in for shifts where they would most likely score against my Hawks. Times change and the Hawks seem to be a younger, stronger team then the Blues. But that’s all on paper so far, but I faith that the hawks will sneak into the playoffs this year.

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A decent photo update, finally.

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Winter is here. We do hover in the mid 30’s during the day, but it’s into the 20’s every night. The small amount of snow we have left may just melt before we say goodbye to these lovely mid day 30’s temps for good. Regardless, in a few weeks the snow will start accumulating and I’ll be playing hockey before I know it.

This Saturday I’ll be fly fishing for rainbow trout on the Kenai River. The temps will probably be in the teens, but the trout get nice and plump after feasting on salmon eggs this time of the year -- so you bundle up and hope for that enormous, once in a lifetime rainbow. Unlike salmon fishing, there is no way we’ll be taking a fish home. The trout are catch and release only so a beautiful picture will have to be enough (if we are so lucky). It’s a world class stretch of river and this is the way it will stay that way. I’m digging the Alaskan approach to the cold – ignore it and just do what you want to do. It’s infectious.

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My Vampire Counts army is coming along nicely, and should be glued and ready for the November 1^st Warhammer tournament. I’m not too accustomed to fielding 3500 point armies so I don’t expect to get very far, but any play is good. Having just finished painting some crypt ghouls, I’m feeling in fine form and can’t to play weekly and continue to paint nightly.

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I did finish Dennis Lehane’s “The Given Day” and felt a very flat emotion upon the final page. I love his prose and this book is no exception, though the great characters and situations just don’t pay off in the end. I understand Sam Raimi has purchased the rights to it, so perhaps the movie will come across stronger. The previous 2 Lehane adaptations were so strong (Mystic River and Gone, Baby, Gone) that maybe buying this property was a knee jerk reaction rather than a response to the work itself. For a 700 page book, I found it all consuming and a very fast read, which makes it even stranger to end up feeling flat at the end.