Guess what tomorrow is?

It's the start of Predators' training camp!!!!

So what have the Predators done during the offseason. Let's see...

1. Made a huge (literally & figuratively) free agent signing in center Jason Arnott.=)
2. Traded Scott Walker:( for another big center Josef Vasicek.
3. Resigned Marek Zidlicky to a 4 year deal.
4. Also resigned Martin Erat, Scotty Upshall, Scott Hartnell, Jordin Tootoo, Chris Mason, Jerred Smithson, Vernon Fiddler, and David Legwand.
5. Said good-bye to the team captain Greg Johnson:( as well as Mark Eaton, Adam Hall (sorry Michelle), Yanic Perreault, Danny Markov, Mike Sillinger, and Brendan Witt.
6. Out of the blue, signed JP Dumont after Buffalo walked away from arbitration.
7. Tomas Vokoun was cleared to play & signed the largest contract in Predators (short) history.
8. David Legwand finally had the ACL surgery he needed... after playing the last part of last season with it torn. Rehab looks to be going well.

And now they just have to have the following questions answered.

1. Can they get Dan Hamhuis re-signed? please, please, please
2. Who will be the next team captain?
3. Will all the new guys mesh well with the old guys?
4. Will the number of forwards & potential rookie phenom Alexander Radulov force the team to trade away someone?
5. How will the extremely young but very talented defense play?

Oh I'm excited! Preseason in the NHL is much different than the NFL. They'll be playing their first game this Sunday. The first game that I get to see is a week from Saturday.

Rock Star: Supernova

Finale tonight. Looks like I was a little mistaken on the final 3. Somehow Toby snuck in there over Magni (who had become my favorite over the last few weeks.. oh well). But in the end it was Lukas. The strange thing was that tonight his vocals were probably the weakest of the 4 that performed. But once he was named the winner & was singing with the band... he was a very good fit. Now I have to decide if I want to spend my money on a Supernova album/download.

9/11

I keep reading articles & seeing news reports that tell us "to always remember". I have to ask, how can I ever forget? There are very few days in my life that are seared into my brain in their entirety. Most days I do good to remember a moment out of a day. But I can remember where I was, who I talked to, & what I did from the moment I arrived at work & heard the news until I finally fell asleep in my tears at 3 AM. And I'm sure I'm not the only one.

So what I'll ask is not to always remember but to always pray. Pray for the families of these people to find comfort & solace. Pray for the military, firefighters, and police to be vigilant & safe. Pray for the leaders of the world to be wise & understanding. Pray for our enemies to have a change of heart. And then if you just have no idea what to pray about next, just remember Romans 8:26...

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.

Old 'Blood & Guts'

I know it's not Memorial Day or anything, but I read an article in the paper this morning about a World War II veteran that made me cry. Go here to read it yourself.

Vacation: July 19th

It's amazing how much you can do before noon if you try. We knew we had to be checked out of our hotel room by 12, which was good timing because that was just about the time we needed to head to the airport. Somehow we were able to have a nice breakfast, take a trip to Prazsky Hrad (Prague Castle), go back by the old town square, buy some souvenirs, get lost, and still make it back to the hotel with enough time to get the souvenirs packed and check out before noon. So here's some of the photos I took that day. The view from our hotel room. A cute narrow little park. I loved the brick design on the sidewalk.
The castle is on top of a nice little hill (which is always the most logical place to build a castle). But that meant we had to get up that hill. Even though Cindy had given us directions on how to get to the top of the hill on the trams, we decided to walk up the old castle steps. At that point in the morning it wasn't too hot. Plus the view we had of the city was wonderful. This was right at the entrance to the castle. England's not the only place that have guards stationed outside the gates. Apparently they have a changing of the guard ceremonies too but we didn't have a chance to see it. Yes that's a sunflower growing out of the wall of the castle. It's currently the wallpaper on my computer.
And a view of the city from the castle.
And another view.
A view of the bridges over the Vltava.
Inside the castle is an area called Zlata Ulicka (Golden Lane). This was the one place in Prague that I knew I absolutely had to see. These are small homes built into the wall of the castle in the 16th century. If you look at the top of the homes, you can see the grey castle wall. They are now used as little tourist shops. I bought some wonderful soap in one of them.
My second most favorite building in all of Prague. And here's Trina (in the shadows) taking pictures.
A view down Golden Lane.
And now on to the rest of the castle. I wish I could remember what this building was...
Look.. it's flying buttresses ! Any way, Trina & I were excited to see them. And the required bit of construction. Katedrala sv. Vita (St Vitus's Cathedral) is breathtaking.
Looking straight up at the cathedral.
Beautiful mosaics at an entrance to the cathedral.
Another view of the cathedral. On my next visit, I have to go inside!
Another pretty building in the castle. Unfortunately, I don't know the name of this one either. I guess that's what happens when you are on a very tight schedule.
Anther pretty building.
Ok, I was very sad to see later that I had not taken any photos of Lady Luck in Prague (I guess that's one more reason to go back). So instead, I'm showing a photo of Trina walking on the cobblestone sidewalk somewhere in or around the castle(& just a little bit of the cobblestone road at the upper right).

So all of that was done before noon. After lunch we made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare. Our flight to London Gatewick was uneventful. Customs between EU countries was very easy. So easy that if you have nothing to declare then you don't even have to talk to human being. We found our way to the train to take us into the city. Once at Victoria station we stumbled around until we found the Underground.

A short time later, we found our hotel, the Ambassadors in Bloomsbury. And wouldn't you know it... the hotel was undergoing a renovation! Luckily, the room had already been renovated and was very nice with good AC... and thanks to AAA, the cost was pretty reasonable for a hotel in London. After we got showers (since we happened to arrive in London on one of the hottest days in London history & were drenched in sweat), we headed out to explore the Bloomsbury neighborhood. And it truly was hot... if I remember correctly it was in the high 90s, which is hot even for this southern girl.

UPDATE: Trina reminded me that we did actually have to talk to human while going through customs. It was just so brief that I had forgotten about it. For some reason Trina had a harder time talking to security so she probably has a better memory of that. I was only remembering the part after whe talked to the man & had to decide which line to enter depending on where we had been. That was the part where we didn't have to talk to anyone.

Vacation: July 18th Part 2

After we left the old town square, we left in search of Karluv Most (Charles Bridge). Thank goodness for Trina. She has a very good sense of direction. Look close at the signs in the windows. Yes, it is the Museum of Torture. Cindy had told us about this place. It's right beside the Charles Bridge and there's a youth hostel in the museum. She said she actually stayed there one night because it was right beside the Charles Bridge & that's her favorite place in Prague. She didn't recommend it to us. I don't think she had the best experience there.
And this is the Charles Bridge at dusk. I'm sorry my photo doesn't begin to show it's beauty. Go here for a few better photos. It's around 600 years old & has 30 statues. There are lots of musicians & artists on the bridge. And at least at dusk in the summer there are a lot of gnats too.
A view of Prazsky Hrad (Prague Castle) from the Charles Bridge. More on the Castle on the 19th's summary.
A couple of the statues on the bridge. The one in the foreground is called The Lorraine Cross.
Another statue.
And another statue.
And another statue.
And yet one more statue.
A view of the crowd on the bridge. In the distant (in the middle of the photo) is the Old Town Bridge Tower.
This is a view of Wenceslas Square late at night. The dome in the distance is the National Museum. Just imagine this square filled with people all shaking their keys. And thus helped to bring about a peaceful end of communism. As a side note, if you ever want to see a movie that takes place during this time, rent Kolya. You do have to be willing to read subtitles but it's a good movie (oh there a few scenes that aren't for kids).

Vacation: July 18th Part 1

This day was bittersweet. Just after lunch time we had to say good-bye to Cindy, Jirka, & Jakub. Because of the difficulties we had flying to Paris, we missed out on the day of exploring Prague. Cindy said we couldn't come to the Czech Republic & not see Prague... even if that meant leaving them a day earlier than planned. So Cindy found us a hotel on the internet & Jirka called & booked a room for us at the The Hotel Beranek. And by the way, if you're ever in Prague, I'd recommend the hotel. It was recently remodeled, has air conditioning, is close to a subway station, & just a few subway stops away from all the tourist areas. Here's Cindy, Jirka, & Jakub. And if you've been wondering, Jirka is pronounced more like "year-ka" not "jerk-a" & Jakub like "yeah-coo-b" not "jay-cub". Or at least they weren't correcting me from saying it like that. Actually Jakub was called Cuba ("coo-ba") most of the time.Here's the bus station in Prague & the yellow bus was the one we were on. I was very impressed with the bus company that Cindy recommended. We got a movie & a couple of episodes of Friends. Unfortunately we spent most of the trip trying to unlock the lock on Trina's backpack. She had a combination lock & apparently what she thought she set as the combination was not the combination. Finally I was able to muscled the lock enough to slip it off. Getting to the hotel from the bus station was very easy, we just went around the corner, bought a 24hour pass for the subway & took the subway 3 stops (didn't even have to change trains). Once we got checked in, we took off for Staromestske Namesti (the old town square). The subways in Prague were very easy to use... even with the language barriers. We actually took the subway to Vaclavske Namesti (Wenceslas Square - a very important place in the end of communism) & walked over to the old town square. We were walking down a narrow street from Wenceslas Square... just following all the other tourist when suddenly the street opened up to this scene... the old town square. Breathtaking! The Astronomical Clock in the square. There's quite a show at the top of the hour. We actually had a very late dinner at an outdoor cafe in front of this around 10pm. Very cool.
This was my favorite building of the entire trip. I somehow took about a dozen pictures of it. I later learned that it's called Dum u Minuty ("the house at the minutes").
You can't really tell, but that's me in the pink shirt. The Astronomical Clock in on the left, The Church of Our Lady Before Tyn is behind me, and the cafe we ate at is behind all the people on the right.
Jan Hus Memorial. Hus was apparently burned at the stake for calling for Church reform - of course all I really knew at the time was "oh pretty statue must take photo." It stands right in the middle of the square. The little red things are bicycle taxis. Maybe I'll try one on my next trip to Prague. And I do plan to take another trip. There was so much in this city that I didn't have a chance to see.
Another view of the square. The Jan Hus Memorial is at the right. And pretty buildings all around. I would've loved to just spent a day exploring this area. But unfortunately there was much more to see.
And here's Trina taking a photo. If I had to guess it was probably the Jan Huss Memorial.

I have so many pictures that I'm dividing this day into 2 parts... not to mention the photos I have of Prague for the 19th. Stay tuned for photos of Karluv Most & Prazsky Hrad.

Chickidee Randomness

To get a few more posts on here, I've decided to post my "random thoughts of the day". I hope it will be at least a semi-regular occurrence.

• Does anyone else confuse Jack White & Jack Black? I'm constantly using the wrong name. So just to help. Jack White: strange pale musician. Jack Black: strange funny actor. Maybe I'd do better at keeping them straight if they both weren't so strange.

• The coolest video I've seen recently... OK Go's "Here It Goes Again". The Gnarls Barkley video for "Crazy" is the second coolest video. I was a bit disappointed the other night when I surfed by MTV's Music Video Awards & saw that OK Go was recreating the video... and therefore completely lip-synching. I hate lip-synching!

UT Football

Let me just say, I refused to drink the orange kool-aid this off season. Why get your hopes up only to be dashed again by another terrible season? But I must admit Tennessee looked really good today... especially the defense. I'm not ready to say the season's going to be wonderful just yet. Cal may have just been extremely over-rated. Now we'll just have to wait a couple of weeks for the next big test.

TV ramblings

Wow, 20/20 is having a really happy fun show tonight. What's the topic, you ask? Oh only various ways that the world may end. You know, super volcanos, black holes... why am I watching this?

I can't believe it. ABC is moving one of my favorite shows - Grey's Anatomy to the exact same day & time as one of my other favorite shows - CSI. Do these people just want to torture me? Then again, I'll be spending a lot of my Thursday nights over the next few months down at the GEC watching hockey. So no need to worry.

Rock Star: Supernova. Well I was wrong. They sent Ryan home tonight... the guy that I had decided had displaced one of the other singers in the top 3. It's down to the final 5 & I really don't know who they're going to send home next. By this point in the INXS show last summer I had already picked out the final 2... & ended up being correct. I just can't decide with these guys.

(I love the blogger spell check... who would ever want to replace volcanos with folksongs?)

It's Football Time in Tennessee!

I've often heard that here in Tennessee the 4 seasons of the year should be called winter, spring, summer, & football. I however believe there are only 3 seasons: football season, post football season, and pre football season.

Football season begins with the first football game played of the season... high school, college, or pro. During football season nothing else exists. Local TV sports coverage begins & ends with football. ESPN is either showing a game, analyzing last weeks games, or breaking down next weeks games. The sports section of the newspaper consists of 11 pages of football with everything else squeezed onto the one remaining page. And unless something earthshattering happens, the big photo above the fold on the front page of the entire paper on Sunday morning will be a shot of the hero or goat of the UT vs. whoever game.

Post football season begins 10 seconds after the end of the last game of the season. This is a time of navel gazing. It's a time to decide what went right & what went wrong. The fans call into the sports talk radio shows to whine & complain about the coaches & players. Or on that rare instance, there's a lot of celebration. Occasionally you can find someone willing to talk about basketball & hockey during this time of year. Only 5 pages are devoted to football in the sports section with all the other sports sharing 3 pages (& notice the sports section often shrinks during this time of the year).

Pre football season begins on signing day for college football & on draft day for the NFL (I'm a little more uncertain when it begins for high school). This is the time all the fans stop whining about the last season & start dreaming about the next. It's the time of year that everyone's drinking the "kool aid". Everyone's going to go undefeated because their team signed or drafted the one missing piece to make their team the champion.

Well it's that time... football season. High school started a couple of weeks ago. College starts next weekend & then the NFL the following weekend. Let's hope it's better than last year. But if it's not (& I have my doubts especially with the Titans), I still have pre season hockey starting in about a month.

Vacation: July 17th

On Monday Cindy, Jirka, Jakub, Trina, & I hopped onto one of the city trams & traveled into the city center of Brno. They got us as far as the tourist information center when Jakub decided that he had had enough of all the traveling & site seeing that he had been doing the past few days. So after pointing out a few points of interest on the map, Trina & I were left to discover the city center all alone. Don't worry we were very brave big girls... and Trina's great sense of direction was very helpful. Cindy made sure to point us toward a yummy pizza place for lunch. When I asked the waiter if he spoke English, he asked me if I spoke German. So I ended up using the little German I remember along with pointing at the menu to place our order. After seeing some wonderful sites, we safely made it back to Cindy's where Jirka finally got to pull out his new toy to grill some chicken for dinner.

A view down a street in Brno.

Mahen Theatre. This was our starting point into the city center. I can't believe I didn't get a picture of the trams that took us into town. I just read that this was the first theater in Europe to use Edison's light bulbs.

Namesti Svobody (Freedom Square). This is the main city square... and wouldn't you know it... there's construction going on. It's just one more reason why I know I have to visit Cindy again.

Another photo of the city square. I noticed that the buildings in the Czech Republic seemed to be very old or very modern. Notice the buildings on each side of the white building.

Petrov (Cathedral of St. Peter & Paul). This was an absolutely beautiful cathedral. We went inside & just sat for a few minutes. Once again we weren't allowed to take photos of the interior but I will say it was stunning & awe inspiring.

Even Lady Luck loved the Cathedral

An up close photo above the main entrance into the cathedral.

Surprise, that's Trina taking more pictures of the cathedral. Here camera's battery died shortly after this & she took over taking pictures with my camera.

The pink building is the Capuchin church & crypt. If we had been feeling a bit more morbid, we could have gone in to see the bones.

I thought this was funny. I just can't escape country music?!

The entrance to the Old Town Hall. The tourist information center is found here along with....

The famous Brno Dragon and wheel. I realize that the dragon looks a lot like an alligator... go here for the story of the Dragon. And here for the story of the wheel. They are both entertaining

And I had to share this one. This little boy was just too adorable. But it just shows you that kids are the same all around the world... when you start to let them dress themselves you never know what will happen.

For the science geeks out there, I forgot to mention that on Sunday we drove by the actual gardens in Brno where Gregor Mendel did his genetic experiments with pea pods. You can go here to see some photos. This is a great site for general info of Brno... and there's a web cam too.