Back-to-back Puck

My kids have had a double-dose of Puck the last two days.

Thursday, they got to meet Chef Wolfgang Puck as part of the celebration of Sue's fifth birthday party. My oldest even got a one-on-one cookie decorating lesson. He was very excited to get to meet someone famous. I guess I have to work on my Q-rating some more. :)

It was fun to see them on TV, even though it was so early in the morning. The CBS affiliate in Chicago did their morning news traffic segments live from the museum. Their traffic reporter, Susan Carlson, would interview somebody or do something with the kids during each segment. The teachers said she was great with the kids and the kids were pretty well behaved. You never know what you're going to get from kids, especially sleep-deprived ones.

They also got to do a dance to a song that Al Jarreau sang. "Dance" might be stretching things a bit. It was more like hand motions, but what can you teach kids in a short time.

Here is a link to Susan Carlson's page on the CBS 2 Chicago website, which has links to a few of the video segments from the museum. You can see my kids best in the one where Al Jarreau sings his new song, but the Wolfgang Puck one is kind of funny, even though my kids aren't in it.

Last night, I took the kids to see playoff hockey. Many of you may not be familiar with hockey. It's a sport where people skate around an ice rink and try to shoot a small rubber biscuit called a "puck" into a net. They used to play this sport at a high-professional level in this country, but they don't anymore.

They do still have lower professional levels, and the Chicago Wolves are one of the better teams in the American Hockey League. Last night, they scored four third-period goals to eliminate the Cincinnati Sitting Ducks 4-1. They'll face the Manitoba Moose in the next round.

My oldest hasn't typically had the patience to sit through an entire sporting event, but he really seemed to enjoy the game last night. My middle son likes sports and will sit with me and watch them on TV, so watching it live was fun for him. They gave out those thundersticks, and those entertained my oldest when the game wasn't.

I get to one or two Wolves games each year, and this was one of the smaller crowds I've seen at one of their games. They had just over 5,000 people there, and I don't think I've been to a game where the crowd wasn't at least 10,000. The Sox and Orioles played the same night, but that hasn't typically been a problem before. In fact, there have been nights where the Wolves outdrew the Sox when they played at the same time. I wonder if the NHL kamikaze mission has hurt attendance at the lower levels.

There was a lot of penalties in this game too. Usually, in a playoff hockey game, refs forget to put the peas in their whistles, so you hardly have any penalties called. In this game, though, there were 20 penalties called, all minors and each team had eight power plays.

Cincinnati was so bad on the power play most of the night that you often forgot which team had the man-advantage. The Wolves were better in the sense that they usually got a lot of shots, but didn't connect until early in the third period.

While I always enjoy going to these games (in fact, I'd rather go to a Wolves game than an Hawks game), they never fail to remind me that there is a reason why these guys are in the minors.