Hello Stingrays Fans,
Mid-November finds the Rays in a fortunate position at the top of the leader board in the South Division and entering a four-game week, which will hopefully keep the wheels spinning on the streak train. The first month of the season gave me a little time to enjoy some of the variety that Charleston has to offer away from the rink as well as a chance to get to know the new roster and divulge a few stories about the boys for your entertainment. Being another year older and hopefully wiser, I’ve yet to come across any situations of unfavorable traumatic strain with any one member or group of teammates, so some of these might be drawing first blood in a sense. Stay tuned for the backlash.
Halloween is a great time to be around the Lowcountry, with the grand assortment of options. One evening Pierre-Luc Obrien (PLO), Josh Johnson (JJ) and myself, along with our respective significant others, opted to head to Boone Hall Plantation and check out the festivities which included two haunted houses and a tractor-towing cart ride through the woods. While it would seem that a group of 20-something hockey players would remain unfazed while wandering through a labyrinth of fright, especially one aimed primarily at elementary school children and middle school girls looking to escape their parents for the evening. Not true. It’s not the gore that gets me, but rather the idiot I don’t know lurking behind every turn and coming out of nowhere and yelling loudly in my face while I feel around in the dark. I would like to say I was the only one, but in thinking of the company I was keeping, let’s just say that there’s a reason that goalies are protected by the rest of the team, JJ, and that no one has ever accused the French, PLO, of being the aggressor. We were thankful however that “Nasty” Nate Kiser had chose not to include himself in our venture, as he tends to maim first and deal with litigation later. In an unrelated story, the ‘Nasty’s’ and the Scherer’s finally got the opportunity to be taken on a Ghost Tour downtown after being shutdown by four competing agencies which weren’t trying that hard to win our business. It isn’t like we were expecting to actually see anything supernatural, but when the tour included an hour and a half of standing in front of four establishments that we’d all dined at during some point of our SC experience, we just sort of lost interest and Nasty demanded that I owed him $40. I can assure you he’ll never see a dime of that money.
Many of you are likely familiar with facebook.com or “The Book” as it’s often referred to by many, but it seems that this year’s squad is completely infatuated with the inner workings of open forum communication. I admit that it is a guilty pleasure of my own, but there are several factors by which we can identify different users and some of the boys tend to fit in these categories. There’s the “creep” factor for instance. After an evening of carousing, many of the boys had made the acquaintance of a certain female from MTV’s Real World who will remain nameless for her sake. The next day, from waking till turn in, Paul Kelly, self-proclaimed “the Kid” (no one knows why), sat on his couch with a handful of teammates and the computer glued to his lap in anxious anticipation of this young lady accepting his friend request. There was even some discussion of potential marriage plans, although to this day I’m not entirely sure that their facebook friendship is even valid; I’ve yet to see proof. There’s also an issue of status. Now I’m not huge on updating my plans online ever but some feel compelled to let you know when they’ve left to go to the bathroom. Those who are part of the book understand that it automatically enters ‘is’ after your name before your status update; this has been the heart of repeated badgering for Keith Johnson (KJ) after simply wanting to show support for his beloved Red Sox. KJ is also a regular user of the book and after leaving a status update of merely “Game 7” during the ALCS, his status bar read “Keith Johnson is Game 7”. Being that the Kid and KJ also happen to be roommates as well as habitual book users, Kell’s only retort for waiting/stalking miss Real World was that not KJ or any person for that matter could be Game 7. Since then a rule has been enacted that no teammate escape ridicule for not specifying their status bar. There’s also the status of relationships on the book, but that might require a small novella to help you get the gist of the complicated workings of being in a relationship, either way, let it be said that Tommy Maxwell is getting so soft.
As for news on the home front, I’ve always been a big pet guy; never a big cat guy, though. Mrs. Scherer managed to procure a stray while living up in the Northeast and it was allowed to make its trek down with us under the pretense that it would be an “outside” cat and never cut into the family budget. That plan was working great except for the cat is a bit on the side of temperamental, disobedient and territorial. It managed to be here about three weeks before a Jimmy Dean sausage sized abscess showed itself on her hip from a recent battle wound gone infected. A phone call and a stop in to the good people at Long Point Animal Hospital revealed a 105 temperature which was in itself a treat to measure rectally on this cat which we’ve already discussed its general demeanor. After drugging and lancing, everything was pretty much back to normal and Mrs. Scherer thanked them for their generosity before returning home with a cat that was too inebriated to stand up, had a partially shaved back and thumbnail sized holes with drainage tubes (yes plural) exiting either side. After purchasing the feline lampshade to discourage any tampering with said drainage tubes, I managed to secure the apparatus while incurring only limited damage to my hands and wrist before leaving for a game. It was then that the animal was left in the bathroom for the amount of time it takes to walk to the kitchen spigot, get a glass of water, and return to find that not only had it removed the lampshade, but the drainage tubes were no longer in place, or anywhere to be found in the bathroom for that matter. Through deductive reasoning we can assume that she somehow pulled a Houdini and digested approximately 4 ½” of plastic tubing in less than two minutes. All things considered she’s healing nicely and a big thank you to Emyle and Randy at Long Point for dealing. Sidebar: Attention- Beautiful longhaired cat with shaved back and two sizable punctures. Insubordinate, evil, and complete disregard for anything other than self. Answers to nothing, free to good home or just whatever. Inquire at next home game…
See you around the arena, till next time.
