Day 1

"Day 1 of what?" you probably are asking.

Day 1 of the NHL playoffs, of course!

For the next two months, most of my evenings will be spoken for. I'll be in front of the big TV in the living room (or at my computer desk, with the little TV nearby) watching whatever transpires, as 16 teams battle for one old, rather ugly trophy. It is nothing less than the Holy Grail, as far as hockey fans are concerned.

Thanks to some far-sighted work by our local cable TV service (of which I am a director), our local area will be seeing both the broadcasts on CBC and (for the first time this spring) on Versus. Tonight, the first night of playoffs, both channels are broadcasting two games. And wouldn't you know--they both chose the same two games!

But tomorrow night, they will also be carrying two games. And this time, each is different. Plus, the Detroit Red Wings have their first game on another channel. So that's five different games, three taking place early (6 p.m. start locally) and the other two late (9 p.m.).

Regular season games usually last about 2 1/2 hours. But during the playoffs, they go to sudden-death overtime, and if no team scores, they keep on playing. And playing. And playing. The longest game I have watched personally went to four overtimes.

That means they can go way late. I try to stay up to watch the fun, but when they start a period around 1:30 a.m., that's really pushing it for me. In the past, I have tried to make it until 2; after that I let the recorder watch the rest for me.

Those of you who aren't hockey fans won't understand. But Little Miss Confused (Minnesota Wild) does. Indigo Moon Arts (Red Wings) does. Kinnigurl (Vancouver Canucks--oops, they didn't qualify--Anaheim Ducks) does. And I think Texican is allied with the Dallas Stars, though I may be mistaken.

It's a lot of fun and a real adrenaline kick. The games are usually a lot more intense than regular season games, and there are incidents and dust-ups galore. There's tension, waiting for a good chance on goal or the next heavy hit. And each year, one player--each team's goaltender--can carry his team by doing his impersonation of a brick wall.

My team is the Detroit Red Wings. They had the league's best record this year, but I'm not absolutely sure how far they will go, due to injuries late in the season and sometimes erratic play in goal. One other thing bothers me, too. Many of the teams in their conference have beefed up with muscle players who can really deliver a hit. That's not Detroit's game--they go with speed and finesse. That trumps heavy hitting--as long as the top players stay healthy.

Bottom line is, I don't know. I'm hoping for the best, and the story will be told over the next two months.

By some odd coincidence, today was the day when several hockey-related websites have amped themselves up with new content. [URL="http://www.nhl.com"]NHL.com[/URL] has new video channels and [URL="http://tsn.ca"]TSN.ca[/URL] debuted a new look today, also with video links.

We don't get TSN here (the Canadian flavor of ESPN), but CBC and Versus will be watched closely over the next few weeks.

It's a lot of fun, and believe me, I have been eagerly waiting for this. And I'll stay with it to the end, no matter what happens to the Red Wings.

****
The trip to Chicago is definitely up in the air right now. It's because of the weather.

A massive storm will be passing through the eastern U.S. late this week. Parts of the U.S. expect a major tornado outbreak. Other parts (including some of the tornado areas) will see flooding rains on top of rivers that are already over their banks.

Areas near Duluth, Minn., are facing a blizzard. DeeJay will have to make her pre-blizzard shopping trip. And Little Miss Confused will be handling all those anxious shoppers.

Us? We're just supposed to see some snow, sleet and wind up here. Relatively speaking, pretty small potatoes. But I'm the driver.

It's just too hard to call right now. Right now, the warning areas include only the northern tier of counties in northern Wisconsin. If that's really the case, maybe we could drive out of it as we go south. After that, we'll only see rain and wind.

(Sigh.) I'm afraid it's not going to be a pleasant trip. I'm really tired of winter, especially when it extends into mid April. And when I have to drive through a snowstorm ... it's something I try to avoid as much as possible.

So I just don't know right now. We have at least another 36 hours to make a decision--we don't get into the car until Friday morning.

The forecast for Friday is already talking about 3 to 5 inches, following rain, sleet and snow Thursday night. I'm crossing my fingers.

****
We got about 4 inches of wet snow overnight. Ironically, as I was walking home for lunch, I saw a robin--the first robin I've seen this spring.

He was sitting on the roof of the building across the street. He was looking anxiously at a map, and I think he was swearing,