ICE, ICE baby

From multiple sources:

Helpful Spanish phrases to use in case you ever encounter ICE

1. La Migra = ICE
2. La Migra Está Aquí = ICE is here
3. Córre = Run!
4. No digas nada y pida un abogado =

Don't say anything and ask for a lawyer

according to several lawyers I follow it is apparently ok to yell the above it is not against the law

In search of ...

Holy shitballs, the last three days have been the longest years of my life. It's hard not to get caught up in the constant rage, pain and disappointment. For my own sanity, I deleted Facebook and Instagram from my phone. I most likely will also delete Threads - most of who I follow there is on BlueSky - but I really liked the community vibe there.  BlueSky, the way I have it curated now, is a lot of what feels like doomscrolling. That being said, those are all Meta and I'd like to get out from under that. My Italian school is on FB so I can't get completely away from that and also, there are some people with whom I keep in touch that are on no other platform; this is a conundrum as it would take a lot more effort to to keep up with them.  Am I ready to do that, let it go, or check the platform on a more structured schedule.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I know a lot of you are struggling as well.  Whatever you decide to do to find the balance between informed and sane, I get it. I'm hopeful I'll be able to tolerate more and be more involved, but right now - boy howdy do I want to hide. I can't stand seeing his face or hearing his voice. I can't go to the smaller rec center I like because they have TVs and I just can't. No MSM either; not since Nov 5.  Here's who I'm following - Aaron Parnas, Bryan Tyler Cohen, Katie Phang, Joyce White Vance, Seth Abramson, Aaron Rupar, Stonekettle Station, Ellizabeth Cronise McLaughlin, Democracy Docket, MeidasTouch Network and the newly formed The Contrarian (Jen Rubin formerly from WashPo and Norm Eisen,  developed 1st impeachment of FOTUS and senior fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings Institute as well as an expert on law, ethics, and anti-corruption.).

Ok, I need to go study Italian and burn off some rage pumping some iron. The iron is small, but the rage is big, so lots of sets today.

Stay hopeful my friends.

PS - I do fun stuff too, like make cookies or pack my bag for our upcoming trip to see what fits and what needs to go.  Yes, I consider it fun, yes, I know I'm in the minority.  We'll have to talk about my stupid brain some other time.

Tenere botta

There's a phrase in Italian, "tenere botta". The Local Italy explains it well. "Are you going through a rough patch and just hanging in there hoping for better times to come?"  I don't know why I mention this today...

Women's Hockey comes to Denver

Welcome to the PWHL - Professional Women's Hockey League.  The PWHL decided to do a takeover tour. They sent the Minnesota Frost (the inaugural season's Walter Cup winner) and the Montreal Victorie to stop in several cities in Canada and the US to help expand the league. BTW, my shirt is from Mahogany Mommies (they have lots of cool activism shirts) and reads, 'Women are no longer meant to sit still & look pretty.  They are meant to lead empires.' I got several compliments from a variety of individuals. I also liked the shirts that read, 'everyone watches women's sports' along with the league team shirts.

I've been a hockey fan for a long time.  I enjoyed the AHL, IHL, NHL and now the PWHL. Denver is a hockey town and we are proud to call Colorado Avalanche the home team. (Funny story, I'm a Pittsburgh Penguins fan but also root for the Avs, but that's a story for another day.) We have hockey as well as basketball games in Ball Arena.  This was previously called the Pepsi Center or 'The Can'; most of us still call it that. We still call the NFL stadium Mile High, even tho it was torn down and another was built and it's been through several name changes.  I don't think I'll be changing calling the Gulf of Mexico something else anytime soon.  Anywhore, here's a great picture of what 14,081 fans - mostly women, a lot of children and some men - looks like in our arena.

We had great seats

Obligatory 'ussie'

Skate Around (pregrame)

The new scoreboard shows the team logos in all their technicolor glory. 

SOG stands for Shots on Goal.

<insert announcer voice> 

The starting lineups for your Minnesota Frost and

Montreal Victoire

The lineup with the addition of the 'kid captains'. The youth hockey

players stand with the 'professional' players

for the national anthem.  Well, anthems in this case as

we got to hear Oh Canada as well as

the Star Spangled Banner.

At the start of each period - there are 3 in hockey, each 20 min

the lights are turned off and the arena is illuminated with

cell phone flashlights.  It's really beautiful.

This is my favorite thing about hockey - NHL and PWHL as well as peewee

and every other league.

After the game, there's a handshake line.

The game is everything you want it to be.  Fun, fast paced and full of action. If you think the women aren't playing as hard as the men and don't get into fights, you'd be wrong. The puck flies down the ice and the women are lightening fast.  Checks - one player uses their body weight against another player, usually while moving and the other has the puck - to push them out of the way, steal the puck or take them out of the current play WITHOUT pushing them into the boards - a 2 min penalty or 4 min if there's blood. When the announcer gave the total number of attendees, it was accompanied by thunderous applause and when it was announced that it was the largest crowd for a PWHL game in the US, chants of "we want a team!" were deafening.

I LOVED IT.  I do want a women's team in Denver and lots of other places as well.  Women's sports rock and I want in on the action.

Time keeps on slippin' into the future

Then....

Anne mentioned the other day we should revive our blog.  Oh, right!, we used to have a blog.  With much noodling and digital digging, we found our original blog.  It encompassed 2008/2009 and then, as those with ADHD do, we forget about it. It's fun (mostly) to read those posts. It also reinforces that time has moved on regardless and some of those we wrote about aren't on this mortal coil any longer. JR found a job in NY, so we spent 5 years working in the City and living in Westchester County.  It was the best of times and the worst of times. Kat met the love of her life and got married. Two of our nieces died by suicide and we threw ourselves into advocacy. A few of my family succumbed to a family degenerative neurological disease, so again, we threw ourselves into advocacy.  Advocacy has been a wonderful journey and I can't state how happy it makes me to do the work.  In 2017 we returned to Denver and our condo. JR got a job working with former colleagues and had a blast. I opened my own company and worked with some great clients. We loved, lost, mourned and persevered.

Now....

It's 2024, December, and holy crap things are different, and older.  JR and I were fortunate enough to retire this year. We are now 71 and 62 respectively. Since 2008 we've gotten closer with our family of choice, our daughter and her husband now live in Denver, we took our first ever overseas trip and fell in love with Italy - hard. We've taken cruises, road trips, and land trips. We've traveled just the two of us, four of us, six, eight and ten of us. We did a cruise/land to Alaska and saw Denali, sled dogs and glaciers as well as a rain forest.  We've been to Southampton, London, Richmond on the Green, Paris, Normandy, Belgium, Dublin, Edinburgh, Sterling, Glasgow, Kotor, Aix in Provence, Rome, Venice, Florence, Pescara, Cinque Terra, Dubrovnik, Athens, Mykonos, Barcelona, Girona, Naples, Amsterdam, Orkney, and saw history unfold and met some great people along the way. We took road trips to National Parks, National Monuments, places of historical significance and saw wonders beyond our imagination. We visited almost every state; Hawaii remains.

Future....

2024 was a year of transition.  Learning how to 'be retired'.  We made plans and were able to distill those down and execute them.  We're learning Italian and will be spending time there in 2025.  2024 saw one of the most contentious presidential elections in history and we found out some hard truths about our country. The next 4 years - and beyond - will be tough for a lot of people. I'm still sitting with the repercussions and finding my footing. 

We hope the last 15 years were ones of growth, peace and happiness for you. We hope that 2025 will be everything  you want it to be and more.  Stick around for our adventures.

Stacey and JR