Hahaha!! Amazing.

I'm going to start wearing only high cut running shorts to work from now on.

This is my inspiration.

As a dude, you know you're a coffee nerd when the thing you want to know the most is how good the coffee really is...

Hyvää Suomi!

So the Hockey World Championships just ended, and usually i'm keeping better track of how Finland is doing during the tournament, but my beloved Kari Lehtonen (goalie for the Atlanta Thrashers) was not in goal for Finland, so i haven't been on top of things as much. Kari is up for signing a new contract this summer, and was nervous about hurting himself. It's understandable (he has a history of groin injuries), but if he had played, perhaps it could have been the edge that could have gotten them the gold, but bronze isn't too shabby.

This bronze is especially sweet (possibly sweeter than gold) because of how they won it. The got the bronze beating Sweden 4-0. SWEDEN! 4-0! Amazing. I'll have to check with Saila, but i have a feeling Finland is on cloud nine right now. (Finland and Sweden have a bit of a rivalry...)

Canada and Russia played for the gold, and Russia prevailed because of another beloved Atlanta Thrasher, Ilya Kovalchuk. Russia was down 3-2 halfway through the second period when Dany Heatley (a not so beloved former Thrasher) made it 4-2 for Canada. Alexei Tereshchenko made it 4-3 in the middle of the third, but it was Kovy who tied it up with 5 minutes left in the period sending the game into overtime, then Kovy again in overtime with an amazing powerplay slapshot which gave Russia the gold. Goodtimes indeed.

The other sport i'm into these days, football (soccer), isn't such a happy story for Finland. They barely missed qualifying for Euro 2008, which is sad, but then again, England didn't qualify either..... which is way worse.

Back from Minneapolis

Back in A-town! Feels nice. As fun/awesome/great experience SCAA/USBC was, it was nice to be able to watch soccer, and catch up on 30 Rock, Lost, and the Office. Oh yeah, and working again.... work is good. Bills, gotta pay those...

Needless to say i took away a ton of things from the trip. Met some AWESOME people. Saw some mind-bogglingly good baristas do there thing (and put me to shame). But i think the most important thing i learned was, that i am a poor dresser/appearance maintainer. There's some rough pictures of me floating around out there... (just kidding, that wasn't the most important thing)

Speaking of taking this away, i still haven't unpacked.... i should probably go do that now.

Live USBC video link

It would appear the live video feed from the USBC will be coming from here...

And we're off!

USBC/SCAA, here we come.

M'lissa and I are a few hours away from getting on a plane and spending the next week in Minneapolis. I'm super excited. I'm feeling good about my routine. I'm stoked on my coffee. I think i just might do okay.

There will be some kick-ass online coverage this year somewhere in the vicinity of http://conference.scaa.org or so. I'm going 4th on Friday around 10ish or so maybe? In any case, you should check out the coverage, it's going to be super fun/nerdy.

I'll try to post some updates once i'm up there.

Update

So i'm at the Counter Culture training center practicing for USBC and i've got some down time for a few minutes, because i'm waiting for M'lissa to get here to help me out (because M'lissa is my coach and without her i'm more of a mess than you could possibly even fathom). In any case, i figured i'd do a little update while i wait.

First off, M'lissa, Danielle, and I are leaving bright and early Thursday morning to go to Durham, NC to get Counter Culture certified. We've all been wanting to do this for a long time, and since USBC is only a couple weeks away now, we figured it'd be a good time for Danielle and I to practice our routines. It should be a nice little mini-vacation. We found out our beloved friend (and SERBC champ) Lem Butler is going to be DJing Thursday night, so we're going to have an awesome night out on the town Chapel Hill/Durham style.

Once we get back, the practicing will probably get more intense. I'm really excited about my whole presentation, i think it's going to be really good. I'm doing a slight Finnish theme and my signature drink is inspired by sima, which is Finnish for mead. Obviously, though, there will be no alcohol in it, and while sima is my inspiration, i'm tweaking it quite a bit. I'm putting bilberry juice in it, which is the kind the European version of blueberries, and i have to say, the end result is pretty damn delicious.

M'lissa just got here! Hooray! More later....

Thursday Night Throwdown on CNN.com

So at our first TNT a few weeks ago, this guy Curt, who works for CNN, did an audio report for CNN.com on the Thursday Night Throwdown our first night of doing it. He interviewed a lot of us, took picture, and i have to say... it's pretty cool. I'm kind of really pumped about it

Here it is.