BCHL

Last night I saw my first live hockey game, right here in Merritt. The Centennials were playing the Quesnel Millionaires and beat them 6-5 in overtime. It was pretty exciting, considering the Cents haven't won an away game this season, and I was fully expecting them to lose at home, too. Seeing hockey live rather than on TV is pretty cool. You don't get all the close-ups, but it is great to be right near the action. It's cold and you can hear the scritch of skates on the ice, and the whack of the puck against sticks and sideboards. Also, any aggression is a lot more in your face. There were no fights, but definitely a lot of pushing into the boards and falling. Good thing they wear pads and helmets. Standing up, cheering and clapping and getting right into the spirit of the game was the best. You can't really do that in your living room, so I can see the appeal of going to watch a game. I'm no hard-core hockey fan, but seeing the Canucks play at GM Place would rock.

Big M

I would love to have a cool nickname, but the latest one has been given to me only because this woman at work in the sales department, let's call her 'Susan' (actually her real name), still cannot remember how to pronounce my name even though I've been at this job for a month now. A nickname given only as a substitute for a brain fart is not a good reason for having a nickname. She knows my name starts with an M, so she started calling me M, and then it became Big M. I don't feel big, but then maybe there are some tiny people out there with my name who she knows and I don't. It's really not difficult, but I've had people call me Marcel, Mariel, Muriel, Morrel (which I believe is a type of mushroom), Meryl, May-relle, and the list goes on. Perhaps one day I'll be known as the Scarlet Sniper or something, but for now, I'll just be Marelle, thanks.
Actually, I was called Hopscotch for a while by a German friend I met long ago and far away, but she was the only one who took to calling me by that particular moniker, and that was only because she couldn't say my name (and I'll forgive her because we all know Germans trying to speak English should be given a break), and she thought it was hilarious that the literal translation of my name is "hopscotch" in French. But I seem to have lost touch with her, and therefore with that nickname.
Other than that, however, there isn't really anything else you can do with my name except shorten it to Melle, and then people just think it's Mel and assume I'm a Melanie, or a Melissa. Not that there's anything wrong with those names, but that's just not original enough a nickname to really constitute a check mark on my list of having earned a "cool" nickname.
I think Melle might be "honey" in Portuguese, but that's not a nickname, that's a term of endearment, which only very special people and annoying trailer park cashiers at the grocery store use on me.
No, a nickname has got to be for doing something outrageous like scaling a building in NYC without ropes or something. I'll work on it.

Home Alone

It's been almost six months that I've been TV-free and four days that I've been living on my own. So I'm halfway to my goal of being without a TV set for a year, and just starting my goal of living on my own and being completely self-sufficient for a year.

The TV thing is easy because life is so busy and I have a reading list a mile long for when I have free time. Most TV shows don't seem to be worth watching and ads are like nails on a chalk board. Every ten minutes a booming voice and flashing lights urging me to buy carpets at half price is not the kind of thing I want to make part of my evening recreation. A stereo for CDs is nice, though. And living on my own, I think it will help prevent me from talking to my plants.