Ottsens and Ottesen

How's it going, nonexistent readers? :D
Just going to provide some updates on what's going on in my life.

  NHL

Playoffs
> The Ottawa Senators (Ottsens/Sens) won Round 1 against the Montréal Canadiens, and have advanced to round 2, where they're facing the Pittsburgh Penguins.
> Pittsburgh won Game 1 because they capitalized on Ottawa's penalties.
> Pittsburgh also won Game 2...
> But the Senators won Game 3 less than half an hour ago, and that gives me lots of hope yay :D The next games are gonna be tough. This game was already at home (teams generally play better at home) and it took two extra periods to win (that's a lot of fighting back).
> Game 4 is gonna be good.
Covervote
> I decided to vote for Duchene in the NHL cover vote (see end of previous post for info), but unfortunately Hall won by less than a hundred votes. Frustrating, but at least now it's clear who I'm voting for. :)
> The voting for the next round is now finished, and I will check back into covervote.nhl.com to see if Hallsy made it through! :D

  Countryfic

> No new developments, no new plot ideas... all I'm doing is playing with my characters. :) I like drawing them, and there are so many unofficial fun scenes to drop them into, so... drawing them will suffice until I get a good plot idea.
> Writing them in random situations works too. I'm just not very into writing right now, so.
> As for the characters, I've been developing them-- starting in Scandinavia, because that's where my 2010 self chose to start, being obsessed with Nordic things.
> I started in Norway, naming my Norway-rep Erik Brønstad, and he's the one I'm closest to (basically the only one I've really developed, so... XD) More about him in posts some other time.

  Miscellaneous

> As part of my development research for Erik, I've spent months looking into random Norwegian things-- falling in love with Kaizers Orchestra, a band (wikipedia) (website), following the Stavanger Oilers hockey team to their victory in the GET-ligaen (league).
> I've been really into Kaizers Orchestra, and am totally in love with songs from their last 3 albums (a trilogy, actually) and am learning a lot of Norwegian from them. (Although their dialect is a bit different from "official" Norwegian.)
> I would recommend them for their creative music (I swear, putting orchestra parts into their songs is cool, plus they do all sorts of weird things with scale/key shifts and such, but it's all very good still.) But I know not everyone is going to appreciate the bother of reading translated lyrics, so I won't start shoving in your face how you should totally listen to them right now XD

PS: As for my post title, the name of Kaizers Orchestra's lead singer is Janove Ottesen, and it struck me how similar "Ottsens" was to his name, so... I can't resist some mad word play okay :D

Test 3: NHL!

Testing pictures and thumbnails... with an NHL rant...

A quick history: One day I created Canadian original characters. And then I randomly picked a hometown for them-- and they ended up being from Edmonton.

Deciding that some of them should like ice hockey, I did my research on Edmonton's National Hockey League team, the Edmonton Oilers. I downloaded their iPhone app, followed their tweets, listened to live feeds of their games; so I could be more familiar with hockey. Eventually I started to fall in love with the Oilers, and following them became more of a hobby/obsession than just a "research" thing for my characters.

I followed the Oilers to the end of their 2012-2013 season, watching them peak at hopes for a playoff spot, and then sliding down a 6-game losing streak that took all that hope away. So now, the playoff games are happening, and what team am I following?

OTTAWA SENATORS, BABY! :D

It started when I read about Erik Karlsson's injury last February--he was the first Senator I kind of got to know. After that I didn't really expose myself to much Senators stuff. In the last week of April, while the Oilers finished their season, I started hunting around for a good team to follow during the playoffs. And then I saw an article: Erik Karlsson was returning to the Senators' lineup.

Out of curiosity, I followed the Senators game against the Washington Capitals, the first game Karlsson participated in after coming back (which the Senators won 2-1 in overtime, and also the game in which they clinched a playoff spot!)
And was I impressed with Karlsson!
He recorded assists on both Senators goals, and registered 8 shots on goal--more than any other player. That was when I decided that I should stalk follow Karlsson and the Senators.

(Of course, his beautiful face pleasant appearance helped keep me interested. *bricked*)

At any rate, now I am following the Ottawa Senators on the road to the Stanley Cup championship! In addition to following Karlsson on Twitter, I've also followed a ton of other Senators players ↓

So yeah, I'm more or less following the other teams matched up in the first round of the playoffs, too (San Jose is totally crushing Vancouver, btw), but I'm busy stalking the ADORABLE Senators on Twitter. They just keep messing with each other; so cute! :D

Meanwhile, the Vote for the EA Sports NHL 14 game cover is happening, too! The second round just finished. Being obligated to my Oilers, I voted for Taylor Hall in the second round, along with Matt Duchene from the Colorado Avalanche because Duchene is one ridiculously handsome kid (and yes, I find him a pretty good player, too, lol)

In this third round, the top 16 players get matched up into 8 pairs, and voters have to choose one player per pair.
I hoped Hallsy and Duchene wouldn't get matched...

But they did get matched, and now I'm the saddest, most indecisive person on the planet! I swear. I want to vote Duchene, but I'm pretty sure Hallsy is going to win (I think he's more popular).

And I also feel a bit guilty. I mean I followed the Oilers through everything and voted Hallsy and now I'm just running over to Duchene. XD Whatever. Time will tell.

          _{Erik Karlsson       Taylor Hall       Matt Duchene}