Sir,

Sir? May I help you? Do I know you? Oh, oh, you weren’t really looking at me, you were just staring at our game? I understand, it is fascinating to see how two formerly athletic guys still can throw and catch a ball, isn’t it?

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Somebody sent me a message on Facebook this morning.

Hi, Risto,

I read somewhere that you own a book about Valeri Kharlamov. I’d like to buy it, if you’re willing to sell it. You can name your price…

Hockey greetings,
M

PS. You are the hockey writer, right?"

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All my life I’ve been waiting to get discovered. It may be because I’m lazy by nature, although I think that since I’d simply like to be discovered for what I’ve done - instead of just playing the lottery - I think I’m not a complete slacker.

I’ve always wanted to get head hunted for a job. I think it'd be nice if some movie director saw me order a caffe latte and asked me to audition for a role in his movie. I would have even auditioned for the part of Mini-Me in the Austin Powers movies.

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You may want to check out Hunch.com. Just a gut feeling I have.


But I'm the opposite of a cat person. And I definitely don't have a thing for redheads.

But sure, blue pens are cool. And it did recommend these professions for me:


An interesting read.

A friend of mine once told me that he’d heard somewhere that your home will always be wherever you are living when you’re 18. Regardless of the questionable reliability of the source, that’s a claim that’s pretty easy to believe, it kind of makes sense.

Home is where you are when you’re a teenager.

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”The bike sure is a great invention. It may just be the best of them all.”
– Son, riding his bike

Wife and I have a fairly long list of movie quotes that we use in our everyday conversations. When she shows me an ad for wonderful cruises in the Caribbean, I reply in a dreamy voice, “Someday, Jennifer, someday” just like Marty McFly told his girlfriend in "Back to the Future".

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The end is nigh. The end of summer vacation, that is. Tomorrow morning, at about 8 am, I will be left alone in this home office of mine. No more bicycle trips to the pool house, no more making pancakes for lunch, no more football matches or games of petanque in the park, no more lazy days in my lazy chair outside while the kids run around with their friends.

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In Finland, each day is associated with a name, a custom that's apparently a leftover from the Catholic and Orthodox calendar of saints, when people celebrated each saint's feast day.

Today, August 7, is the name day of Lahja, Finnish for “present” or “gift”, a name that is mostly a female name, especially these days. According to the statistics by the Population Register Center of Finland, no baby boy has been named Lahja since the 1960s – and only a little over 500 baby girls, of the total of over 12,000 people.

My paternal grandfather was one of 97 Lahjas born in Finland in the very late 19th century.

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I bought Wife a watch for Christmas because she didn’t have one but also because I like watches myself. The only problem with buying a watch is probably that once I find one that I really like, I realize that I like my money even better but when I was buying that watch for her, I figured that she was paying half of it anyway.

Just kidding.

Only the best is good enough for her. And I found one that she likes “a lot,” as she just told me in a chat window.

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