The All-Star Game was a blast. It was so cool to be in our city and to have hockey fans and celebs everywhere. I literally bumped into Bill Clement and Toby Enstrom sat in front of us at the All Star Game itself. We also saw Peter Laviolette, coach of the (evil) Carolina Hurricanes, waiting in line with his family to get his daughter's face painted.
Saturday was probably the best -- the all star game itself was okay -- but Saturday there was the red carpet arrival for all the players. A respectable number of people turned out, so Atlanta didn't disgrace itself. Nothing like Toronto, of course, but a lot of kids and Lindsay Lohan turned out, so I guess we'll call it a success. :-) The skills competition was fun and much better in RL than TV -- I can say from personal experience since after coming home from the skills competition, I watched the taped skills competition. (I do believe my obsessive compulsive attention to hockey is getting better, honest, I do.)
The weekend did take its toll -- we skipped Wednesday's game against the Pens (which we won) and tonight's against the Sabres (which we're currently losing). But, to excuse us, tonight we did go to an amazing conversation between Salmon Rushdie and Rosemary Magee, VP and Secretary of Emory (and my former boss). Rushdie is on Emory's faculty and comes for a week each year and this was the kickoff event. What an erudite, intelligent man. He spoke about his creative process (he writes when an idea has stuck around long enough), the smallness of the world now (world is flat), the idea that the novel is somehow innately local (in tension with global expanse), and his antipathy towards critical/literary theory. Rather, he would prefer close readings and attention to how the second sentence follows the first sentence.
