Happy New Year!

Hey puck heads!

Happy New Year! I hope you guys all had a great Christmas and an even better New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. I went down to Los Angeles from the 29th til the 4th and boy, did I had a good time. I spent a couple of days at Disneyland, trying to enjoy myself and get the most out of my Disneyland pass. I haven't been able to use it much since I graduated from Whittier College and had to move back to Northern California. But hey, I had the time of my life there, spending New Year's Eve enjoying the midnight fireworks to celebrate 2016. That was a great three days leading up to the New Year.

For New Year's Day, I spent it watching the Rose Parade and boy, there were a lot of great floats, such as the Miracle-Gro float, which showcased what typical Los Angeles life was like: pretty with a lot of palm trees and great scenery and entertainment all around. The other float I liked was the Disneyland float, where they put Frozen on the front of their floats with the characters, Mickey, Goofy, Donald Duck, and Minnie on the middle float, and then the Star Wars float on the back, showing the new Star Wars characters like the First Order stormtroopers and Kylo Ren, as well as an awesome model of the Millennium Falcon attached to the top of the float. This was a great Rose Parade, and it was the first Rose Parade I saw since I was probably five or six. I could've been younger or so, but hey, this was the first Rose Parade I do remember and it was something special.

After the Rose Parade, I watched the Rose Bowl in person with my Dad, his girlfriend Julie, and a couple of colleagues and friends of my Dad, watching Stanford crush Iowa from the first play of the game on. Let me tell you something, Christian McCaffrey is a beast. When he starts running, he just rolls people over. He commands the football, he is patient with his run, and he knows exactly when to move and how to move to avoid tacklers and get to the end zone. I look forward to seeing him next year back at Stanford where I'm guessing he'll do the same thing again and hopefully get Stanford to the College Football Playoff. It was just one, fun parade that I enjoyed and loved.

The rest of the New Year's weekend was just hanging out and relaxing. I managed to go see the LA Kings matinee game against the Philadelphia Flyers, and it just helped me prove that the LA Kings are back to their winning days and are deep enough to possibly win the Stanley Cup again. I managed to meet up with an old friend of mine from Whittier, who just happened to be a ticket executive for the LA Kings. Good for him, wish I had that kind of guts and prowess to do that, but I'm an English major and I'm only good with words and writing, not exactly with people and money and that sort of thing. But, other than that, it was one fun game that I got to enjoy this weekend. Hopefully, there'll be many more Kings games in the future, like the January 19th game against the Stars that I'm going too. (assuming El Nino doesn't delay my flight down there that day)

I left LA yesterday to come back up here, where I spent most of the day thinking about where I'm going next. Hopefully, with 2016, I can concentrate a little bit more on my writing and my blogging and making sure I'm up-to-date with all the info coming from the NHL league. I know I haven't exactly been doing that of late, especially with school and where my life is trying to go, but hopefully I can find some way to pull myself together, get my writing in gear, and hopefully get back to what I love to do best: write about hockey (and maybe football). So I will do the best I can to make sure I get you all the latest news and stories about the NHL and what I feel might be the best course of action. If I decide to blog about something else or open up a new blog, you'll be the first to hear about it. And don't forget to follow my blog: Reid's Poetry, where I try to post some of my best poetry that I've written. As an English major, I'm always open to anything.

Anyway, I hope you do have a good 2016 and that this year will be even better than the next. I will always be a writer, wherever I am. Even if people convince me to do something else, I will not budge. Writing, and especially writing about hockey, will always come first so I will make sure that comes first, no matter what. I hope you all have a good night and a good new year and I hope to be talking to you a lot over the next couple of months or so.

With encouragement and dedication,
Reid Urban

P.S. I will post pictures in the future of the Rose Parade and the Rose Bowl Game, when my computer stops acting so slow when it comes to uploading pictures.