Helloooo, Mistah Grier

In my last post I said that it would probably be a long time before I could update again discussing any Sabres news. Well color me happily surprised. I've said before that it's a long offseason and that there was still plenty of time for the Sabres' management to make another move...and I think they have successfully made a move that will both be beneficial to the team and very pleasing for the fans.

When I got a text alert from the Sabres last night, I had to re-read it about three times before I finally believed it was true. Grier? No way! I was pretty surprised considering he didn't have a lot of nice things to say about the organization when he departed, but that all appears to be water under the bridge now. Grier was definitely one of my favorite Sabres when he was with us and I was extremely disappointed when he didn't return to the team. I never would have thought that he would have came back to the Sabres...but here he is, crawling back to us begging for us to take him back. That was my attempt at being cocky, ok. I'm not very good at it as you may have just gathered. Anyways, I'm thrilled to see that he's back with us and I'm really liking the direction that the team is headed in the offseason. The team has added more grit and physicality and I am hoping that some of our players matured over the offseason and will be better for it next season.

I feel like I should mention this before I say anything else, but I will not be commenting on Pat Kane's arrest due to personal reasons. I don't really feel like I have much else to contribute to the whole situation anyways, considering the story has made headlines in more places that Pat would like to think about. Everyone's opinion on the arrest is already out there so I don't feel lke mine really matters. So that's that.

In other news, one of my readers, Chris sent me a video of the Goose being interviewed on a local Portland TV station. A highlight in the interview is him talking about his golfing "skills". A big thanks to Chris for giving us a Goose fix!

Speaking of hockey players going all PR on us, Ryan Miller was the Grand Marshal at Watkins-Glen for the Crown Royal 200 where he promoted his Steadfast Foundation and gave details about Catwalk for Charity IV. It's 50s-themed this year...as I have mentioned before on here I'm a sucker for anything vintage (basically anything between the eras of the 20s to the 70s), so I'm pretty excited. I already have a real vintage 1950s cocktail dress that I think I'm going to wear. I wore it to one of my homecoming dances when I was in high school and I did my hair to resemble my homegirl Marilyn and I got many flattering compliments where people were saying I looked like her. I'm definitely going to pay homeage to my favorite lady again and do the Marilyn look again at this year's Catwalk. I'm going to have to pull up my collection of thousands countless pictures I have of Marilyn to get some inspiration on how I'm going to look. I'm sure there will be people there doing the whole Marilyn thing, but I'm going to try and be a little different. There's more to Marilyn than a white billowing dress being blown up by a NYC subway breeze. Even for last year's Catwalk, I was able to get a little bit of Marilyn in my look by wearing a hidden flask in a garter belt to go along with the 1920s speakeasy theme. In one of my favorite Marilyn movies, Some Like It Hot, she wears the same thing since the setting is during the 1920s Prohibition days. So that was my Marilyn inspiration...this time around I'll be able to do even more since the 50s was during Marilyn's prime as a movie star. One thing that got me nervous though was the details on Sabres.com about the event, it said that if all tickets sell through sponsorship sales, then no individual tickets will be available. I would be saahhhh upset if it sells out before individual tickets go onsale...I look forward to this event every year.

Anyways...I just returned to Buffalo after spending some time in Chicago for Lollapalooza. Lollapalooza is a huge 3 day long music festival that Chicago has hosted for the past 5 years and I went for the first time last year and I was hooked. There are always huge headlining music acts along with smaller acts throughout the day. It's a great music festival in a great city. I saw Kings of Leon the first day and I had never seen them live before. They blew me away. I have seen them peform live on TV before, so I knew I was in for a good show, but being there in person is a completely different experience. Along with Kings of Leon, my other favorite acts that I saw were the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Bon Iver, Chairlift, and Santigold. I met a lot of really great people from all over while I was there. I'm talking like people from Portugal, Mexico, Spain, and Ireland. It's crazy that they come all the way to a music festival...but it definitely is worth it. My friend who I went to the festival with also had a gift certificate to The Refinery that she won at a previous Catwalk for Charity, so we stopped in East Lansing on our way back and I got a really cute dress and a cardigan. I uploaded some videos I took at Lollapalooza incase anyone is interested. Here is a video of me just walking around the festival, it shows you how big it is and how many people were there. And here is a video of me leaving the festival on the second day. Buckingham Fountain is in the second video and it's amazing...my video of it doesn't do it justice.

So now I'm back home but I leave again in a few days to spend some time up at my cousin's cottage. I'm so excited to hang out on a boat all day...as long as the weather cooperates. This summer has been really sketchy weather-wise...but I guess that's Buffalo for you.