Michigan Pro Hockey Tour - April / May 1998

Hi everyone!

Well, guess what? This will be my last letter because Dean and I are moving home and I’ll get to see most of you on a regular basis and can tell you in person what happening in our lives. For everyone who doesn’t live in Alaska, I’ll still keep in touch, though, just probably not monthly.

A lot has happened in the last two months so I won’t keep you in suspense: Dean was traded to the Milwaukee Admirals on Wednesday, March 25th. The Griffins owed them a player and out of everyone on the team, they wanted Dean so that was quite a compliment. Dean’s happy about the trade because he thinks the Admirals are a better team, they’re battling fewer injuries than the Griffins, and he thinks they’ll go further in playoffs, thus earning him a bigger bonus. His first weekend, he played in front of 15,000 people at the Bradley Center in downtown Milwaukee and he got a goal and an assist. He gets a lot of ice time and more scoring opportunities so, again, he’s very happy to be there.

I spent the first weekend in Milwaukee with him, but then he left to go on a 10 day road trip and I came back to Grand Rapids. A couple days later, on April 1st, I flew to Alaska for a job interview with the Nerland Agency and they liked me so well, they ended up offering me a management position in the agency, rather than the account executive job that I applied for. I was very excited and yes, I accepted the job. My first day is April 27th. Also, payment for schooling was part of the job offer, so if all goes according to plan, by the end of next summer, I’ll be the proud owner of an MBA. I’ll keep you posted. Dean will just fly to Alaska instead of Grand Rapids when playoffs are over.

I stayed with my sister while I was there, and Pete and I were flipping through the channels one day and Fox had one of Dean’s games on TV! It was so neat to watch him on television! He was part of the play of the game, so the camera zoomed in on him for about 30-40 seconds while the color commentators talked about how he was a great addition to the Milwaukee team, a very strong defenseman and very solid on the defensive line. They told a little bit about his history and everything. It was so great! No honorable mentions about the wife at home, though. Oh well. Ha.

I came back from Alaska last week and headed to Chicago where Dean had one more game. It was his last regular season game on Easter Sunday. Chip Aiken and family joined me and it was great to see them, they’re doing well. Nathan graduates this year and they had all just returned from a trip to Nashville and Orlando, where Tiffany and the marching band she plays in got to perform down main street at Disney World. Chip and Annette were chaperones for all the kids. VERY generous parents, aren’t they? I’m glad Dean didn’t play for Chicago this year because it was a boring performance. The hockey was good, but it’s such an entertainment industry anymore and I missed all the fun promotions and games that they usually have between periods. Shannon Miller, the gymnast, was in the crowd that day, and they showed her on the readerboard but that was about it. At the beginning, when they introduced the players, they had laser lights and fire and smoke, so that was neat, but pretty standard anymore. I spent most of the time visiting with the Aikens.

After the game, I went back to Milwaukee again with Dean until he had to leave for playoffs in Houston, TX. Just to kill some time, we took a tour of the Miller Brewing Company. That was a fun couple of hours. We went with one of the other guys on the team and his wife. They didn’t really explain the brewing process so much, but rather, gave a history of the company and showed us the bottling, canning and shipping areas. Did you know that their canning machines can a case of beer every second? Amazing. Their shipping warehouse is 200,000 square feet and stocked full of beer from floor to ceiling. Every last bottle and can in there is shipped out and restocked every 48 hours. That’s a lot of beer, America. We saw the huge vats where they make the mash and process everything. It was about 90 degrees in that room from all the boiling wort. We also walked around in the cave where they stored the beer in the 1800’s to keep it cool during the summer. Then at the end of the tour, we sat in this great little tavern and they let us try 8oz samples of different Miller products. That company makes a LOT of beer. I was surprised. Although I don’t know why, I am married to a hockey player, after all. Dean told me that the refrigerator in the locker room is always stocked from donations from the company and the guys certainly take advantage of it.



Anyway, I’m back in Grand Rapids now to pack up the house and say farewell to everyone. My computer will be packed up next Wednesday and I won’t unpack it again until we get settled in a house in Alaska. It may take a couple months to find a place and close on it, but as soon as we do, I’ll send out an email and let you all know our new address for your Christmas card list. In the meantime, I’ll be living with Dad and Mom in Eagle River and you can reach me there:

c/o Ron & Gayle Smith
PO Box 770884
Eagle River AK 99577
(907) 696-2293
smith1000@prodigy.net email

Aside from all the above excitement, it’s been a great couple months. I had a good birthday in March. Mom sent me a present from her trip to Mexico and wanted me to open it right away but I made her wait until my birthday. I called her and had her on the phone while I opened it. It was a gorgeous chess set. It’s hand carved from green and ivory stone and has an Aztec design on it, so it matches my southwest decor. The green pieces look like English royalty with the king, queen, bishop, knights, and the pawns are men dressed for battle in armor. The white pieces are Aztec Indians with a chief, his squaw, and Indian warriors for pawns. It’s so beautiful, I absolutely love it and Dean & I have played several games on it already. Dean had a hockey game the day of my birthday, so the night before, we tried to go out to dinner, but it was blizzard weather. We tried several restaurants in town but every place closed early. We ended up going to the grocery store and we came home and I cooked. We went to Charley’s Crab a couple days later, though, and it was wonderful. Also, as a little gift to myself and the women in my family, I had a picture done of my great grandmother, grandmother, mother, sister and niece. FIVE generations of women in one photo - it is SO neat. I framed it and I’ll cherish it forever.

Dean’s birthday is coming up in June, but if they do well in playoffs, he’ll be in the championship round at that time. If they make it that far, and I manage to get us in a house by then, I’m going to buy him a big screen TV for his birthday, then have a party at our new house and we can all watch the games on his TV! ha. Could be a lot of fun, yes? I hope it happens.

Last week, we had a fantastic thunderstorm. I love watching electric storms because we don’t really get them in Alaska. Not like they do here in the midwest. Lightning flashes every 10 seconds and it’s amazing to watch. I AM going to miss the weather here. There was still quite a bit of snow in Alaska last week when I was there and it’s been warm enough to wear shorts all week here. The grass is green and the flowers are blooming. The trees all have leaves and the apartment complex turned on all the fountains in the little ponds around here, so when I open my porch door, I can hear the water splashing. That is one thing I will definitely miss about this place is the warm summer. Oh well.

March was actually a pretty boring month. I was unemployed with nothing to do but job search and that’s a lot of “hurry up and wait” type stuff. I discovered that I have to stay active or I go nuts. I bought some MBA textbooks to read to get a jump on classes, did our taxes (we had to file federal, state AND city taxes here - blech!), I cleaned out every nook and cranny in the house, went through all our stuff (the goodwill people know me by name now), cleaned out all our files, took up yoga, and I even started brushing up on my Spanish. Yikes. I told Dean that when I start taking inventory of toothpicks to have me committed immediately - I’ve lost it completely. I spent a lot of time on the computer in March, too. Ask me anything about Windows 95. If I don’t know the answer, I can figure it out, I guarantee it. We discovered how to record, mix and edit sounds and send them as attachments to email files. I can also answer the telephone using the microphone and speakers, and use the computer as voice mail when I’m out. I’m still trying to figure out how to call long distance using the internet connection so there’s no LD charges. I need a new program, but I’m told it’s really easy.

I also auditioned at a local modeling agency and they booked me for a couple shows so that was fun. I volunteered to be the meeting leader / emcee at a local speaking contest sponsored by Toastmasters, International. They asked me to come back and do it again at the area wide contest, so I did that, too. It was fun and I learned a lot listening to the more advanced speakers. Some of them are so good.

Dean grew a goatee this month, and I thought it looked great on him, but it drove him nuts so he shaved it off while I was in Alaska. It took almost three whole weeks for it to look full. Ha. He’s such a babyface. Shortly after he started growing it, he caught the butt end of a stick in the chin during a game and got four stitches. With the blood and scraggly hair, he looked really tough for a while, let me tell you.

I saw one of the greatest moves I’ve ever seen in hockey the week before Dean got traded. Danton Cole, a Griffins player, had a puck coming at him through the air about eye level. Now, I didn’t know this, but you’re not supposed to be able to catch a puck like that with your hands then put it down and continue playing. If you do, the ref is supposed to blow the whistle and you face-off again. So to keep the puck in play, Danton bent his head down a little bit and head-butted the puck back down to the ice, he took it down and then scored!!! The crowd was on their feet - it was so great! Those guys are so tough, who else but a hockey player would have the nerve to head-butt a flying puck? Of course, it could just be stupidity from being hit in the head one too many times from flying pucks. Ha. Just kidding, actually it was a well thought out move and I was in awe. It hit his helmet so there was no blood or pain (so he says.)

On April 1st, Dean & I realized that we’d met exactly 10 years ago for the first time at a party in college. His buddies had left him at a party and both he and I lived in the dorms. I offered him a ride back. I figured it was safe enough because I had three of my girlfriends with me (hi Nat, Fran and Regina – remember that night?) He came back to our dorm and sat at our kitchen table with us until about 5am, being Mr. Entertainment and making us all laugh for hours until we were all crying. I fell in love immediately, and now here we are, living happily ever after. Sigh. I can’t believe it’s been that long.

Well, that’s all the news. It sure has been a fun year and I’m sad to see it end, but looking forward to my new job and being with my family again. I’m anxious to finish my MBA and get started on our own family again, too, so we’ll keep you posted as life trucks right along!

Much love,
Tiffany