Aw, for crying out loud! The Phantoms played SUCH a great game tonight, only to give up a late powerplay goal on a questionable penalty that tied the game at 1-1. We ended up losing 2-1 in overtime.

How aggravating. The team played SO well, and SO hard, from start to finish. It's cruddy if that penalty that cost us the powerplay goal turns out to be a mistake, as I suspect it was.

One GOOD thing from tonight's game is that I got to meet an online friend face to face for the first time. One of my fellow Maxime Ouellet fans (see my December 7, 2005 post if you don't know who Max is) drove up from DC with her friend for tonight's game. It was very nice to meet Tara and Ruth, and they're already planning to do this again for a Sunday game. That'll be easier for them, as our Sunday games begin and end earlier than our weeknight games.

Tomorrow, we're having our annual lunch at Strawbridge's restaurant, the Corinthian Room, in honor of our late friend Joan. Once upon a time, we used to meet for lunch there with her almost every Saturday. When she passed away, we started honoring her birthday by having lunch there on a Saturday, as close to her birthday on January 26 as we could.

This year will be the tenth time we've gathered to celebrate her birthday, and it's possible that it'll be the final time we're able to eat in this restaurant in its current incarnation. The company that now owns Strawbridge's will be converting the store to a Macy's sometime this year. Goodness only knows what will become of the Corinthian Room as a result of the changeover.

I do hope they keep the restaurant. Even though its menu has changed since the days when Strawbridge and Clothier was the last family-owned department store in the US, it's still a nice place to go for old times' sake. But the Strawbridge family sold the store to the May company (at which point, it was renamed "Strawbridge's"), and now it's changing again to a Macy's. Sigh. Some changes, I could do without, and this is one of them. I hope they don't murdalize what's left of the store as we knew it.