Forgive my breaking in here for something that is related to these lists
but not so much to hockey - well, it is in a way.  You'll understand when
you read on.  Although I'm typing this in, this really is a joint message
from myself and Heather Neely who is now about 300 miles away in Syracuse.
Heather is a manager for MailBoxes Etc. and I work here at Bull in Billerica,
Mass.  Since she is no longer on the net, this is from both of us.
 
First, since I know there are some new people on here and also because
many of you may have forgotten, Heather was the manager for Plattsburgh this
year, which won the NC$$ DivIII championship, and she was on hockey-l through
the last few months of her team's season.  After the end of the season, she
got the ball rolling to institute a mailing list for DivIII hockey, "hockey3",
which ended up being established by Pete Kester who is doing a superb job
of running it.  And as many of you know, I started the College Hockey Mailing
List about 3 years ago and then passed it on to Wayne Smith after a year -
and Wayne has been doing a marvelous job himself and deserves more words of
appreciation than I can ever give.
 
A while ago, under the sub-heading of hockey-l romances :-), and mostly
because we were so excited about it and have many friends on these lists,
the news came out that Heather and I have been seeing each other for a little
while.  I could tell from some of your responses that a lot of you thought
it was quite a story since we met through hockey-l, after I responded to
one of her posts (and asked her how Cam was :-)) and things somehow took off.
Not overnight, but they gradually built up through months of email, then
phone conversations, and then finally meeting and that connection being there.
 
Well, in the spirit of Tom Tseng's earlier announcement, we are both very
happy to announce that last Friday, August 14th, we became engaged and the
magic date is probably going to be either Nov 13th or 6th of 1993.
 
Now, before anyone asks, no, hockey-l is not a dating service, and no, I
did not start it with this end in mind. :-)
 
Heather also wants me to give the details of how this came to happen, so here
they are:
 
When I originally asked her, she wasn't 100% ready to say yes at that time
and wanted to take some time to make sure.  But she told me she was going
to make up for not being able to give me an answer then, by finding some
special way to tell me when she had decided.  Last week we drove to Huntsville,
Alabama where my best friend catches for the Huntsville Stars, a AA team for
the Oakland A's.  On Friday, as we were sitting watching our last game there,
in the fourth inning, she whacked me on the knee and said, "Look!", pointing
to the scoreboard in left field.  And what I saw was:
 
  "If you build it, he will come"  (sorry, I couldn't resist.  But seriously:)
 
  "Michael 'Tookey' Machnik
   My answer is...
   YES  (flashing)
   love, Heather"
 
(Tookey is a nickname I got while managing Northeastern, it refers to a guy
in the Flyers farm system named Tim Tookey.  Nothing cute there, sorry. :-))
 
I was surprised...but somehow I expected it - two innings before, I was down
talking with one of the other players' wives while Heather was off getting
ice cream, and I said something about her being gone for a long time and
maybe she was up to something.  I was half kidding, but I also had this strange
feeling that something WAS going on although I couldn't be sure, and no one
had told me anything (no one knew except her).
 
So after that, a guy from the team came down and said congratulations and
wished us good luck, and I went down to the dugout and asked my friend, who
was not catching that night, if he'd be our best man and of course he almost
fell over.  Good thing he wasn't playing that night. :-)  It was also a good
excuse for us to go out with him and his wife for a couple of beers after
the game.
 
By the way, Heather has a weird sense of humor - she was going to have the
board say "NO...just kidding" but changed her mind.
 
Again, forgive the non-hockey content, but with the number of people here
who know of us, it seemed appropriate.  But please, no ceramic dalmatians
for the happy couple, I've seen and heard enough of dalmatians for one
lifetime...
 
 
- mike, soon to be Married Eastern Hockey Guru
- heather, looking forward to getting back on h-l & h3 in about a year from
  mike's account (if she can't line up something else by then)