Me? Hardly. Nevertheless, you can learn everything you never wanted to know about me and how this web site came to be under that heading in this week’s issue of The New Yorker.

There’s something incredibly intimidating about seeing my name in print in a magazine as renowned as The New Yorker; I’m more the type of person who prefers to hide behind her keyboard in anonymity. And I’m still not sure that what I do here is all that newsworthy, but folks with far more experience in knowing what people do or don’t find interesting obviously disagreed, so who am I to argue? Besides, it’s not very often that hockey gets so much as a mention in the mainstream press (unless there’s violence involved, of course) so I’ll consider this my Sarah Palin moment, my selfless good deed for the game (cough) before I fade back into obscurity.

It’s strange to see pieces of the two-hour conversation I had with the author snipped, clipped and rearranged into a two-column story that starts somewhere around the age of 11 with me living in fear of World War III and ends up with me talking about reading children’s stories in Russian outside a Manhattan hotel at the age of 35. Granted, there are chunks missing and details glossed over, but the story covers the gist of why and how I came to learn Russian and why I ended up starting this blog. While it’s largely accurate, I’m disappointed to admit that my Anisimov jersey is not, in fact, signed (yet?). And I’d hesitate to call my attempts at speaking to his family in Hartford last season a “conversation”, though they do qualify as the most words I’ve strung together in Russian in about a dozen years, so I guess I can’t say it’s inaccurate.

So there you have it… the woman behind the keyboard revealed. Please be kind, I have a thin skin. ;)

Big thanks go to the author, Alec Wilkinson, for making the whole process far less scary than I thought it would be, and for coming up with the idea to do the story in the first place. And also to Dubi Silverstein of Blueshirt Bulletin, who put him in touch, and who gave my early, pre-blog translations a home. Without his support (and links!) I doubt the majority of you reading this would be here right now.

In a post on Monday I issued a somewhat tongue-in-cheek plea for help in acquiring a copy of a photo my husband and I took with Ranger prospect Artem Anisimov’s dad in Hartford last November. I’d be lying if I said I actually thought my request would yield results, but I figured, ‘hey, what have I got to lose?’

Today the photo arrived in my Inbox.

This Internet thing? Very cool.

I’m not entirely sure what route my words took to get to the person who sent me the photo, but I’d like to offer my thanks to all involved. Or, to put it another way, большое спасибо!

Now, if anyone can help me out with a check for $1 million, you know how to get in touch… ;)

New York Times correspondent Andrew Meier was in Omsk on Friday watching as Avangard took on top-ranked Atlant Mystischi, a game that ultimately ended in a shoot out loss for the home team. While visits by foreign reporters have been a fairly regular occurrence since Jaromir Jagr arrived in Siberia in late July, Meier’s presence attracted the attention of Soviet Sport’s C. Galaido, who asked Meier about the purpose of his trip to Russia.

“I have a large editorial project,” related Andrew Meier. “I need to tell our readers about Russian sport. Currently in New York fans follow Avangard because for the last three seasons their favorite, Jaromir Jagr, played on the Rangers. It’s reached the point that our fans post translated articles from the Avangard web site and other Russian hockey web sites on their blogs.

You don’t say?

For the record, Meier’s story will cover more than just Avangard, Jagr and hockey. “Tomorrow I fly to St. Petersburg to gather information about [soccer team] Zenit,” he continued. “And next week I will be in Moscow. My main subjects in the capital are the men’s basketball team Dynamo and an interview with KHL president Alexander Medvedev and Vyachaslav Fetisov.” Hopefully Meier also managed to find some time to have one of those infamous cups of coffee with Omsk GM Anatoli Bardin while he was in town, since we all know what a good quote that guy can be.

But I digress…

On Sunday I was interviewed by a writer for an upcoming piece in another New York publication — one that’s not generally known for giving hockey the time of day. (I’ll pass along the details once I know his editor wasn’t so bored to tears by the story that he left it on the press room floor.) The topic? This blog. Trust me when I say I’m as baffled as a hockey mom confronted with questions on foreign policy by the attention this little side project has attracted in its three short months of existence. But I wanted to take a moment to offer my thanks to those of you who have read, commented on, emailed about and, perhaps most importantly, linked to my sloppy translations and sometimes scatterbrained ramblings. It’s been both flattering and intimidating to discover that it’s not just a bunch of obsessive-compulsive Ranger fans reading my words.

As an aside: If any of you shadowy figures out there have the power and influence to help track down a copy of the photo my husband and I took with Artem Anisimov’s dad last November, my email address is at the bottom of the page. (Oh come on, it was worth a shot, no?!) [Update 10/08/08: Whoa. It worked. Thanks!]

Of course, all these unexpected eyes have meant that this blog has already outgrown the web hosting space it was “borrowing” from another project of mine. So sometime in the near future it will need to be moved to a home of its own. If all goes well, the move should be completely transparent to you. But until then, if you have trouble getting here or get an error once you do, please bear with me and try again later.