Maybe by this weekend I will start to get some things back on track around here, I hope so. I don't want to be lagging all of the time.
Anyway, tonight was the hockey game. As I mentioned before (I think, I forget half of what I say, a sign of Alzheimer's perhaps?) I took Christina, who is the daughter of my friend Rich. Some of you would know him as howletzer1 over in the contact section, though he hasn't hung out here much recently. I have know Rich for a few years now and am friends with everyone in his family.
Now really astute readers of the blog will recognize that I had originally planned to take someone else. I will say that that didn't happen, and I am very glad it didn't. Because what might have been a good thing a few months ago would be a bad thing now. What can I say, fate has been fun these last few days. Of course I was going to go to the game with Dee, she of the secret blog entry fame. But since extending the invitation to her a couple of weeks ago and now, some things have changed. The thing is, once I invite someone somewhere, unless something drastic happens, I am not likely to uninvite them. So I was thinking, the absolute worst thing to happen now would be for her to go. But I didn't want to say that. So I didn't. She said it for me. And the best part was, it was some lame ass excuse she used to get out of going, which made me feel even better if that were possible. I don't know the real reason she couldn't go, Monday she said she didn't want to talk about it but by today she was saying that she had previously made plans with her neice, which would hardly seem to be something you can't talk about. Whatever the case, I really don't care, her not going was the best thing that could have happened.
But it did mean I had to find someone to go with. A couple of people at work had expressed some interest prior to me having an extra ticket, but once I did have one it seemed that they were either already on the schedule working or by that time had other concerns to worry about and couldn't go. So I started going through my mental rolodex of people I haven't done cool stuff for recently when I say something on my Facebook page about Christina's birthday and I thought that this might be cooler than what she had planned (technically her birthday was the day after the game) or maybe not, I hadn't known her to ever even mention hockey in the past. But I fired off a quick message over there and she said she would like to go, which made everything all cool in a “Matt's life is going awesome right now” kind of way.
So we ended up meeting up in town around 5:30 pm and made the walk over to the Pens building in about 15 minutes. The hardest part to finding our seats was, well nothing. We went in the main entrance, went up one escalator and right across the concourse area was our box. And the box was cool, in it was a little TV right between us, our chairs were like comfy office desk chairs as opposed to those plastic chairs the masses get to enjoy. I could wheel around and spin and it was good. At our seats was the concession menu as well as a copy of the pregame notes package. Unlike the program, which is handed out to everyone when they go in the building, pregame notes are pretty much left to just the press. Lots of inside hockey technical statistical stuff.
Since we got there so early I decided that I was going to get something to eat (I hadn't eaten most of the day) and I asked Christina if she wanted anything, but she refused. Okay, well I was hungry, so I ordered a cheesesteak sandwich, fries and a 20oz RC. Since we are dealing with concession food here, we all know it wasn't cheap, it was 18.50 altogether. But I was hungry damn it. So I ate.
We had probably been there maybe 30-35 minutes, just talking and taking in some pregame stuff when the 7 Up guy Phil came in. While I got the tickets from our rep, Phil would be his boss. So he and I talked shop briefly, and next thing out of his mouth is, by the way the concessions are covered on my business account. So if I had waited 30 minutes, I could have had a free dinner. Oh well, Christina did end up getting a diet peach Snapple and Nachos, and I did end up getting a Tim Horton's coffee on the 7 Up account, so it wasn't a total wash in that regard.
The game was good too, I would argue from a strictly game play perspective Pittsburgh seemed to play better more consistently throughout the course of the game, but sometimes the game is simply about luck. So after Pittsburgh scored first, a fluke goal ended up tying it (a Penguins defenseman actually kicked the puck into his own net), an Alex Ovechkin shot that was so hard it had to be reviewed in the league office so they could see it actually went into and right back out of the net bounced off of the back of the net and caromed back out without anyone on the ice actually noticing it. Pittsburgh would get a late goal to tie it and send it to overtime, where Washington would win the game 3-2. It was certainly entertaining enough, sure the result could have been better, but the effort was there. If the Penguins have that type of effort through the season, they will have nothing to worry about for the rest of the regular season.
Okay, my eyes are starting to shut., I guess it is bedtime for now. Nite kids.
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