Believe in Blueland

I attended my first NHL hockey game last night. Tickets for the Thrashers vs. Bruins game were one of my gifts to PDM this Christmas. He loves hockey, but I had always been sort of lukewarm about going. I'd been to a couple of AHL games (the now defunct Worcester Icecats) when I lived in Massachusetts, and I like watching sports, but generally hockey hasn't been my thing. That's why I knew this gift would be a surprise. Especially when I wrapped the tickets and taped them to the inside cover of a box, put a lot of junk in it to rattle around, then wrapped the box.

I've gotta admit it was a lot of fun. Way better than watching a game on TV. It didn't take long to see my first hockey fight (less than two and a half minutes in), followed by a second fight before they had even announced the penalties for the first fight. That got the crowd fired up. Atlanta went on to play a great game, winning a 5-0 shutout.

This should have been my second Thrashers-Bruins game. PDM had tickets to a Thrashers game for us and four of his family members five years ago during one of my holiday visits. This was back when I still lived in Massachusetts and we were dating long distance. Unfortunately, we ate some bad Mexican food the day before and became violently ill overnight. It was my first time staying at the family home, and I made it memorable by puking all over the floor at three o'clock in the morning. To his credit, PDM helped me clean it up, even though he was also fighting a losing battle with nausea. The family had to go to the game without us, and we ended up with a pair of $60 bookmarks to go with our fever and chills. We joke about it now, but back then... not so funny.