Sports in Dallas Make for Such Happy Memories

Here is an update of the fun we've had in Dallas:

Dallas Cowboys vs. Indianapolis Colts

So I guess selling your soul to an accounting firm comes with perks (oh its not that bad... but then again I haven't worked the 60-70 hour weeks yet). The partner over my group has season tickets to the Dallas Cowboys and he was unable to attend their opening exhibition with the Indianapolis Colts - the raining Super Bowl Champions - poor guy. So he kindly gave the new hires his four tickets. They were $125 a piece for an exhibition game! That means the regular season tickets are 3-4 times more expensive. Here is a somewhat blurry shot of the view from our amazing seats. We got to see Peyton Manning and the starting line up of the Colts for two series and the Cowboys starting line up for 3. It was my first NFL experience and I loved it! The stadium is very old though. You can't see it well, but there is this really gross , green mold growing on the stadium roof. They are building a new one a few miles away that is costing $1 billion and will seat almost 100,000 people. It will be the biggest stadium in the NFL - any surprises? Not here in Texas.

Texas Rangers vs. Seattle Mariners

This same partner with the Cowboys tickets just happened to be out of town again for a Texas Rangers game - poor guy. So he kindly gave the new hires his four tickets. These seats were right behind the first base dugout (only $45 a piece for a regular season game, but the Rangers are considered one of the most mediocre teams of all time). Here is the view. Of course being close to the field makes you more susceptible to things like fly balls and camera shots. Well it just so happens that my favorite moment of this game (sarcasm) was being locked on the Kiss Cam with my coworker! OH THE EMBARRASSMENT!! Neither she nor I knew what to do, she being single and I being married, she and I both never being in visible-to-a-camera seats where things like this happen, she and I both being new to the professional world, and so forth. You might think of an easy solution out of the situation now, but when you are staring at your face on a 40 foot screen and everyone around you is yelling "kiss her, what is wrong with you! GO ON, KISS HER!!!" thinking takes a back seat to trying not to hyperventilate. An older coworker next to her leaned over and said "just kiss her on the cheek." We both heard the suggestion and it felt like the only way out of the dilemma. As I leaned over to plant the kiss, the cameraman got annoyed with us an left for another couple! Of course that was impossible for me to see staring at my coworkers cheek, so I ended up kissing her anyways. Gosh!! I hope you are all laughing at how silly the situation was - I am sure one day I will get there with you. For now I will stick to cringing at the slightest thought.

Needless to say the rest of the game wasn't as enjoyable.

Texas Rangers vs. Chicago White Sox

Sporting events on our dime are obviously going to turn out much different, right? Well, Dianna went with me this time. She isn't the biggest fan of baseball, but she was a good sport and gave me some good company. We arrived at our $2 seats (yes, through a ticket concierge I managed to get tickets for $2) and someone was sitting in them! Now this may seem common at a ball park, but the entire upper deck had like 30 people in it, and two of them were in our seats! Really weird. But because of the limited number of people in our section, we didn't say anything and just went one row down and sat in empty seats there. As soon as we sat down a lady came down the stairs and we thought she was going to make us move (again weird considering there was hardly anyone there). She asked if we were season ticket holders for those seats and we said "no, we are just sitting here because someone else is in our seats." She then told us that she was giving upgrades to season ticket holders but that she would give us the upgrade anyways. So we ended up getting really good seats in right field on the "Lexus level" which is like the premium deck in the middle of the lower and upper decks. We enjoyed the rest of the game from there and the Rangers won an exciting game 4-3.

So obviously it was a nice thing to happen to us, but honestly - what's the moral of the story? Tell us what you think.

Pinky

So Dave is going to be traveling quite a bit for work, and our apartment complex charges a ton of money to have a cat or dog in the apartment. So Dave and I compromised.

Meet Pinky!






She is my new Guinea Pig. I named her Pinky because she has one pick ear. I think she is cute and fun. We got a great little cage for her and so fun toys for her to play with. Mostly I like just holding her.

Anniversary #2

I suppose every anniversary won't be as fun as our first two, but we don't have really demanding jobs or kids yet. So I guess that makes it easy to have lots of fun on our anniversary!

Dianna and I took the day off from work to spend the day together. We went to the Dallas World Aquarium in downtown Dallas in the morning. We saw all kinds of interesting animals in this really unique format for a museum. The whole thing was laid out along a declining trail that went from the top of the forest canopy to the ground level and then underwater. It wasn't so big, but we still spent hours there. They did a really good job of getting the animals right up close to you, so that it felt like you could almost reach out and pet them.




After the aquarium we went to Best Buy to get our anniversary present: an XBOX 360! I call it our present, because come to find out, Dianna likes playing Halo and DDR just as much as I do. We also got the infamous "Guitar Hero" which is a simulated guitar game. It comes with a life size, guitar controller and allows you to play famous rock songs as if you were on stage. What a ton of fun!

From Best Buy we went to get Dianna a present at PetsMart: a Guinea Pig! This will require some more details from Dianna, so refer to her post later in the blog.

The rest of the day we just spent inside together. Even for dinner we had some steaks at home, followed by some store bought, ice cream cake.

Can you believe it: two years have gone by! Dianna and I are still doing very well, love each other very much, and feel very blessed to have such great families/in-laws! Here is to another happy year of marriage.