My date with the New England Patriots

As mentioned in yesterday's post, The Boss gave me three tickets to a Patriot's pre-season game for last night. This is actually one of the perks of working at The Firm, because my boss is a major sports guy and has season tickets to just about any of the local pro-teams. I have now seen the Pats play twice, the Red Sox twice, the Celtics and the Bruins each once, all on his dime. And these aren't just ANY seats...usually I am sitting in the best possible seats in the house. Last night's seats, for example, were on the 50 yard line, 8th row. Yep, that good! Here's our view:

See what I'm saying?

So, you would think that when you are gifted with a set of $100+ seats (each) to a game, it would be cake to find people interested to go, right? You would think wrong. See, I only learned of these tickets on Tuesday afternoon, that left me very little time to find people with last minute availability. DD is off on vacation this week at Yellowstone or some such, so she wasn't around to go. Shopaholic started a new job and had training this week, so she couldn't go. My brother, who is continually bitching about the fact that I have yet to take him to a game on my boss's tickets, didn't want to go because...well, I don't know why actually, but now he's no longer allowed to bitch about tickets. Then I called BFF, because as long as I've known her, she's been a HUGE Pats fan. Well, she was as excited as I thought she would be, but as timing would have it, her mother in law had just been admitted to the hospital, and they weren't sure yet what was going on with her, so she had to pass on the tickets. (Mom in law is fine by the way). So, now I'm scrambling to figure out who else I can take to this game with me.

I decided to invite Kitty, who is my mom's best friend's daughter, in her early 20's, but someone who I've befriended lately, as she was going through a life change and I sort of took her under my wing a bit, sharing my own personal experiences, and being sort of a mentor of sorts. She was uber excited and so I had ticket taker number 1. As for number two, my friend Henna, who I hadn't seen in a few months had incredibly good timing. She sent me an email on Wednesday morning, saying we should get together for dinner or a movie or something sometime soon, since we hadn't hung out in a while. I emailed her back "How about a Pat's game tomorrow night". And then we were three.

So off we went with visions of tailgating and 8th row seats in our heads. After a bit of traffic (oh, I'm so downplaying the 2 hours we sat in stop and no go traffic), we finally arrived. We were ready to tailgate. Out come the Coronas and...oh crap, we forgot a bottle opener! After some schmoozing, we managed to get our drinks opened and enjoyed some drinking and chatting and the gorgeous weather.

And then it was time to head in to the game. Our seats? AMAZING. The crowd was having a good time, it was the last pre-season game, no major players on the field, just a fun time for all.

We did watch some of the game (I swear we did) but as we were sitting behind the visiting team (NY Giants, if you care), we spent most of the evening appreciating some of the nicer assets of their team...

We left a bit early to beat the traffic out, and I was in bed right around 1AM...getting up for work at 7:30 this morning was not a pleasant experience, and as a non-beer drinker, those 3 beers have left me with an unfortunate headache...OUCH. But hey, it was fun, and totally worth it. OH yeah, and the Pats won, just in case you were wondering!

How was your Thursday evening??