Conflicted

The Rays and the Red Sox are meeting here at Tropicana Field starting Friday night for the ALCS. Tickets sold out last week and upper deck nosebleed seats at the Trop are STARTING at $100 a piece. Not bad for a team no one in town cared about six months ago!

As a long time Red Soxs fan I'm conflicted. I'll root for my Sox, but it's great to see the hometown former cellar-dwellers of the AL East getting one step away from the big show.

There's been a lot of talk in town about bandwagon fans. But, in their defense, who wants to root for a team that's been in the basement for the last ten straight years?! Would you pay to go see that? The only time the Trop was packed was when the Rays played the Red Sox or the Yankees, who have ENORMOUS fan bases.

Go Sox !

If you haven't seen this yet.. you're missing out!

EPCOT Food and Wine Festival

Details to follow. I also have more pictures, but I have to ask the parties involved if I can post their pictures online. But, much fun was had by all !!

Ugh

I got called to jury duty AGAIN !! This is the second time in the last six months I've been called. I was dismissed the first time. I called the night before and they said they didn't need me. The problem is, the day they called me is during the week I'm covering for a colleague who's going to be out of town that week. Now I have a month to find a fill in doctor. I'm so not looking forward to this.

Rays/Red Sox

One of my best Tampa guy friends called all excited yesterday morning that his evening class had been cancelled at USF. He had scored Rays/Red Sox tickets in the third row of right field for Monday night's game. We're both Red Sox fans, so of course I agreed to go with him and his girlfriend.

The girls at work were great. They moved up my last patient so that I had two patients at 4pm and then I was free to leave. Of course, my 330pm patient showed up at 5 minutes to 4 so I ended up with THREE 4pm patients and a CL check all at 4pm. So, I didn't get out any earlier than normal. I raced home to change and Lance (guy friend) ran Tiger outside to potty and get food.

For an almost play-off type game, I was very sad to see that the Trop wasn't sold out. It was about 50/50 Rays to Red Sox fans.

The big drama was when we got there and realized there were four of us and Lance was holding only THREE printed out tickets from StubHub. We ended up traveling all the way to the opposite side of the stadium to talk to the StubHub rep and prove that we'd paid for four tickets and could they please print out an extra one that we "misplaced". They gave us a little grief, but in the end printed out an extra ticket. By the time we entered the stadium at the bottom of the first inning it was 4-0 Red Sox. By the top of the 5th it was 11-1 Red Sox. It was a shelling. As a Red Sox fans , Lance and I were thrilled. But, the home crowd got dejected and started leaving in the fifth inning.

It was definitely a fun Monday night outing. (not bad for 20 dollars seats either!) Much better than sitting at home on the couch with nothing on TV. I just wish G had been home to go with us.

The horror!

I have today off so I spent most of my morning sleeping in, cleaning, and just be a bum in general. Around 3pm I started to have a smoothie craving. Since G is home this week, due to Hurricane Gustav canceling his weekly trip to New Orleans for work I decided to head to our local Jamba Juice to pick up two Mango A-go-go smoothies (our favorite!) I get to said local smoothie shop only to discover..... THEY CLOSED !!!! The signs were down, the store was gutted, and they had a "for rent" sign up in the window. I'm so dejected right now. When you're craving mango smoothie they were the only place to go! Now, there's another Jamba Juice in Clearwater, but that's a 30+ minute drive which is way above and beyond just for mango smoothie. Smoothie King is pale in comparison and has no mango. I'm a sad panda.

Are you ready for some football ??!!

Football season is here, my friends. It's my favorite time of year. I LOVE fall. Granted, I live in Florida so fall comes MUCH MUCH later and we usually call it winter by the time it gets here.

G and I got off the waiting list for Buccaneers season tickets this year. Our seats are on the third deck in row G. We're right off the 10 yard line. It doesn't sound good here, but trust me the seats are GREAT ! The picture to your left, is the view from my seat before the game. Yes, we're on the East side of the stadium so there's lots of sun!



The people sitting around us are all other season tickets holders and all seem, at this point, to be really nice people. There WAS, however, some drama in the third quarter that I'll get to later.

Before the game, G and I found parking and got there about 90 minutes early. The game started at 8pm, so we headed out to find food. Note to all those heading to Raymond James stadium: There are NO healthy options on the menu !! Beer, chili cheese dogs, fried chicken fingers, nachos, hot dogs, and hamburgers are all that is there. Next time, I will be eating ahead of time. Once regular season starts I'll most likely be tailgating so I can grill something healthier. I"d rather not pay 8 dollars a piece for my heart attack! (Plus drinks) I settled for chicken fingers.

The opening: the guy singing the National Anthem, must have won a contest or something. He was AWFUL! Maybe he was related to a player or coach. They should have explained the reason, cuz he was really REALLY bad.

First quarter the Buccs dominated, Griese looked amazing!

Fun part #2: The Pee Wee Football half time. Lutz Chiefs vs Land O Lakes Gators! The kids were SO CUTE !! 5-9 year olds playing football on the GIANT field at Ray Jay. They were so pumped. One little guy from the Chiefs even ran it in for a touchdown and then jumped into the stands like the pros do. It was so funny. I was waiting for the endzone dance, but it didn't happen. It was definitely a major highlight of the game for me, once the game became kind of a blow-out. It's hard to tell from the picture how tiny the kids are, until you look at the adult coaches in the picture!


The real drama came in the third quarter. Some random guy and his "Girlfriend" came and sat four seats down from G in our row. They didn't belong there, but we left them alone (for now). About ten minutes after they sat down the guy started having a really LOUD conversation about what "girlfriend's" sister is like to date, in bed, etc. This guys is talking EXTREMELY loudly. To the point where G turns to me and goes "more crowd noise please". I could hear the guy's entire conversation and I was sitting six seats away. Finally, the guy in front of him asks him if he can keep it down, in deference to the two 9 year olds sitting in front of him. Gauntlets were thrown, along with F bombs and another guy leaps in the aisle to go get security. Security shows up and check tickets. Amid complaints from the guy and "girlfriend" that they "didn't do anything" security escorts them out because they don't belong in our section to begin with. I was just glad the drama was over.

The rest of the third quarter: Chris Simms goes in as quarterback !! Jess, trust me, I was laughing the whole time! It was really ugly. His chances of getting picked up by another team if he gets dropped are slim if they look at that performance.

Overall, a great time was had by all.