Saints weekend Part 1

My hat and our tickets
Cleveland Bound!


I was hoping to get out of work early Friday so we could get an early start on the trip to Cleveland but alas, no such luck. I made it home around 5:35 and ate a quick bite of spaghetti that H Ditty made the night before. Spaghetti is the one food that's 100 times better as a leftover. Then I headed out to get my oil changed. There's a place a 1/2 mile from our house and as I'm pulling in they're shutting their doors. They closed at 6, it's 6:15, sucks big time.

The closest place now is a couple more miles away. So I head on down giving them a call to make sure they're still open, yep, until 7. I pull in and all three bays are taken up with the 3rd bay having a car waiting. I pull up to the 2nd bay and proceed to wait. About 15 minutes later someone else pulls in and parks at the 1st bay. Another 10 minutes later the two cars in bays 1 and 2 are pulled out and I'm expecting to see my car pull in. Nope, the van in the 1st bay is pulled in and the car that was waiting at the 3rd bay pulls into where my car should've been. Now that one I understand, they were there before me but if they were going to take the time to move my car out of the way then they should've done the same with that van. Instead it's another 20 minutes at least before my car finally gets pulled into the 3rd bay. When it's all said and done I've been there over an hour.

To top it off H Ditty calls to say that The Brat Prince has taken another shit behind the tv, with H Ditty right there! We're not happy campers about it.

I rush home and immediately go down to clean the shit up (he's got a bad gag reflex so I get shit duty) and then go into packing mode. We're bad, we or I should say I, usually pack the day we're leaving. Every now and then I'll begin to get the clothes organized the night before but never actually packed.

We pack up the car, say goodbye to the cats and head to the gas station to fill up on gas, ice and cokes. After that we head to the station to drop off the key to H Ditty's partner that'll be feeding the cats. And by 10 we're on the highway.

There's construction through Chicago and we miss a turn off. Not a good part of town either and I'm all pissy that he wasn't helping me. Well, he was but not how I wanted him too of course. So I'm getting upset and we're raising our voices at each other but we get back on the highway in a couple minutes and it's all good. The rest of the ride went pretty well. He tried to rest while I tried to stay awake and keep us alive. Finally around 2ish and half way there I had to switch with him. We got in a little after 4 and within minutes I'm trying to fall asleep. Actually, they're an hour ahead so it's really after 5.

I had set the alarm for 9:15 or so but keep hitting the snooze. I finally make myself get out of bed around 10 to get in the shower, after that I get him up to get ready and we're on our way to Canton (an hour away) to go to the Football Hall of Fame. That was a good time. I could've spent longer in there but H Ditty is only able to do museums for so long and then he's done. I love to read so I could read everything there but he can only read so much. We were there about an hour and a half and saw most of what we really wanted to see anyway. Mostly Saints and Bears stuff. The busts of all the inductees were fun to see. Walter Payton didn't look like what we remember him as, but then, it was of him the year he was inducted so of course he wouldn't look like his football days. I observed that the first 7 years or so all the busts were of clearly white men. Finally the 1st black man showed up and after that it was pretty well mixed.

On the way back we stopped off at a couple stores for a few items and then finally made it back to the hotel room around 5:30. We decided to order pizza from a certain red roofed place. There's one phone number to call for the whole county for deliveries. H Ditty calls, places the order which includes an extra sauce for the breadsticks and crushed red peppers. He's told it'll be about 30-35 minutes. 30 minutes later we get a call asking if we had ordered a pizza, I said yes, the girl says ok thanks and we hung up. We're waiting and waiting and no one comes to the door. I can't see anywhere on the phone on how to get to the front desk so I head down there thinking maybe their policy is that they don't send food deliverers up to the rooms. I get to the lobby and no one is there with a pizza. I ask the girls behind the counter and they say they haven't seen anyone and when guests order pizzas they always send the deliverers up. So I head back up to our room and we wait some more. An hour later H Ditty calls the number back and they give him to "customer service." They say the orders been taken and the person should have been here by now. They say if the pizza is cold they'll make us another one. About 5 minutes later the doorman calls up to our room asking if we ordered a pizza. I ask him to send them up and she gets to our room within minutes. She keeps saying she's sorry, I check the breadsticks, they're warm enough. I ask if there's an extra sauce, nope, what about the crushed peppers, nope. She's sorry again, they didn't put them in there, sorry, sorry. She was going to get over 5 dollars in a tip for having to come to a hotel room and we're nice like that. It went down to just over 2 bucks and that's only because I didn't feel like being a complete bitch and gave her a 20. But she's really sorry, no excuse or reason given though. It would've been nice to get some kind of reason.

We've been playing cribbage and he's been kicking my ass. We continue to play while eating and watching Serenity. Great movie based on a great tv show, Firefly, that should never have been canceled.

After the movie's over I take a bath to relax and then we watch Dane Cook. Never seen the guy, his name is familiar to me but not to H Ditty. We decide to give him a look see. The first 15 minutes we can't figure out how he's managed to fill this huge stadium, people are laughing but we're not. Finally, he starts to make us smile/giggle and then eventually we've laughed out loud a few times. But I'd say more then not we're not even smiling. In fact, H Ditty's head is bobbing up down as he's falling asleep so I decide to turn this guy off and go to bed so we'll be rested for the big game.

Tomorrow's post will be of the game.

Media quote of the day: Let's play football bitch. - Nigel 'The Leg' Gruff from The Replacements