I’m sorry for only one post this week. I took the week off from work to spend it with BoyGeeding and DaughterGeeding. We went to the Dallas Stars game on Wednesday and had a blast. It was the perfect mini-vacation we all needed.
Things didn’t start out great for the Stars game. Since it was my son and daughter’s first hockey game, I wanted to get there early so they could take in all the pregame festivities. But when we got the the arena, the door was locked. It turns out the game was scheduled to start at 8:30 pm. When I bought the tickets, I noticed the game time said 8:30 PM. Not putting much thought into it, I thought it was referencing Eastern time. When you live in the central time zone, a lot of time you see events are scheduled for Eastern time and just know to adjust for the hour difference. The older version of me would have really let this bother and loom over me. But, Keith 1.5 moving to 2.0 took it in stride and tried to make some lemonade with the lemons I plucked.
One of the many things I hate about divorce, especially a bitter one, is all the “firsts” you miss out on with your children. There’s nothing like experiencing firsts with your children, you know you are making a memory and increase your bonding. Thankfully, I’ve been a part of many of their firsts when we were a whole family, like to the beach, Disney, and major sporting events. I still dealt with a little sadness their mother didn’t tag along, she deserves to experience their first hockey experience. But, she has made it known if I’m a part of anything, she will not be a part of it. I don’t think any parent should miss out on any firsts of their children because of some sort of disagreement.
Going into it, DaughterGeeding wasn’t all that excited. She even asked, due to my mistake of the start of the game, if we could leave early. I reluctantly agreed. However, she was enjoying the experiencing so much that when it hit third period, she asked if we can stay for the whole thing. That sure did warm my heart.
BoyGeeding had a lot of good hockey questions. I wished I knew more about hockey to answer them.
I wonder why I’m not more of a hockey fan. The Dallas Stars really do put together a great product. The atmosphere was pretty wholesome. Compared to the TCU football game we attended last year, there was a lot less cursing and drinking.
The American Airlines Center (it’s hard to believe it’s been around 21 years, it’s held up grate) has an option of buying a souvenir cup. But the cup comes with free refills. I’m not sure what I paid for it. I should be more disciplined paying attention to price when buying certain items. Most of the time, for stuff like this, I ignore whatever the price and just deal with it. Tickets for our nose bleed seats set us back about a hundred each. Of course, Ticketmaster will add in their convenience fees for each individual ticket, then you have parking to pay for, then you realize why you don’t do these things more often.
Since we were playing a Canadian team, the Canadian national anthem was sung. To my surprise, the singer went immediately from it to the Star Spangled Banner. If you didn’t know better, you would have thought it was one long song. I do love the hometown bit of when you get to any part of our anthem that references “star” the whole crowd emphasizes it.
I thought having virtual Christmas lights on the jumbotron the entire time was an unappreciative and unnoticeable bit.
They do a cool little t-shirt drop by attaching them to mini-parachutes and dropping them from the rafters.
I’m proud of my kids for many things, but one thing I take pride in is how well they act in public. They might be a little soft-spoken and shy, but they are well-mannered and respectful.
