going to Chicago!

When they announced the Winter Classic was going to Wrigley, I knew I had to give this a shot. Laurie grew up in the Chicago area, is a huge Cubs fan, played goalie (footnote 1) in the boys leagues there before there were girls leagues to play in, and was (and is) a huge Hawks fan. I thought it would be just perfect to get her to Chicago for the Winter Classic if I could swing it.

So I started exploring contacts, and thankfully, I found some folks (who shall remain nameless) who agreed, and we now have a ticket, and Laurie’s headed to Chicago for New Years! She promises to blog and post photos.

Nope, I’m not going. This one’s for her. If they ever do a winter classic in Southern Callifornia and the Kings, I’m right on it (with sunscreen) — and I figured two tickets would be asking for more favors than I felt comfortable asking (in reality, I could have gotten a 2nd ticket, but with the cats and birds and holidays and etc, the logistics are just much easier if I stay home and pet-sit) — fortunately, this is only going to cost me six months of washing cars and mowing lawns.

So we now have the plane ticket settled, and the hotel, and I’m jazzed. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Laurie quite so — speechless — as when I told her, since I hadn’t said that I was scheming until I got confirmation it’d actually happened.

And to the nice people (the ones with the really large lawns!) — thanks from both of us. I can’t say just how much this has made us happy; Laurie because she gets to go, me because I was able to send her and work this out without her catching on…

Laurie’s first comment on hearing about this: I am going to freeze my butt off.

My response: and you’ll love ever minute of it.

And she will.

YEAH! I love it when a plan comes together.

(footnote 1: Laurie’s commentary on her growing up: all the girls I grew up with wanted to sleep with Tony Esposito. I wanted to be Tony Esposito — in all honesty, one of the best goalie scouts I’ve seen, I really nag her to start doing her scouting reports again. One of these days I need to tell the Ian Boyce story from our days working with the Spiders…)

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