Sometimes my life is AWESOME
Dear Internet,
Long time no chat.
I had the best weekend ever. I touched Stuart Holden's sweaty jersey. OMG, STU'S JERSEY!!!
But in a nutshell I went to Chicago with Ken and lisaofdoom to see the USMNT play their friendly against Poland at Soldier Field on Saturday night. We got in on Friday and had enough time to go see the Columbus Crew take on the Chicago Fire at Toyota Park. We got to see Brian McBride score a goal. I just, OMG SO AWESOME. The weekend was already off to an amazing start.
Saturday morning we got up and went to the Shedd Aquarium and the Adler Planetarium. I had the most fun staring at the octopus and saying okapus over and over again like I was three. Ok, maybe not, maybe I enjoyed the otters and the belugas and the dolphins the best. And I touched a starfish and took ridiculous pictures of Ken and Lisa. The best part of Saturday's pictures is we match with our away jerseys. YAY USMNT. At the planetarium I went into the kid's section like you do and there was this one kind of cool "you're in space" thing that I couldn't get them to come back and do with me. LAME. But the Night Sky planetarium show was the best part because the guy doing the presentation was hella amusing. Then it was a little after four and we still needed food before the game at Soldier field.
We wanted to get pizza but there just wasn't enough time. The three of us were walking in the opposite direction of Soldier Field and it was super depressing to be going in the opposite direction of the gaggle of people headed to the field in their Poland and US garb. We started making a list of player jerseys. I was keeping a tally but that went away by the time we got in the stadium. Anyway, we got food at a local sandwich shop and kept flailing at the number of jerseys we saw. OMG THE GAME WAS SO CLOSE. After food we started making our way toward the stadium again, finally going in the direction of the other soccer nuts. I was compulsively refreshing twitter to see the lineup for the game since we needed to know if our jersey namesakes were starting and almost killed myself like three times while walking and twittering. (Oh, yeah, the three of us didn't just have jerseys, we got them personalized, I have Bocanegra, Lisa has Cherundolo, and Ken has Feilhaber.) Finally we make it to the stadium and for every US supporter I'm sure there were like 3 or 4 Poland supporters that made me sad but it was not unexpected.
So we got to our seats and OMG THEY WERE SO CLOSE TO THE FIELD. We were on like the 40 yard line and in row 11. My little 3x zoom camera almost did the job from there. But never fear, I jumped up and ran down to the front when the boys came out and started warm-ups. I've got some excellent pics from there, they aren't that close, but still fabulous because I took them with my own camera. While I was standing there taking pictures for the first few minutes I was right next to a Polish supporter who was yelling obscenities at the US players, Deuce in particular, BUT YOU KNOW WHAT, THAT JUST MEANS HE'S AFRAID OF WHAT CLINT CAN DO BECAUSE HE WILL FUCK UP YOUR SHIT. ♥ ♥ ♥ Anyway, I took roughly 120 pictures in about 5 minutes then returned to my section. Then the game was about to start. They played the Polish anthem first and it felt like everyone around us was singing it the came the Star Spangled Banner. In my 25 years of life I've never felt patriotic. Ever, I had some forced patriotism after 9/11 but I still didn't really feel it deep down. The USMNT makes me so fucking patriotic it kills me. I started singing the national anthem at the top of my lungs, then about halfway through Lisa punched me and I realized I'd fucked up and skipped a verse or line or something, take home point, I WAS PRACTICALLY SCREAMING THE ANTHEM AND I FUCKED IT UP, I am awesome. But I had energy for our team so that's what is really important. Or something.
And then the game started. AND IT WAS GLORIOUS. Jozy spent a few minutes actually proving why Bob keeps calling him up, Mo was kicking it on the back line and being awesome, Tim as usual, was a fucking beast in the goal, Stu and Dolo were communicating with each other and playing really well and Jones lived up to his hype. I am not going to talk about any of the negatives re the team and their playing. Yeah, they fucked up, because there were so many opportunities for us to make that a win but they are my team and I love them and I will fuck up your shit if you try to bad mouth them. Just saying. I really did think that I was gonna have to hold Lisa back at one point because the guys behind us kept talking about the back line. And most of what they said was valid but I still thought Lisa was gonna turn around and deck them. But Stu absolutely stole the match for me. He got to do so much since Landon wasn't on the field. He takes the corners and the free kicks and he's all over the field and if he ever gets a chance to be on the team without Landon he's gonna be in the 10 jersey, I just know it. Stu is awesome.
Then the match was over and I'd spent way too much on truly shitty beer and Stu comes over to our section and takes his jersey off and throws it into the stands, I DIDN'T CATCH IT, BUT the next best thing happened, the girl who ended up with it (Ken said a guy caught it and then gave it to her, he was probably a Polish supporter) let us touch it and take pictures with it. So those of you who are friends with me on facebook and can go see my excitement and my new profile pictures. OMG STU I LOVE YOU!!! And, and, and I tweeted about it and Stu @replyed me which pretty much was the perfect end to an amazing evening. :D I really do want a Stu jersey one day. He's amazing. Hopefully he'll get way more play time in 2014.
The walk back from the stadium and around downtown Chicago a bit and eventually back to the El was awesome too because there were so many jerseys and people randomly hi-fiving us for our USMNT jerseys and it was just an amazing experience that I will never forget. Like when we saw a guy in a DeMerit jersey and we told him it was awesome and he just asked me and Lisa if we knew him too. And we just kind of stared at him in confusion as he told us Jay is a college buddy of his. Then he said he'd tell Jay that we thought he was awesome. The only part of that exchange that wasn't awesome was that guy thinking you had to know Jay to have his jersey. JAY DEMERIT IS A BAMF AND HE WILL FUCK UP YOUR SHIT. I also thought about getting DeMerit on my jersey. Why must they be so expensive? I want like the whole team on my back. Wait, what?
Oh and then a really drunk polish supporter started hitting on Lisa and that was pretty amusing cause you know who else will fuck up your shit? Kenneth.
But yeah, oh, and back to the game really quickly, when Dolo went down the first time at the very beginning (which was right in front of us, if he hadn't been injured I'd have been taking pictures like a crazy woman) my first thought was OMG ROADIE IS GOING TO KILL ME and that kept being the first thought in my head every time he went down for any reason Saturday night. roadrunner1896 said she'd fuck up my shit (not in those words though) if anything happened to Dolo while he was here for friendlies.
So yeah, that was a really long nutshell, aren't you glad I didn't give you the un-edited version? :p
Chicago was amazing and wonderful and I'm so glad we decided to be ridiculous and go to the game. BEST WEEKEND EVER.
Pictures to come soon.
Long time no chat.
I had the best weekend ever. I touched Stuart Holden's sweaty jersey. OMG, STU'S JERSEY!!!
But in a nutshell I went to Chicago with Ken and lisaofdoom to see the USMNT play their friendly against Poland at Soldier Field on Saturday night. We got in on Friday and had enough time to go see the Columbus Crew take on the Chicago Fire at Toyota Park. We got to see Brian McBride score a goal. I just, OMG SO AWESOME. The weekend was already off to an amazing start.
Saturday morning we got up and went to the Shedd Aquarium and the Adler Planetarium. I had the most fun staring at the octopus and saying okapus over and over again like I was three. Ok, maybe not, maybe I enjoyed the otters and the belugas and the dolphins the best. And I touched a starfish and took ridiculous pictures of Ken and Lisa. The best part of Saturday's pictures is we match with our away jerseys. YAY USMNT. At the planetarium I went into the kid's section like you do and there was this one kind of cool "you're in space" thing that I couldn't get them to come back and do with me. LAME. But the Night Sky planetarium show was the best part because the guy doing the presentation was hella amusing. Then it was a little after four and we still needed food before the game at Soldier field.
We wanted to get pizza but there just wasn't enough time. The three of us were walking in the opposite direction of Soldier Field and it was super depressing to be going in the opposite direction of the gaggle of people headed to the field in their Poland and US garb. We started making a list of player jerseys. I was keeping a tally but that went away by the time we got in the stadium. Anyway, we got food at a local sandwich shop and kept flailing at the number of jerseys we saw. OMG THE GAME WAS SO CLOSE. After food we started making our way toward the stadium again, finally going in the direction of the other soccer nuts. I was compulsively refreshing twitter to see the lineup for the game since we needed to know if our jersey namesakes were starting and almost killed myself like three times while walking and twittering. (Oh, yeah, the three of us didn't just have jerseys, we got them personalized, I have Bocanegra, Lisa has Cherundolo, and Ken has Feilhaber.) Finally we make it to the stadium and for every US supporter I'm sure there were like 3 or 4 Poland supporters that made me sad but it was not unexpected.
So we got to our seats and OMG THEY WERE SO CLOSE TO THE FIELD. We were on like the 40 yard line and in row 11. My little 3x zoom camera almost did the job from there. But never fear, I jumped up and ran down to the front when the boys came out and started warm-ups. I've got some excellent pics from there, they aren't that close, but still fabulous because I took them with my own camera. While I was standing there taking pictures for the first few minutes I was right next to a Polish supporter who was yelling obscenities at the US players, Deuce in particular, BUT YOU KNOW WHAT, THAT JUST MEANS HE'S AFRAID OF WHAT CLINT CAN DO BECAUSE HE WILL FUCK UP YOUR SHIT. ♥ ♥ ♥ Anyway, I took roughly 120 pictures in about 5 minutes then returned to my section. Then the game was about to start. They played the Polish anthem first and it felt like everyone around us was singing it the came the Star Spangled Banner. In my 25 years of life I've never felt patriotic. Ever, I had some forced patriotism after 9/11 but I still didn't really feel it deep down. The USMNT makes me so fucking patriotic it kills me. I started singing the national anthem at the top of my lungs, then about halfway through Lisa punched me and I realized I'd fucked up and skipped a verse or line or something, take home point, I WAS PRACTICALLY SCREAMING THE ANTHEM AND I FUCKED IT UP, I am awesome. But I had energy for our team so that's what is really important. Or something.
And then the game started. AND IT WAS GLORIOUS. Jozy spent a few minutes actually proving why Bob keeps calling him up, Mo was kicking it on the back line and being awesome, Tim as usual, was a fucking beast in the goal, Stu and Dolo were communicating with each other and playing really well and Jones lived up to his hype. I am not going to talk about any of the negatives re the team and their playing. Yeah, they fucked up, because there were so many opportunities for us to make that a win but they are my team and I love them and I will fuck up your shit if you try to bad mouth them. Just saying. I really did think that I was gonna have to hold Lisa back at one point because the guys behind us kept talking about the back line. And most of what they said was valid but I still thought Lisa was gonna turn around and deck them. But Stu absolutely stole the match for me. He got to do so much since Landon wasn't on the field. He takes the corners and the free kicks and he's all over the field and if he ever gets a chance to be on the team without Landon he's gonna be in the 10 jersey, I just know it. Stu is awesome.
Then the match was over and I'd spent way too much on truly shitty beer and Stu comes over to our section and takes his jersey off and throws it into the stands, I DIDN'T CATCH IT, BUT the next best thing happened, the girl who ended up with it (Ken said a guy caught it and then gave it to her, he was probably a Polish supporter) let us touch it and take pictures with it. So those of you who are friends with me on facebook and can go see my excitement and my new profile pictures. OMG STU I LOVE YOU!!! And, and, and I tweeted about it and Stu @replyed me which pretty much was the perfect end to an amazing evening. :D I really do want a Stu jersey one day. He's amazing. Hopefully he'll get way more play time in 2014.
The walk back from the stadium and around downtown Chicago a bit and eventually back to the El was awesome too because there were so many jerseys and people randomly hi-fiving us for our USMNT jerseys and it was just an amazing experience that I will never forget. Like when we saw a guy in a DeMerit jersey and we told him it was awesome and he just asked me and Lisa if we knew him too. And we just kind of stared at him in confusion as he told us Jay is a college buddy of his. Then he said he'd tell Jay that we thought he was awesome. The only part of that exchange that wasn't awesome was that guy thinking you had to know Jay to have his jersey. JAY DEMERIT IS A BAMF AND HE WILL FUCK UP YOUR SHIT. I also thought about getting DeMerit on my jersey. Why must they be so expensive? I want like the whole team on my back. Wait, what?
Oh and then a really drunk polish supporter started hitting on Lisa and that was pretty amusing cause you know who else will fuck up your shit? Kenneth.
But yeah, oh, and back to the game really quickly, when Dolo went down the first time at the very beginning (which was right in front of us, if he hadn't been injured I'd have been taking pictures like a crazy woman) my first thought was OMG ROADIE IS GOING TO KILL ME and that kept being the first thought in my head every time he went down for any reason Saturday night. roadrunner1896 said she'd fuck up my shit (not in those words though) if anything happened to Dolo while he was here for friendlies.
So yeah, that was a really long nutshell, aren't you glad I didn't give you the un-edited version? :p
Chicago was amazing and wonderful and I'm so glad we decided to be ridiculous and go to the game. BEST WEEKEND EVER.
Pictures to come soon.