& that's the way life goes

Happy last day of February! Usually it’s January that I’m happy to see go but this February has been brutal with the amount of snow and crappy driving conditions. Good riddance. That also means that summer is creeping a little bit closer every day. Woofuckinghoo! I miss my flip flops!

I won’t bore you too much more with my Tampa trip. We went to the game and we were amazed by the sea of red. I felt a little sorry for Tampa because when the Wings scored 6 times the place was crazy. It was even so bad (for Tampa Bay) that there were not 1 but 3 octopi (a Detroit hockey tradition for playoffs) thrown out onto the ice. I mean these Wings fans stuffed an octopus in their pants! (I don’t know if it actually came from their pants…) One of the Tampa Bay crew members got fined for swinging one around. I don’t know if he knew that the gesture is disrespectful to the home team or not. You can only swing Octopi in Detroit, sorry Stevie Y. I read an article that even the upper management was embarrassed by all the red in the seats. The Lightning organization vowed not to raise ticket prices for playoffs this year or next season so Lightning fans will buy tickets to avoid the massive amounts of out of state fans.

Water Taxi to the game – It was GORGEOUS out

Outside my favorite Arena – St Pete Times Forum

Sea of Red at the Game

The rest of the time was spent walking around Tampa and spending quality time with C. Oh and of course, enjoying the pool and the view from our balcony!

I found this really cool shell but when I took it back to the table we realized it was moving so I put it back in the water

We got into Tampa and our rental car around noon.  It was exciting to walk outside and be engulfed in warmth.  I think I let out a content sigh.  And then I pulled our Nissan Altima (it was equipped was one of those buttons you push to start the car, more about that later) out onto Spruce Street.  Fucking goddamn traffic.  I had a moment where I realized again why I left.  What is with all the fucking traffic?  I haz a feeling.

Moving on…

So our car had one of those push to start buttons.  The idea is great I love it but you can easily (as C did a couple times) forget to turn the car off or lock it (like I did when we got to the Tampa Bay Lightening Game and we had to walk back after dinner when I couldn’t remember getting the keyfab out).

We brought our tennis raquets in hopes of going to our old stomping grounds and Craig Park.  It was the coolest place to play tennis, right on an inlet and November-March it’s a manatee sanctuary.

I'm not sure what he is doing

me sporting my Roger Federer hat

i'm a dork

Obviously from my beginning paragraph I don’t miss Florida much.  And I’m not bashing it, it’s just not for me.  But I love Love LOVE Publix!  Like we are talking if it was a person I would marry it.  Well…you know what I mean.  I love that their produce, seafood and meat is all pretty fresh.  They also have amazing subs.

you are totally like 'OMG she took a picture of the sub' aren't you?

One other thing I couldn’t complain about is the weather.  Seriously it was beautiful out.

sunning myself

I can’t just lay at the beach though.  I get bored much to C’s displeasure.  He’s perfectly content sitting there.  I can only read so long before I feel like I might go insane.

We booked a hotel through hotels.com.  This was my first time doing that and I would definitely do it again.  We stayed at the Quality Hotel in Clearwater.  It was a pleasant surprise.  It was really clean and the room was nice with a balcony that had a corner view of the water.  We seriously only paid like $80/night and it was way more than we expected.  They were always cleaning and the staff was super friendly.  They also had coffee in the lobby at all times with the good International Delight creamers.  My favorite

Thursday night we went and saw Tampa Bay Lightening play the Detroit Red Wings.  Would you believe it took almost 2 hours to get into Tampa?

F*&#$ traffic

They don’t play each other usually more than once a year.  Last year we saw them play at Joe Louis and the year before that I think we saw them in Tampa.  It was pretty fun and it’s always good to see all my hockey boyfriends.

Vinnie LeCavalier, we did get booed a little standing down at the Lightening end but I figured I could take 'em if they gave me trouble

Pavel Datsyuk

Ozzie!

Look at all this red!  Lots of Red Wings fans in Tampa Bay!

Andreychuk's Bar across the street from the Forum.

I'm not lying

This is only the first couple of days.  I think I’ll have to make this part I and part II will be tomorrow.  I took 138 pictures (a lot were at the game).  Crazy I know!

Stay Tuned!