I Went On A Date The Other Night...

...with my brothers and 18 of their closest over 35 hockey team buddies! Sasha is one year older and Lexi is three years younger. Here's the poo on the sibs. Sash has been mistaken for Tom Cruise (in his non-crazy younger days) and Lex looks like a better, gentler not so conceited or steroided version of Fabio (at least he used to when his hair was long). This has nothing to do with my post, but I wanted you all to have a visual.

I knew this was going to be an interesting night when we loaded a chock full beer cooler into the car and no one, I repeat no one - besides me - including the cop who was driving dug into the consuming on the Turnpike. I wanted out of the car for a hot moment (umm, precious cargo, hello?) when I realized what was going down, but then for some reason I intuitively understood that this was par for the course and not particularly out of the ordinary. Would the cop get out of it if pulled over? Is this how things work in the brotherhood? I didn't know, but we got there safely.

Only after commenting about the "homeless" fat guy on the entrance to the Turnpike.
Tom the Cop: "Yep, that dude must be starving to death."

And laughing at the 6 people staring at their golf cart that had tipped into the canal.

We were only two minutes into the trip and I felt like I was a fly on the wall in a men's locker room. They seriously forgot I was there, until Bob berated Lexi for belching and possibly offending my sensibilities...until I answered him with a huge self induced burp of my own.

Anyway, we pulled into the VIP parking lot and I had to wait until all 5 of them had peed in the bushes before we could go in.

We arrived the Oilers/Panthers hockey game. When we lived in Edmonton, we were all die hard Oilers/Gretzky fans in the 80s, so there was no question as to where our loyalties lay. A friend of ours is with Budweiser, so we hung out and ate and drank in the Bud Suite and the four of us (3 + 1 neighbour Joey) were granted the 1st row seats, kissing the glass right next to the goalie!! Holy crap, were these awesome seats. I have never been so close to sweating, grunting, gargantuan men, intent on crushing the living snot out of each other while literally performing ballet moves on ice (with an added puck-seeking appendage).

15 seconds into the game, a Panther got smeared on the boards right in front of us. It was awesome. Not so awesome was the goal he scored not 45 seconds later. The long and short of it is that this was THE most exciting game Ive ever seen - on TV or in person. The Oilers were down 2 goals with just over two minutes to go and they tied it up. Lex jumped up at every opportunity and waved his Canadian flag all over the place. Joe was so excited that he was going to be able to see something he'd never seen before - a shootout - that he nearly knocked over the glass when the time ran out. We laughed and laughed until one of us was able to squeak out that we still had to get through 5 minutes of overtime before a shootout could happen. Poor guy was crushed, but that soon dissipated when it was still tied at the close of the 5.

Shootout commenced. Edmonton got two by the third round and it was all over but the glass banging! I have never had such a good time with my boys. It was great.

And, despite crawling up the ass of a State Trooper, we didn't get pulled over on the way home either!