Hurricanes and Football

The phone rang midmorning on Friday. Now, that's not an unusual occurrence here at Daily Yak central, but it was my wife this time. OK, that's not all that unusual either, but there was something different about the tone of her voice on this particular call. She sounded almost excited.

"I've set you up for a DNO*" she stated matter-of-factly, though I could tell she was grinning as she spoke the words. "Uh oh!" I thought, "what has she done?"

"How'd you like to go to the Redskins game tomorrow night?"

I was stunned. I'm a huge 'Skins fan (as I've mentioned once or twice before), but I've only gone to one game in my life. And now my dear wife was offering me tickets to not just any game, but the first home game since Joe Gibbs came back as coach!

"Sure," I said in my mind. In reality I think it came out more like "Yeaagghhh!!!" Think Howard Dean scream.

Now Friday evening the weather forecasters were predicting that Hurricane Charley, having hit Florida and started it's trek up the eastcoast, would probably be walloping our area with 40mph winds and 4-6 inches of driving rain right around game time Saturday. Hmmm....

Well, what's a little wind and rain for a true fan? I have a poncho. And besides, the bad weather would probably keep away some people (obviously not true fans), and maybe once we were in the stadium we could move to some better seats (the tickets my wife bought were way up in the nosebleed section). So, I called a buddy of mine (a fellow stay-at-home dad) and to see if he was up for braving the elements to cheer on the burgundy and gold. He was.

So, prepared for the worst, we headed off to the game Saturday night. It was raining quite heavily by the time we arrived, and we hunkered down for a wet night. As it turned out though, Charley moved more to the east of us than anticipated and we were spared the brunt of the storm. The rain stopped completely before the end of the first quarter, and we enjoyed the rest of the game in relative comfort.

I wound up a bit hoarse from all the cheering, and the game went into overtime (we lost, sadly, in the end) so I didn't get back home 'til 1:30 in the morning, but all in all I still had a great time. Do I have the best wife or what? Buying football tickets for her man so he can have a night out with the guys. :-)


*Our local stay-at-home dads group organizes DNOs (or Dads Night Out) periodically. It's a chance for the dads to get out of the house, without the kids, for an evening of fun and fellowship, or at least a good beer. ;-)