El Super Bowl

Straight Class.

We had the classiest Super Bowl ever.  And by that I mean the boringest.

Don’t get me wrong, great game, and any day the Manning family fails is a good day in my book.

But our atmosphere was so bizarre.  We went to Melia Cohiba, a fancy hotel one block over.  They were showing the game in the “sports bar,” which in Cubañol translates to cigar bar, I guess.  There were two other Americans and a whole bunch of people from the Cayman Islands.  We sat in overstuffed leather chairs, and Brittan and Morgan daintily sipped espresso.  I didn’t drink because I didn’t want to pay 2.75 CUC for a Bucanero.  And I haven’t really touched on this yet, but there aren’t really ads here.  There were occasional commercials for the station itself, or watching specific sports on that station, but no products.  And certainly not the standard American onslaught of commercials that are either wicked funny or wicked lame.

Way too nice, and way too ambivalent. Even the Colts fan in the foreground looks bored.

There was no standard football food, much to our collective display.  MUCH.   Not even wearing my old school pats logo shirt could make me feel better about the lack of bagel bites and swedish meatballs.  And of course the commentary and the display were all en español, which was entertaining.  So while we occasionally read the trivia stuff, we basically only had the commentary of our fellow viewers, when they eventually got rowdy, and we missed out on all those many useless facts.  Perhaps the oddest of all was the simple fact that it was all too quiet, too refined.  Football is meant to be watched with a bud light in one hand and buffalo sauce all over your face, yelling at the tv and cracking jokes.

Hope you enjoyed the game, and I hope Peyton Manning cries.  On camera.

The Final Countdown

You can miss a lot in three months.  While I am pumped to go, here are a few things I’ll miss while I’m gone.

• Pat’s post-season and the Super Bowl.  I watch the Super Bowl every year
• St. Patrick’s Day.  St. Patty’s is a big deal in my family, what with us being absurdly Irish and it being Kev’s birthday and all that.  I’ve also never been 21 for it before, and because of Southeast and UNA last year I pretty much missed it entirely.
• Valentine’s Day.  For me, and any self-respecting UNA kid, V-Day means Harvard and all that that entails.
• Chicken Lou’s TKO.  So delicious.
• Husky Hockey.  The regular season, the Beanpot, etc.  I haven’t missed many games in my tenure at NU; it usually only happens when I’m out of state.
• Harry Potter exhibit at the MOS.  I was hoping to get in there before I leave, but that didn’t happen.  I’m hoping they extend it beyond February.  Even if they do though, it probably won’t still be there in April.
• Milk.  It’s only rationed for babies in Cuba, so I won’t get any for three months.  How weird is that?  And I’m a huge milk drinker so this may be an issue.
• Dates with Meredith in Davis.  It’s a great little neighborhood with some of the best shopping.  Keep an eye out on Poor Little Rich Girl for me, k?
• Alex, my partner in crime.  This will be the first significant amount of time that we’ll spend apart in over a year.  We survived the long hours of UNA, the Egypt trip, a broken ankle, a broken heart and a lot of fun.
• The New England winter.  I know, easy for me to say.

If you were gone for the next three months, what would you miss?  Anything you totally wouldn’t miss?