Food, football and fighting in New Jersey

Corey and Stacie sittin' in a tree....

...watching the Giants vs. Dallas game last weekend screamin' like a couple'a buffoons.

This is one of our favorite traditions.  Corey has a wonderful friend who is a season ticket holder and lets us buy his tickets for this game every year.  This year ended up being a super important game and that made it a little extra exciting.

Add some persistent rain and a whole bunch of crazy Dallas fans and you get one good story.

Going into this game, we're usually a lot more prepared than we were this time.  We know who we're going with (we get four tickets), we have a set game time and most importantly we have a tailgate game plan.  This year, however, we had a bunch of people not quite interested in the tickets, the game time changed to 8pm (hellooooo late night three hour drive!), and we did zero tailgating.

Eh.

Although I do enjoy the collective cheering and stuffing of faces with meat, and 8pm did technically put me in a different state waaaaaay past my bedtime, at the end of the day (literally) I was still going to be planting my buns in a seat on the 10 yard line screaming like a 7th grade cheerleader.  And that was pret-ty okay by me.

So there we were, walking into the stadium in a steady drizzle.

And then there we were, watching warm ups in a steady drizzle.

It was raining, is what I'm trying to say.  We got rained on off and on for the entire game, which would have been that side of terrible if it wasn't an unseasonable 50 degrees.  But rain is still rain.  And when you get those towels you're s'posed to wave when good things happen wet you end up launching a lot of water into unsuspecting eyeballs.

Whoopsie daisies.

So far, I haven't mentioned a thing about the game.  Maybe you've noticed.  But that's only because all of the action happened in the stands.  We were surrounded by Dallas fans.

Dallas fans from New Jersey.

Here's something I was unaware of before moving to New York: New Jersey is terrible.

There.

I just became offensive.

Or insulting.

Whichever applies.

My apologies, New Jersey.  But your roads make me turn four times to go straight, and your people are mean and abrasive and scary.

Corey and I were lucky enough to sit in front of father-of-the-year, and I say that with every ounce of sarcasm I can muster from deep within my bones.  Mr. Stereotypical New Jersey himself brought his entire family, children and all, to the game to cheer on their team, the Cowboys.

The following is an excerpt from an overheard conversation within two minutes of the first quarter:

"(playful ribbing from two Giants fans in front of us)"

"I'm here with my f(udging) family!  You want to f(udging) come back here??  I'll kick your f(udging) a(pple).   Yeah, that's right you couple'a qu(esos).  Turn the f(udge) around.  I'm here with my f(udging) family."

Apparently, he was there with his family.

And he doesn't want his 10-year-old to know what it means to be innocently teased.

Did I not mention his 10-year-old was standing to his right?

I wasn't surprised when the drunk two rows ahead of us started throwing around fudge-bombs in Mr. New Jersey's general direction his kid came back with:

"Kiss my a(pple)!"

If only I'd packed a bar of Irish Spring...

Maybe I'm just old fashioned.

In between all the fun there was actually a football game.

A pretty good game!  It's always good when you can walk out of a stadium and say your team is going to the playoffs.

That's what I always say.

It's also good when you can go to bed at 9:30pm, but sometimes you just have to make sacrifices.