Better Late Than Never

First of all…I just want to say, “I am back”!! Life has been hectic lately and I am sorry for the lack of posts but I am going to be better…I promise...I think…no wait I promise…ok I will try. On the bright side my absence from blogging means I was actually out doing stuff and have things to post about. Hehehe.

Better late than never! That is the idea I am going with for this post. Even though I know the post is technically 3 weeks hold, I had so much fun I thought it was worth posting!!

My boss was SUPER nice and allowed Danny and I to use two of our suite box tickets to go to a Kings game on March 6th!! We had so much fun!! So much that it is worth a 3 week old post! Good things come to those that wait, right? As everyone knows Danny and I have been on a budget lately so this allowed us to get out of the house and as Danny put it, “it is like we are on a date”.

The game was in L.A. at Staples Center so we wanted to head out early since L.A. traffic is a nightmare!! We actually made pretty good time out there until we got into the heart of L.A. where traffic literally just stopped! We sat on the freeway with nothing else to do but people watch and let me tell you there were some interesting people sitting next to us in traffic. At one point I was looking at the Staples Center from our car, so close yet so far, I told Danny I was going to get out and walk and I would see him there. Hehehehe!! Funny…but I really would have made it faster.

We arrived at the arena about an hour before game time so we decided to walk around the surrounding area. I think it is so crazy how in L.A. you can be walking in the ghetto and then PLOP there is an insanely nice building, like the St. Regis. I just think the idea of paying all that money to leave in such an affluent building and then you walk out your door and there is trash and graffiti everywhere is not logical…but I am a Master Planned community girl. I love cookie cutter homes because that means my neighbors house looks just as nice as mine!

There are several nice restaurants in the area surrounding Staples center but we didn’t want to eat because we knew there would be free food in the suite box and hey who are we to pass up free food. We did make a quick stop into a restaurant that Danny has been talking about, The Palms. It was definitely packed and smelled so yummy. I would love to go back when free food isn’t hanging in front of me. Since we had been walking around LA I wanted to make a quick stop in the bathroom. This is the point where things got a little icky. I hate dirty bathrooms more than anything and this one had a BIG TIME DIRTY…I can’t even talk about it. Plus I realized while I was in the bathroom that wearing BRAND NEW shoes for a walking tour of LA is probably not the best idea…I had BAD blisters on both feet. Before I left the bathroom I tucked, moved and covered my jeans just right so that Danny wouldn’t be able to see my blister…why you ask? Because he would yell at me. Hehehehe…no I am not joking. Oh and I figured I should get at least one picture from our pre-game activities. So I snapped this one.

Me in the bathroom at The Palms:


And off to the Staples Center.

I have been to a hockey game before but I must admit it had been a long time. It is crazy the temperature difference in the stadium when you come for a hockey game versus a basketball game, I was a cold little popsicle. Since it had been so long since I had been to a hockey game I wanted to brave the cold temperatures head down to the ice before we went up to the suite box. We met a super nice usher, I can’t remember his name (sorry – but he did make our game experience even better), that let us go down to the ice to snap a couple shots.

The ice:

Me standing in front of the ice, I know dorky but I was so excited:

After playing around down by the ice we went back up and chatted with the usher a little more. ALL Danny had on his mind was food… he kept asking the usher when they brought the food up to the suite boxes. Poor guy had no idea but was trying not to disappoint Danny because he could see starvation written across his face and I kept telling him they wouldn’t bring it out till right before the game.

If you haven’t been to the suite boxes at Staples Center before you don’t know that the elevators of the SLOWEST ones on the planet, I swear…you can time them if you don’t believe me. And then once you make it past the elevators you reach the three suite box floors. These three floors are navigated by a serious of escalators, now mind you they make it mighty easy for you to get up the escalators but getting down is a whole different story. My theory…it is like a Vegas casino where they want to trap you in the casino floor so you are forced to gamble (I have fallen for this trick before and $800 was gone before I knew what was going on)…Staples wants to trap you into the three high priced floors where you spend money on sushi, privates bars and all sorts of food cooked to order special for you.

When we arrived at the suite box we were the first ones there and to Danny’s crazy happiness, and my having to admit I was wrong, the food was already there. Danny was like a kid in a candy shop he didn’t know where to start first but he dug right in! Danny always says that all our pictures are of me, which I think is partly because he likes to take pictures and mostly because I am such a ham), but I was able to snap this one picture of him and he couldn’t even turnaround from the food long enough for me to get it.

Danny and the food:

I was just so excited to see the suite box; I had been before but forgot how pretty it is.

The view facing out:

More food:

As I said I am a dork and was very excited to be in the suite box so I took this picture:

After about 15 minutes with the suite box to ourselves, where we pretty much sat in silence as we both had chicken tenders, hot dogs, sandwiches, chips and salsa and anything else we could get out hands on…hehehe, the rest of the group arrived and it was game time.

Once other people arrived I tried to keep the, what I like to call “suite box tourist” to a minimum, I didn’t want to embarrass my co-worker in the suite. Hehehehe.

I was able to snap a few pictures of the pre-game activities.

The players take the ice:

LA Kings in lights:

They projected some really cool images and even movies on the ice, unfortunately my blog camera isn’t sophisticated enough to capture them.

After the first period of the game we decided to brave the escalators and head downstairs so Danny could get some more food and I could get cotton candy. I myself wasn’t hungry but I have this urge I can’t fight, that whenever I go somewhere and there is cotton candy I HAVE to have some…hungry or not. So as we were arriving back from our trip to get cotton candy, a chocolate chip cookie, Dips ice cream bites and something else I can’t remember, we saw the dessert cart sitting in front of our suite. If you haven’t experienced the dessert cart before it isn’t something you turn down. To me it reminds me of the carts in children’s books like Harry Potter or the Polar Express where while on the train a cart is brought around the has everything a child’s wild imagination could desire. So cotton candy in hand I selected my one dessert and Danny’s two. I snapped a picture because it all looked so yummy, please take note my dessert (a yummy Smores thing) is pretty much gone because it look me this long to stop myself long enough from to take a picture but on that same note Danny’s cheesecake didn’t even make the picture.

Too hard to resist:

Since I have spent the longest post ever talking about everything but the actual game, I guess I should mention that. The game was AWESOME!! I used to love hockey when I was in high school and never missed a Kings game…I just lost that somewhere along the road to being an adult. However attending this game reminded me why I used to love it so much. The Kings played the Senators and the final score was 2-0. The best part of the game was that rookie goalie, Erik Ersberg, who I think was playing in his 3rd NHL game and first start, won his first NHL game with a shut out!! Great story for such a young kid.

My favorite picture of the night was the one my co-worker Eric took of me and Danny. Danny and I don’t get a lot of pictures out so it was great for us to get one on such a cool night.

Me and Danny: