Well, that sucked!

I mean, the night in the hotel was fun, and bein' at the game was cool, but I just wish the fuckin' Cowboys had showed up to play. The people that came out in Cowboy uniforms Sunday may well have been bussed in from the loony bin. I kid you not, it was the worst the team has played since 2004 (last time they went without a touchdown) and the worst they played all year. They saved it all up for me. God bless them.

And what made it all super extra special... The woman who purports to love me was actively rooting for the enemy. You see, Denise is a Packers fan.



She spent most of her formative years wedded to a joker from Wisconsin, and has yet to see the error of her ways. Oh, she ditched to guy, but she still roots for his friggin' team. We watched the packers beat St. Louis on the big monitors in the stadium before kickoff, and then she rooted for the Eagles, hoping they'd knock Dallas down a rung and make things easier for Green Bay. Eagles fans in the Stadium kept noticing her Packers sweatshirt and sayin' they wanted to do the Packers a favor. She even bumped into one other guy wearing a Packers jersey at the bar, while she was getting me a beer. Yep, she kept me well supplied with booze, and she even paid for the tickets, so what do I have to complain about, right?



Well, I paid for the room at the Hyatt Saturday night. I love this place. It's beautiful inside. The room was nice. King sized bed and all the amenities. We brought our own bottle of wine and had a good old time. Woke up Sunday morning and decided to go down and partake of the breakfast buffet there in the hotel. Food was cold and greasy, so we won't do that again.



There were lots of folks there at the hotel who were in for the game, and we ended up sitting next to a family who'd flown in from Philly. They were puzzled to find Denise, a Brit, living in Texas and rooting for the Packers. See, I'm not the only one who thinks she's weird.



Even though we got there way early, we still had to park somewhere on the outskirts of Houston and ride a shuttle in to the stadium. The walk back to the car after the game was ridiculous. I was warned about this by the guys we got the tickets from, so we didn't act too shocked when it happened. Goes with the territory.



This strawberry daiquiri and my first beer of the day cost most of twenty dollars! I'd also been warned about that, so we both had a lot of cash on hand.



This was Denise's first professional football game. I took her in to see the field before we went upstairs to find our seats. She was so excited, it was a huge blast for me to take her and show her around. The last game I saw here was in about 1982 (Dallas lost to the Redskins), and the last time I was in the stadium was in about six or eight years later when I saw Pink Floyd there a few times.



Our seats were great. Section 120, up high, with an unobstructed view of the action. The only thing wrong with the seats was the hole in the roof that let the sun in to blind us for about the first half of the game.



I mean, the warmth it provided was welcomed (temps in the 50s - in the 30s when the sun went down), but the glare obstructed the view of the field and made it very hard for me to see the screen on the back of my camera. This is a shot of the opening ceremonies by the way.



We got a bit of relief when the sun shifted behind this big speaker thingy hanging from the roof. Thing is, the game was not the spectacle one would wish to see when you've spent this kind of money and trudged all the way out there. There were no long bombs that hit their targets or spectacular catches by ether team. Just a defensive slug fest where both teams are shut down and unable to make much headway. I turned out that the Eagles Defense was a bit better that Sunday, and the Cowboys were unable to make the points to win.



It was fun to watch the 'boys try to move it down the field, but with one "3-and-out" after another, by both teams, the frustration began to build.



McNabb is just about to be sacked in this picture. THAT was fun to watch, but they paid Dallas back by sackin' Romo about three times.



This over hyped, over payed dufus didn't complete a single pass to a wide receiver in the first half, and threw three interceptions Sunday. By the end of the game I heard some fans reviving that old thing about "Romo the homo" from last year. It wasn't pretty. Turns out he hit his hand on a helmet in the third quarter and messed up a finger, and they didn't take him out. What the hell was Wade Phillips thinking?



Of course, it wasn't all dreary. The cheerleaders came out at the end of every quarter to perk up our... spirits. Some things never change. God bless them.



The most frustrating thing about the game was the way it ended, with the Eagle player running in towards to goal and then sitting down in front of it, and then having them take one knee after another to run the clock down. I mean, it was brilliant, but I wanted to beat someone I was so pissed. Seemed like a chicken shit way to win at the time. Go ahead and get the touchdown and then let Dallas try to get a touchdown and a field goal in the last two minutes. In stead, he took a knee, over and over, eating up the time. If one of those loud, drunk Eagles fans had nudged me a little harder on the walk down the ramp after the game I might'a ended up in jail. That would'a capped the night off.

It turned out in the end that Dallas just didn't have what it was gonna take to beat the Eagles. It was their day to lose. It's just too bad it was the same day I chose to show up to watch. What are ya gonna go? Denise had a wonderful time. I was happy for her... OK, that's a lie. It was all I could do to bring myself to speak to her for about twenty minutes as we walked back to the car.

We drove to Ft. Worth and had dinner at Pappasito's, all the familiar stuff you've seen before, and more booze, and then we drove home two-and-a-half hours to my place. You know, I'll get over it, but I have to admit I'm in a quandary. OK guys, you tell me.

I've been a Cowboy fan all my life. Even when we lived in friggin' Missouri in the early '70s when the Chiefs were winning games, I walked around in a Dallas Cowboys t-shirt and took the shit. I gave it back the next year when the Cowboys won the big one. All my life there have been a few teams that I have HATED because of the shit they've managed to give the Cowboy's at the right time of the season, one year or the other. They are basically imps of Satan, these teams, and they have regularly caused Gods team to suffer horrible vexations. OK, I can deal with that. It's cool. But the woman who purports to love me insists on rooting for ALL of these teams right in front of me. She does it in my house! The first time I realized this it was the Giants she was pulling for, while sitting on my couch. I was like, "Get the fuck out of my house! You can't root for them in here!" Then she flashed those blue eyes at me and my resolve melted. Satan, I tell you, is in this woman. An exorcism may well be in order. I could do one. I've seen the movie.

Anyway, it sucked, but it's just a game, and there'll be another one in a week or so. If I can live through all the other heart breaking losses I've witnessed in the last 40 years I can learn to live with this one. It was a lot of fun to be there, even with the way the game went. It was fun to take Denise to her first game, but I'll have to think hard about ever goin' to another one.

Oh, I have all these shots and many others on FlickR , so you'll be able to click on it and check them out.

Well, I hope you guys had a good weekend, and all your teams won... OK, that's a lie too. Anyway, see ya later. Cheers.