Packers mania

Oh. My. God. (Now, say that again with the voice of Janice from "Friends.") Oh. My. God. This is the only way to adequately describe how flippin' cold it was at the Packers game yesterday. I've just now thawed out enough to use a keyboard. Holy crap! So, I used to bitch about Husker mania in good ol' Lincoln, Nebraska. Although, I managed to never go to a Huskers game. I left that to Mark and Maranda. And, I would have been all right with doing the same with the Packers, but we managed to procure four tickets to Sunday's game against the Jets. So, we had Mark's cousin come up from OshKosh (about 40 minutes from us) and we all trooped off to the game. Okay...back to why I brought up the Huskers...that sea of red that you could see walking either to or from the stadium (depending on the time of day) is NOTHING compared to what we witnessed yesterday.

Luckily, our neighbor was parking cars at some establishment across the street from Lambeau Field and saved a parking spot for us. Bonus! And, they didn't make us pay to park. Double bonus! But, just driving up to the stadium and around the block to the parking place was an interesting experience. First of all, every business in at least a three block radius was allowing people to park for the game (and, charging them, of course)...this includes the gas stations. It would have been impossible to get gas there, but I guess if you weren't at the game you wouldn't have tried to go to those gas stations. Anyway...then, you got to the residential area which is also, basically, right across the street. And, everyone is charging people to park in their yards for between $10 and $20. Some people had signs up that you could use their bathroom! Of course, everyone was dressed in the obligatory green and yellow. A blonde woman had added green spray paint stuff to her hair, so she completely fit the theme. Everyone else had on hats, coats, gloves, scarves, cheeseheads and all kinds of other Packers gear. Although, since it was so cold there were a lot of people dressed in their hunting gear. So, if you were unsure of the Packers colors, you may have thought (momentarily) that they were Hunter Orange or camoflauge.

So, we made it into the game and found our seats on a corner of the end zone in Row 47. They were very good seats. We were surrounded by people of all ages and even though people were drinking, it wasn't overly crazy. Thankfully, we all own enough gear for snowmobiling that we were bundled up pretty well. Although, by the second quarter I realized that I need to invest in some thermal long underwear. All my layers of clothing worked....but not quite as well as I had hoped. So, I guess I'm adding long underwear to my Christmas list. :)

There were still idiots (men) down in the front couple of rows that remained shirtless for a majority of the game. That HAD to have been fueled by an excess of alcoholic beverages. I don't see how else they could have stayed that way for so long. We invested (and, I do mean invested) in a couple of cups of hot chocolate at $5.50 apiece! And, that helped. Maranda and I got up and wandered around in the Lambeau Field Atrium, which is actually indoors, for awhile during the second quarter. Then, armed with our hot chocolate we were able to tough out the game until the end of the third quarter. Coincidentally, that's when the Packers finally scored a touchdown. So, at least we got to see them score. Oh...I guess we saw a field goal earlier....but, you know what I mean.

The best thing I overheard at the game from some random guy behind us that kept trying to start the wave: "Get off your knees, ref...You're blowing the game!" That made me laugh.

Overall, I'm glad that I went, but I don't know that I'll need to come up with the money to do that too many more times in my life.

So, this morning it starts snowing again and, again, it's beautiful. But, I get to work, get out of the car and start walking to my office and I think...my legs feel really cold. Was I ever this cold in Nebraska? Now, the logical answer to this is yes. There's more wind there, so the wind chill should be worse and I know the temperatures have been similar so far. So, other than this being another argument for long underwear, what's my deal? Have I already forgotten the cold weather that I'm certain froze all the little hairs in my nostrils while I was walking from my car to the office? Or, is there just something about the fact that I'm in Wisconsin that makes it seem like it should be colder? Weird.

Well, I'm off to be productive and, hopefully, not snowed in on campus!