We had the last of my birthday celebrations for the current birthday cycle last night, and a good time it was.
My birthday present from Lauren was tickets to see the Madison Capitols, the minor-league hockey team that plays there. I looked it up and they’re roughly the equivalent of a top-tier Single-A team in baseball, which means that you have a lot of guys playing who are at the very beginning of their careers and still learning some of the basics but are capable of flashes of great play. They’re one notch above the team that plays here in Our Little Town. Lauren even got an extra ticket so Kim could come along with us and make it an evening. We had to schedule it for after all of the various holiday trips and travels were over – the Movable Feast Tradition in our family says that holidays happen when you have time for them, after all – and yesterday was the day.
But first there was dinner, because nothing in my world happens on an empty stomach. Wouldn’t be seemly. Probably wouldn’t end well. And since I got to choose and my tastes run toward the “order at the counter and go sit down” end of the restaurant spectrum, we went to a place called Stadium Takeout which has the best cheesesteaks in Wisconsin.
This is, of course, a relative term.
By Philadelphia standards these rise to the level of “acceptable,” but here in Wisconsin that is high praise indeed. I don’t know why, in a state full of beef and cheese, you can’t find a good cheesesteak, but there it is. I tried this place last summer and liked it enough to come back when my cheesesteak yen got big enough, and they were tasty enough to satisfy that craving and thus a good way to start a birthday celebration, especially when in good company.
My birthday present from Lauren was tickets to see the Madison Capitols, the minor-league hockey team that plays there. I looked it up and they’re roughly the equivalent of a top-tier Single-A team in baseball, which means that you have a lot of guys playing who are at the very beginning of their careers and still learning some of the basics but are capable of flashes of great play. They’re one notch above the team that plays here in Our Little Town. Lauren even got an extra ticket so Kim could come along with us and make it an evening. We had to schedule it for after all of the various holiday trips and travels were over – the Movable Feast Tradition in our family says that holidays happen when you have time for them, after all – and yesterday was the day.
But first there was dinner, because nothing in my world happens on an empty stomach. Wouldn’t be seemly. Probably wouldn’t end well. And since I got to choose and my tastes run toward the “order at the counter and go sit down” end of the restaurant spectrum, we went to a place called Stadium Takeout which has the best cheesesteaks in Wisconsin.
This is, of course, a relative term.
By Philadelphia standards these rise to the level of “acceptable,” but here in Wisconsin that is high praise indeed. I don’t know why, in a state full of beef and cheese, you can’t find a good cheesesteak, but there it is. I tried this place last summer and liked it enough to come back when my cheesesteak yen got big enough, and they were tasty enough to satisfy that craving and thus a good way to start a birthday celebration, especially when in good company.
The birthday card made it even better, as Lauren had gotten a number of friends to send birthday greetings and then combined them all into a short video. It was an astonishingly lovely thing, really.
After dinner we headed over to the ice rink, which is technically outside of the city by a small bit and thus has actual parking. It’s the little things!
The joy of minor league sports is that you can almost always get good seats right up on the action, and we certainly did. We were in the second row, maybe four feet from the ice, and right up on the action.
If I turned to my right, I was staring directly into the opposing team’s bench. Their backup goalie was maybe an arm’s length from me, though the chain link fence between me and him kept us both honest, I suppose. This seating meant I couldn’t really see the near corner of the ice to my right, but then very little of the game seemed to happen down at that end anyway. It also meant that when the opposing team pulled their goalie at the end of the game he came over and stood more or less next to me and I could read the back of his helmet – “My goal is to deny yours” it said, and I hope that kid makes it to the NHL someday just for that.
It was a pretty good game. The home team led 1-0 after the first period and 3-0 after two, and Lauren and I agreed that this was a good margin to be ahead by since less than that was worrying and more than that was kind of rude. And then the third period started and suddenly goals were everywhere – there were three goals scored in the first two minutes of the period – and when it was all over the Capitols had won 6-3 thus preserving the three-goal margin after all.
After the game we met up with Maxim at the cocktail bar where Lauren works and sampled some of the roughly three thousand different kinds of martinis that they make there. I can personally attest to the fact that the Chocolate Cherry Martini was wonderful. Since we were, technically, celebrating my birthday, they also threw in a half-size vanilla martini for me and it was similarly tasty. Add in a plate of mixed stuffed olives, a chicken pesto flatbread, and a lovely evening of conversation and it was a fine birthday celebration indeed.
Happy birthday to me, once again!
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