It's Andy Fish!

The cynic in me thinks Valentines Day is a holiday made up by the greeting card companies (and the origin is actually here in the WOO), but the more touchy feely guy in the gooey middle thinks it’s yet another way we try to occupy ourselves with ANYTHING other than facing the fact that we are in fact in the middle of the most brutal season of the year with little end in sight.

Normally we go back and forth on whether we want to do something for the day- Veronica is sometimes as much a cynic as I am– this year I found a Mechanics Hall event– an Evening of Italian Opera – in which for $150 we would get our own private table on the venu floor, a light meal consisting of meats and cheeses and cocktails– I thought it seemed like a nice idea and with her Italian heritage (she’s also British) and my love of Opera it seemed like a good pairing so I brought it to her.

“I was hoping we could go to a hockey game.” She countered.

Quickly noticing the gender roles flipped from one of my favorite Woody Allen movies- MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY in which Woody agrees to go to the Opera with Diane Keaton if she’ll agree to go to a Rangers Hockey game — I agreed and our decision was made.

We started the evening at OFF THE RAILS a sports pub type of place right next door to the DCU Center (which will forever be The Centrum to me) and had a nice quick meal at 5pm– a little early for dinner but the puck drop was at 605pm– She had brisket tacos and I had a chicken melt sandwich with Teriyaki sauce and fries.

We started with warm cornbread as an appetizer which came with two different kinds of butter– they were very good.

She liked the tacos although she thought the meat was a little fatty and I liked the chicken but there was far too much bread– I really couldn’t tell where the bread ended and the chicken and cheeses started– but it seemed like there were two pieces of bread on each side of the sandwich. The fries were those shoestring type – overall I’d give the place a solid 8 and I’ll be back to try another meal there in April when we go to see Nate Bargatze.

We found our seats and the puck dropped, one of the things I like about these minor league teams is the effort put in by the production staff to keep things lively and fun for the audience, even when nothing is happening (like the refs reviewing a call)- there’s a lot of crazy things that happen like wandering blimps dropping Chic Fil A ™ coupons that you think were worth millions, the standard t-shirt guns and various things the camera would be used for to focus on the audience– but everything is pointed towards fun.

The crowd was mostly families and overall it was a very good time which I would do again.

From there we drove over to FREEPLAY which is a Retro Video Game Club where for $12 admission you are able to play as many games as you’d like. They’ve got some modern consoles but most of them are a throwback to even when I was a teenager playing them- nice to see SPY HUNTER, BURGER TIME and FROGGER getting some attention. The crowd was also well behaved and this time mostly college kids. One young man complimented me on my shooting ability as I faced off hordes of ALIEN invaders from the film series.

Around 11 we wrapped things up and headed home, the night itself was warmer than it has been– and that’s to say it wasn’t skin crackingly frigid as it has been and we had a good time.