Mike has been to every MSU home football game so far, filling in to work security for his friend. Today’s game was going to be the only one he didn’t go to, but at the last minute another friend called and offered him a ticket.

Mike says maybe God is looking out for his inner Spartan. I think that either God is a Spartan too or he’s just rewarding Mike for all those years of working 6 days a week and all his recent long days spent with Luke here at home.

I’m just glad Mike isn’t hating life anymore. He is such a fantastic husband and father and has made many sacrifices over the years. He deserves to have some fun every once in awhile!

Thanks to my employer, Mike and I had the opportunity to attend the MSU football game today, as well as a stupendous tailgate party. I had volunteered to bring coffee to the tailgate, and I successfully did, but not without sacrifice. We were driving to my coworker’s house to pick her up for the tailgate and we came very close to missing the turn onto her street. Mike slammed on the brakes just in time to make the turn, in the process causing the two carafes of piping hot coffee that were safely nestled around my feet to tip over. Onto my feet. Piping hot coffee - I do not know what piping means, just know it was VERY HOT - spilled through my shoe, through my socks, and onto my toes. In nanoseconds.

I wish you could have been there. It was truly an experience I will not soon forget. Not quite Saturday Night Live material, but hilarious nonetheless. Here is how it went:

As I was coping with the seething pain of the hot coffee on my flesh, I had just enough mental capacity left to know that I must remove the shoe, then sock, now no now oh dear God the pain the relentless pain. Shoot. Hot. Oh. Hot. Shoot. Make it stop. Get the shoe off, Mindy. Haaah, eeeeh, oooh. Shoot. Oh, this is her house. That’s crazy, you stopped at the right house.. oh shoot… haaah… can you go knock on the door? Ohma, ohma. Gaaaa… haaa.

Yeah. That’s pretty close to how it went. Replace the shoots with the real four letter word and that’s about verbatim. And I totally have the blisters to prove that I am not kidding about the hotness of this coffee.

Thankfully, the coffee incident was the worst of the day. The rest of the day was fantastic. It was a beautiful day for a football game. We had delicious food, good people, perhaps a little bit of beer, and MSU beat Iowa 16 to 13! All in all the day was pretty stinkin’ cool. Mike ended up snagging a security gig to fill in for a friend so he didn’t watch the game from the stands with me and my coworkers. No, he watched it from behind the goal post. Here was his view of the game, followed by mine.

Mike’s View:

My View:

Yes, his view was better for watching the game, but my view was the best for watching the marching band at halftime. So there!

Mike also got a few shots of some MSU football people that he would want me to post (he’s seriously loving these football gigs).

Javon Ringer:

Mark Dantonio:

Ringer is one of the players and Dantonio is the head coach. Mike says they’re kind of a big deal. I don’t know. Football is clearly not my sport. I’m just in it for the food!

Luke’s cat bite is fine. No infection!

The Tigers lost today.

But… the boys had a riot anyway!

*Just pretend there are pictures right here… I can’t seem to upload them right now and I’ve really got to get to folding the laundry. Seriously. I really do. I’ll try to post them later.

Mike and his dad are taking Luke to his very first Tigers game tomorrow! Baseball is big in this family, so this is a huge deal. It is an occasion Mike and his dad have been dreaming about ever since I got pregnant.

Hopefully their grand plan is not thwarted by a trip to the emergency room. Luke managed to get bit by our cat - again - but this time it was not by Pele (aka Mean Kitty Ow). This time it was Buster Brown, the generally mellow Maine Coon. I don’t even know what prompted it. Buster is always so calm. He was lying on the couch next to me and Luke and all of the sudden he hissed and lashed out. Luke has a couple marks on his arm. One puncture, but we cleaned it out immediately and hopefully it won’t get infected like the last time (Pele bit him on the foot back in June). It’s ironic really, because we’ve been working so hard to keep him and Pele separated, we hadn’t even bothered with watching Buster. Oy. I’ve said it before, but I am so done with these cats. I have my niece and nephew coming for the weekend so I think the cats will be camping out in our bedroom. How frustrating.

Oh, in lighter news, I bought some new make-up the other day and now I feel pretty. Funny how a bit of make-up and a new pair of underwear make you feel like a new woman. Speaking of feeling pretty, How To Look Good Naked is on tonight! Love it!

This is a guest post written by my husband, Mike:

Maybe you have witnessed the Lions commercials that ask “Do you believe in now?”. I’ll admit it, I’m a sucker. I believed in the Lions. I thought they had a chance to finish above .500. I thought they had a chance to make the playoffs. Who knows, maybe this was the year they would win their second playoff game in my lifetime (I’m 31 years old).

After watching parts of todays game (the parts in between my two naps) I realize I have been duped again. Every year I say “I think the Lions have a shot at doing something this year”. Well, I said it again this year. What an idiot I am.

I’m kind of torn on what to do with Luke. I don’t want to raise him to be a fair weather fan (also known as a typical Michigan fan), but I also don’t want to subject him to the yearly heartache of being a Lions fan. One of my great, great uncles played for the Packers. Maybe that gives me a valid excuse to teach Luke to root for another team. Could teaching Luke to be a Lions fan be considered child abuse?

Oh well, at least I still have Call of Duty 4.

My mom and stepdad run a website for the Mid-American Conference called MAC Report Online. It’s college sports. They do news coverage for all the schools in the conference and often attend the games. It’s kind of a big deal (if you’re into sports, which I’m not, but I can appreciate those who are). My stepdad, Dave, had press passes for the Michigan State vs. Eastern Michigan football game today. My mom would normally go with him but she was working at the Western Michigan vs. Northern Illinois game, so Dave invited Mike to go along with him. Mike answered with an emphatic, “Hell to the yes” because of course he loves football and he loves Michigan State University. Oh and he gets along real well with Dave too.

So today was Bring Your Kid To Work Day! Mike had a blast. He got to go down on the field and take pictures. It was kinda funny because he was down there with his press pass and he’s taking pictures with a regular old snapshot camera, but he had a lot of fun and the pictures didn’t turn out so bad. Hopefully Dave can use them for the website. He had a good time hangin’ in the press box too. He got to talk football with other guys who know football, and that is always fun for a Football Guy. They were calling the plays like the experts do. Good times.

Here he is just after arriving home. He wasn’t wearing the press pass so I made him put it back on… he was happy to comply. Can you see that giddy glow in his face?

I’m glad he had a good day, and I hope Dave takes him up on the offer to help at more games. Maybe his next career will be in sports. He says photography but I think he would make a great announcer. When we watch baseball games he’s always saying stuff that 3 seconds after he says it, the announcers say, just in a different way. Yup. He could be the next Rod Allen or Mario Impemba!

My mom is such a girl. My stepdad, the sports writer, gave her an assignment. She was to go to MAC Media Football Day and interview the coaches and players about football. What does she end up doing instead? She reports on how the players dressed for the event. Yes, she chose fashion over football. I’m sure Dave was mortified when she returned home with her notes, but it actually turned out to be a cute article. Enjoyable to read. Check it out:

The Sartorial Splendor of Football Media Day

I was doing some boredom browsing and was amused to find this event posted on my high school’s calendar for Dec. 1, 2007:

Guitar Hero 3 Contest (Fundraiser for Baseball),  5 p.m. - 10:00 p.m.

If you follow baseball you know why this is funny (or at least mildly cute). I’m a baseball fan by marriage and we root for the Tigers, which is the only reason I know why this is funny. Actually, I probably wouldn’t have remembered this bit of information but Mike told me the story when we met Joel Zumaya last summer, so it sort of stuck.

Joel Zumaya is a pitcher for the Detroit Tigers and is famous for being able to pitch over 100 mph. In 2006 he became famous for something else - he injured his wrist playing Guitar Hero, a game in which you have to simulate playing the electric guitar. It caused him to miss three games of the AL Championship Series that year. I’m sure he’ll never truly live that down.

Technorati Tags: baseball, Joel Zumaya, Guitar Hero

Mike and Luke and I have been watching a lot of Tigers games together. After 9 years of trying to get me interested in baseball, Mike finally got his way. How did he do it? By having a son. Now that I’m outnumbered by men in the house, I need to brush up on my baseball knowledge so that Luke can have the cool mom on the block. Okay, cool might be a stretch, but at least we can talk about baseball together.

Tonight Justin Verlander pitched a 12-strike no-hitter against the Milwaukee Brewers. The last time the Tigers pitched a no-hitter was in 1984. Quite an exciting game, and one that will go down in history for Tigers fans, two of which are pictured below. We snapped this shot as Pudge Rodriguez was frantically hugging Verlander, I think before Magglio Ordonez even caught the ball. This one is going in the baby book for sure.