This Saturday, the Wild are playing the Coyotes in Phoenix. I've had my eye on this game since earlier this season, since Phoenix is about a five hour drive from San Diego. For the past few days, Bryan and I have been maturely discussing the wisdom of packing up and heading out to Arizona for the weekend.

Part of the issue is that we're headed to Phoenix for Bryan's brother's wedding over President's Day weekend. So that's one big road trip already on the books. Another issue is the expense. We toyed with the idea of flying, so we could avoid putting extra miles on his truck or my car, but that proved prohibitively expensive, especially since we'd have to rent a car in Phoenix to get around. Add in the cost of hockey tickets, meals, etc. and it adds up. Plus, being gone all weekend really shoots the weekend, and the Super Bowl is on Sunday (and I grew up in Seattle, so I'm more than a little interested in how it turns out).

On the other hand...This game is the annual Minnesota Road Trip, so it means that there'll be a bunch of Wild fans traveling out from Minnesota and staying in Phoenix to catch the game. It would also give us another arena to cross off our list (bringing our total to three so far). And, of course it might offer another opportunity to get player autographs (I have a green home jersey that's just waitin' for some signin'). Oh, yeah, it might be a chance for me to get my picture taken with Derek Boogaard, too. Plus, NHL games are always more fun in person.

So after lots of discussion and weighing of pros and cons, on Saturday night, we decided not to go.

Bryan called me Sunday morning, while he had duty, to say that the boat's schedule was such that we could go if we wanted to, but I maturely pointed out that we'd talked about it and decided not to go, since driving would mean too many miles on the vehicle of choice, and we'd be going to Phoenix two weeks later for Jeff's wedding and we'd have to drive or fly and rent a car for that and, it just didn't seem like a smart idea. He agreed, and that was that.

Well, today I came up with the bright idea of renting a car here for Jeff's wedding and taking that to Phoenix in two weeks, which would be a fraction of the cost of flying and renting a car for the weekend, and which would save wear and tear on Bryan's truck, and comes with a pretty minimal cost.

So that meant that we could drive to Phoenix this weekend for the game, without the trip costing an arm and a leg. Bryan found a hotel that would take pets, and wasn't concerned about her being alone in her crate in the room while we're at the game, which means we can take Bailey with us. I found tickets on Ticketmaster, and I swear this is how I knew it was meant to be, because earlier in the week when we looked at tickets, we found some okay tickets, but they weren't fabulous. Well, those tickets were gone, and the ones that were offered to us today are great. Eighth row, behind the visitors bench between the red line and the blue line.

It's fate, I tell you.

So we've purchased tickets, booked the hotel, and we're headed to Phoenix Saturday morning. Glendale Arena and Derek Boogaard, I mean, Minnesota Wild, here we come!

After a really hellish week at work (difficult patients, difficult doctors and more overtime than I wanted), I needed some de-stressing. So on On Friday, Bryan picked up annual passes through MWR (the military's discount ticket office) and on Saturday, we headed out to Disneyland.

There are definite advantages to living in Southern California. The weather is predictably good, and we have excellent proximity to SoCal tourist attractions. We have yearly passes to Sea World, and (thanks to my grad school friends) we've had passes to the San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park since we moved here. Disneyland is an hour an fifteen minutes to the north, and after quite a bit of discussion, we decided to take a year and overdose on Disneyland. It's good timing, because if you think about it, Disneyland really isn't ideal with kids under, say, five or six. And you can't go on any of the really fun rides if you're pregnant, so we might as well have some fun now.

Anyway, we hit the park, got our annual pass tickets transformed into annual pass cards (complete with heinously bad photo) and then headed over to California Adventure. Anyone who's listened to our recent trips knows that I kind of gripe about California Adventure (henceforth referred to as "DCA" because I don't feel like typing more than I have to). The park doesn't have many stellar attractions, but its definitely got one major thing going for it - it's usually deserted compared to Disneyland. We were able to walk right on to California Screamin' and had less than five minute waits for Tower of Terror and Soarin'over California.

I don't know how anyone can not love Tower of Terror. It's easily my favorite attraction at DCA. As soon as the first drop goes, I just start laughing. I can't help myself.

Anyway, we worked our way through the park, including a disappointing lunch along the boardwalk, caught the new Monsters Inc. attraction (cute, but probably more appealing to five year olds) and then headed back over to Disneyland, prepared to stand in some lines.

We hit everything except Space Mountain - the lines were a little too crazy, and we'd been on it plenty of times lately.

However.

Around 8:45 pm, Disneyland ceases to be the Happiest Place on Earth and becomes the Most Difficult Place to Navigate on Earth. We were trying to get the heck out of there, and in preparation for the fireworks and assorted shows (Fantasmic), the vast majority of walkways were blocked off and to get from Tomorrowland to the exit, we had to go through Frontierland, almost all the way to New Orleans Square and back out through Adventureland. I was not amused.

So, with the exception of our attempt to exit, it was a good day to relax. We had Gulls games on Friday and Sunday, both of which we lost, and both of which conflicted with Wild games. I didn't mind missing the one on Friday, but the one on Sunday featured some good Boogaard fights, so I was bummed to have missed it. Next game is tomorrow, and unfortunately I'll be working overtime again, so I probably won't be able to catch more than the third period. (So Derek, if you could hold off on the good fights until the third period, I'd appreciate it!)