Night out at the Flyers.

Wednesday evening at work I got offered tickets for a hockey game in Philadelphia. My boss owns season tickets for front row seats at the Philadelphia Flyers home stadium in south Philadelphia. After quickly checking with Jill, I accepted and we were on our way, I was even able to get out of work a little early as it is about a 90 minute ride from where we are. It was a nice drive down and not really any bad traffic except for near the stadium about 10 miles out. We arrived about an hour early around 6pm and took in the atmosphere of the stadium, got something to eat -quite expensive- (think mc donalds for 3 at about 8 dollars a head) and proceeded into the stadium to find our seats. It's a really nice stadium and as we settled in, the players took to the ice for the pre-game warm-up.



The atmosphere in the stadium was greatly enhanced by the large screen suspended over the playing area. Here during each stoppage images of sections of the crowd were shown and rousing popular music was played over the sound system ensuring maximum audience participation. There was even a "raise the roof" noise appeal with noise level graphics to go along with it.



Lets get ready to rumble. Flyers get ready to start the game against the Nashville Predators. Now we can relax and enjoy the game...but no, some people come and tell us that they are sitting there. We are in the wrong seats. We have to get in peoples way as we file back out of the aisles and find our correct section, the section we find is right behind the Nashville Predators subs bench.





The game itself ebbs and flows, the Flyers take the lead with a good follow-up off a rebound and then still in the first period the Predators level the game with a similar follow up and then take the lead with a shot high into the right corner. At 1-1 the flyers had a great chance where Simon Cagne was through one on one with the goalie where he beat the keeper but not the right upright hitting the post. Nevertheless in the third and final period the Flyers level the game again and bring it to 2-2 with Umberger scoring under the keepers legs. A couple of funny surnames to think about, the first being Umberger (I want mine with tomato and lettuce!!!) and then my personal favourite "Legwand" and I know all my readers will get that one -Leg-Wand.!!!

Not long after the Flyers level the game 2-2 there is a bad defensive mistake and the Nashville Predators take advantage and score what was to be the winning goal. With five minutes left they could not come back again. It was a very enjoyable night out but the result was not what we would have hoped for. I nearly forgot to add that with hockey being a physical game there was a fight near the end right in front of us where several of the players got involved, Marc really enjoyed this part of the evening...probably more than any other.

Turkey, leftovers and a long week-end.

So Easton won the 100th game in the rivalry between the two local high schools (secondary school), it was a rain soaked day and conditions were a little treacherous but nevertheless the Easton team won. We watched it all on nationwide tv and then we emerged from the room with the smell of turkey in the air....mmm just like a christmas morning except temperatures here are somewhat balmy for this time of year and very mild, just the odd cold morning. So Thursday was turkey with all the trimmings and then leftovers on Friday. I was just happy to have a few days off and on Saturday we went to the Java lounge to watch our good friend Chris Thomas perform with his group the Magic Bean Band.They play a lot of original songs but also some covers such as Dylan and Tom Petty and the Beatles. He plans on getting a cd out some time in the not too distant future and I will use them as gifts and stocking fillers to my friends and readers alike. So now I think there is Christmas to look forward to. "Its the most wonderful time of the year"!!!

Thanksgiving holiday is here.

Yes its true, over here we will actually get a couple of days off from work can you believe it. Thanksgiving is really christmas a month or so early, there will be turkey with all the trimmings and something I am not so fond of, cranberry sauce. Thanksgiving holiday goes hand in hand with american football and a lot of families actually go out and play football on the morning and then come in to have a meal. Imagine in Ireland going out to play gaelic football on christmas morning and coming in to have the turkey and ham. Where I am now there is the Easton vs Phillipsburg turkey game, a century old rivalry where communities go head to head for prestige and bragging rights. This year is the 100th game and its being televised nation wide on ESPN.

Jimbo will spread the "word of Ray".

I had a nice conversation with Jimmy yesterday evening - Thank You Jimmy!!!. He kept me informed as to how things are back home in Dublin and especially in Repro. (Big shout out to those reading) All new readers are very welcome and Jimmy is passing on the good word.

Who killed R2-D2?

On saturday we went to the King of Prussia shopping mall near Philadelphia to take care of some of our christmas shopping. It was not as busy as I expected to be honest and we got a bit of shopping done. During one of our visits to an electrical store we noticed a cool looking scaled down version of R2-D2 on display on a counter about 2 feet off the ground. The model was about 12-15 inches tall. On the display card it detailed what the model can do. If you say Princess Leia R2-D2 will get excited and make sounds and move around in a happy manner, so we said "Princess Leia" and sure enough he got all excited and moved around on his counter top. It also mentioned that if you said Darth Vadar that R2-D2 would act very scared and be scared. So Jill said "Darth Vadar" and indeed R2-D2 made very scared sounds and moved erratically. He would not stop so we faced him to the right of the display where there was a wall part of the counter and where he could not move against.

We continued to browse around the store and imagine to our surprise when 60 seconds later we heard this big crash as R2-D2 had launched himself off the counter and broke both of his stabiliser legs. There had been another couple who was looking at him and maybe it was they whom were to blame but maybe, just maybe it was us and more particularly Jill. We kept our heads down as if we knew nothing of the circumstances around the death of R2-D2.

The good, the ugly and the bad.

This was the first game where I played good, notice the 3 strikes in the middle of my game. My high score is 164 so 148 was respectable.


Here in the second game I played ugly and Marc deserved to beat me, in fact applying the 50 points start we can say he did beat me.
We played a third game and I got 102 in that one, yes kind of bad. So my average is somewhere between 79,102 & 148.



Gonna knock some pins down!!! It was a good night overall though and Marc clearly enjoyed it.

Calling Dublin. The Saw Doctors are in town.

If you want to catch a really great live show of the Saw Doctors then click here for details. If anyone decides to go they will have a great time there, trust me.

Birthday plans for a friday night.

This evening we plan to go bowling and to eat at this place. Since I bowl about a 100 - 120 game I will be trying to better that, Marc usually gets around 50 - 80 and there will be pictures in the next few posts watch out for Marc's unique style of both bowling and celebrating any pins he gets. In fact being competitive I am willing to give Marc a 50 point start, anyone want to guess who will win? Jill usually sits it out, she says it is due to saving some money but I think the competition scares her...wimp!!!.

I will probably try the ribs tonight, ribs and a good score at bowling can't ask for more than that in life!!!.

Happy Birthday Marc. The kid's gonna be 15 years old tomorrow.

Five years ago I never thought I would have a 15 year old son in five years time. Ya know what I mean? Marc is the best kid a guy could ever hope to have as a son, every day we see him growing into a young adult and he makes us very proud. He is very well liked at school and has lots of admirers, a big happy birthday Marc!!!.

Those people at INS like to make life interesting.

Exchange "extremely ****ing difficult" for the word interesting in the title. Jill and I had submitted what was to be one of the last pieces of paperwork to the immigration people and they have replied with something like..."we are not satisfied with with the information supplied". They go on to list what we need to re-submit and further comment "please do not re-send any information we have recieved already". So now we are in a complex situation of asking various people to get sworn testaments to state that we have a valid and true marriage. We have asked several people who know us well and can vouch for us, in all maybe 10 people or couples whom we know well...friends of the family or friends of ours. We will send the documents in and I am sure all will be well, but its such a pain.

Now I can be a blog master.

If for no other reason than for the fact that I figured out how to link to other sites. The sites that mean something to me are listed to the right hand side, the first one is from a fellow arsenal fan and a fellow irishman, the second one being from my childhood town and my family are always amazed about how I know what is going on back there. So it seems I have progressed from blackbelt to the next step up in the art of blogging. I am afterall relatively new to all of this and I am always looking for ways to make the site more appealing to those few who take the time to check in.

Safari Ride in Animal Kingdom.

Disney's safari ride is a wonderful way to see animals in as much of their natural habitat as you are likely to see. The ride incorporates the beauty of each animal and also stresses the need for conservation of these species in the wild. Throughout the ride you embark on a journey as a park ranger and even at the end you get to catch some poachers. So you have the natural beauty of the landscape and also the slight thrill of a Disney ride as you move along the safari trail.


"I can see you, but you cant see me"



Mother elephant with babies close by.



A couple of zebras hangin out.



Look closely and you will see the lioness on top of the rocks.

Next stop Animal Kingdom.

Animal Kingdom was on the agenda for friday and with the park closing around 5pm it was important to get there early. We did and forged right on for the "camp mickie-minnie area". It was quite strange as we were one of the first people to get there, and as we arrived near our intended destination (the lion king show) we got "sharked" by one of the attendants and seeing my Arsenal shirt immediately inquired "are you english?". Now being from Ireland normally that is always a source of amusement to me but this time I could see why he may have thought that, afterall I was wearing an Arsenal shirt. Also the guy in question was from the states but then he delved deeper and asked whereabouts in Ireland was I from, I replied "Dublin" ah said he "thats in the north of Ireland". Well I didn't have the heart to burst his bubble of getting something right, "thats right" said I. For gods sake he should have left it at that!!! He went on to venture to say "well then you are England". It was at this point I point blank told him "Dublin is in the south of Ireland". We exchanged our pleasantries and moved on...on to the show.

The Lion King show is a colorful,dynamic, and rousing 20 minutes of audience participation, storytelling and music which charts a story of a young lion cub. In many ways it is everyone's story. A story of the brashness of youth that invincible feeling of full energy and life and then realising that you are not so special afterall but rather one part of the whole world. The show celebrates the diversity and uniqueness of every living creature and the costumes are just fantastic as well as the overall feel of the show. This was the show we made a dash for on friday and overall we saw it two times. Its a must see for us when we visit Disney.

Now for something totally different.

Isn't this just a magnificent picture of darkness falling over Europe. The shadow that the sun leaves on the earths surface is just breathtaking. This makes me feel very insignificant when I look at this picture. You can see all the house and street lights turned on over mainland Europe. Wow.

MGM backlot tour.

Above are a couple of props from the Star Wars movie "Return of the Jedi". A fighter ship and a transport skiff of Jabba the Hutts kingdom. These were just some of the items which form part of the backlot tour at MGM. Below we can see a big truck which is used as part a demonstration of the work that goes into making movies using simulated fire and water effects.

MGM parade 3pm.

At each of the parks there is a parade at certain times in the day. We managed to be in the right spot at the right time and caught the show. Of course MGM being a celebration of movies the parade featured all of the characters which include disney and movies in general. Such characters included the new cars movie, toy story, disney characters and some star wars characters also. I think the pictures below capture the essence of the parade. It was a very hot time of the day and I was a little worried about being too long in the sun.

Intrepid explorers looking for lost artifacts.

No, just Ray and Marc posing beside the Indiana Jones stunt show. But it was nice to pose as "Indiana Jones" if for only a moment. This was the first day that we arrived in Florida as we were still wearing long jeans, as it was cold in Pennsylvania but we did not yet have our bags and so we were a little warm that day.

More Disney-MGM.

This is a beautiful model of an AT-AT at MGM and part of the entrance to the Star Wars attraction. The weather was very nice and warm for a day in October. Also see the Ewok Village below, another part of the Star Wars attraction.

Our digs and keys to Disney.

Here's where we stayed during our time at Disney. However we calculated that we in fact only stayed there during the times that any of the Disney parks were closed and this was typically between 11pm and 8am. We had room keys and the rooms were very nice indeed, in fact the room keys were not just room keys they were really the keys to disney as we needed them to link everything to our package. They were needed for entry to the four parks and to allow us to stay in the parks for those extra magic hours either earlier or later as each day a different park had this feature. We also need them for the meal plan which allowed each day per person to have a restaurant meal, a counter meal and also a snack too. We never needed to spend any cash except for a few gifts here and there. We estimated that the meal plan was a very good deal, and the whole package when analysed was excellent value.

Who's Walter?

The beginning of our trip was somewhat interupted at Philadelphia airport. We got up early at about 4am and got a lift with the hotel people with whom we left the car also because it was a good deal to leave it there. Checked in with no problem and proceeded to the security area where we had the misfortune to meet Walter the security screener, this guy had a real attitude and was in the process of bullying an old man and his son. When he came to us he still had the attitude that he was going to bully us. He thumbed through all of Jill's cosmetics and in an abrupt fashion took everything and dumped it in a bin in much the same way as he had done with the people in front of us. He had said to the people in front of us, "where do you think you are sir?...this is the united states of America".

A day or two later it was with some amusement that in Epcot and during Disney's magic hours we encountered a guy who had much the same idea about doing things in strict manner. We accepted that we needed wristbands attached to show we were eligible for the extra magic hours being booked under the package deal, however we did not expect to meet another strict individual... I remarked to Jill..."this is just like what happened with Walter". The guy inquired "who's Walter?" Jill replied "just a guy we met in Philadelphia". We walked away laughing with the guy quite oblivious to our specific story.

We wondered how Marc would react to his first time on a plane and he was quite happy all the way through really as you can see from the picture. During take-off he was a little apprehensive and for part of the flight too, we put it down to him being a little curious about it all as he was looking out the window constantly as I pointed out rivers, forests and houses - all rather smaller than Marc was expecting I'm sure.

Magic Kingdoms halloween show.

Saturday we were at Disney's Magic Kingdom and after we had a pilgrim styled meal packed with "meet and greets" from various Disney characters, we managed to catch the daily fireworks display at the castle. This was a magnificent fireworks display as usual, with various shapes of seasonal significance backlit onto the castle for a wonderful and colourful show.

Disney,Poocas and sore feet.Oh and sign the petition.

I'm building the anticipation here, I know but due to such a busy week (and a slight hangover I might add), posts have been few and far between but know that I have a lot of material to share. Disney was a lot of fun we went on a lot of familiar rides and one or two new ones and I will detail all of this in due course, but first I think I will talk about last night in the next post and then I will highlight why our feet are sore and our bodies are tired. But whilst you wait, please go to todays post on www.arseblog.com and find the link which says "go here" then sign the petition to have Arsenal Football Club place the old clock from the old stadium into the new stadium. This is an important aspect of the clubs history so please spread the word. Thank you and more later. Poocas will be explained also later.