Friday night lights

One of our neighbors works in ticket sales for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and he helped us out with tickets to the Bucs' preseason game against the Titans last Friday night. The only catch was Eric couldn't be too boisterous in his cheering for Tennessee. He gave us four tickets which meant we had to find people to go with us. We ended up inviting a guy that I met at a recent Wharton alumni happy hour here in Tampa and his partner and they were happy to join us.

Let me set the scene:

Most people probably know this but it turns out Buccaneers are Pirates! (Not those things the girl has to get for her date to the Homecoming dance.) The free Bucs schedule calendars that they handed out said Cannons Will Fire and it was true - they did. Eric was so startled he spilled some of his beer on his shoe.

Getting out of the house is not easy and we did not manage to pre-eat before rushing over to the stadium, so at the first break I went off in search of food. Our companions did a poor job of masking their horror but were good sports about accompanying me in search of reasonable, vegetarian sustenance.

I was trying to decide between a dinner of nachos, a soft pretzel or a Pizza Hut personal cheese pizza when one of them suggested we push on to the next set of food options, just to see. As it turned out, and I am not sure if he knew this or just got lucky, this was the vegetarian haven. I ordered a Sloppy Jane, a vegan sloppy joe made with tempeh, and a black bean burger. Eric would get to choose which one he wanted and I would eat the other. I also got two large beers to wash them down.

The presentation of the Sloppy Jane can be summed up in five short words: "cat vomit on a bun." This sandwich could double as a test of how imaginative you are. Anyone with any imagination at all would be incapable of raising it to their lips.

The black bean burger was dressed up pretty nicely with lettuce, onion, tomato and condiments and did not look at all disgusting. I believe Eric enjoyed it.

I went through a lot of my beer forcing down the Sloppy Garfield.