What a great weekend! Other than being rousted from our sleep at the Days Inn of Neenah at 5:50 AM on game day because of a faulty fire alarm, it was a picture perfect weekend.
Because I am a senior citizen and suffer from the senior citizen's disease of arriving early at any and all events, Tom Johnson (who came up from Madison on Friday night) and I arrived at Jay Moore's domicile about twenty minutes early, but Mr. Moore knowing me all too well, was packed and ready to go.
We stopped in Rothschild, just off Highway 29 east, rendezvousing with my friends Terry and Suzi Kittson for pizza at Sam's Pizza, before continuing on to Green Bay.
We had intended to tour the Packer Hall of Fame and hit the Packer Pro Shop, but were disappointed to find that all the tours were sold out so we joined the throngs of both Carolina Panther fans and Packer fans in a never ending line of consumers in the Pro Shop.
I wondered aloud to the boys about how much money the place must take in on a game weekend! It was wall to wall glaze-eyed money wavers!
Tom got a much needed Packer stocking cap and I got some little needed but really cool "receiver's gloves" before we "popped" out the other end of the shop.
We headed down to Neenah and our lodging at the Day's Inn, settled in with some Bloody Marys and watched the end of the Ohio Sate/Michigan game, followed by yet another game which I cannot recall because of all that tomato juice.
There was much discussion about where we would find supper (not being familiar with the immediate Neenah area), so I retired to a bath tub of steamy hot water, took a long soak, yellow pages in hand, and checking the restaurant listings I came upon a listing for the Apollan, an authentic Greek eatery back up Highway 41, down College Avenue, and up Appleton Street (well actually the next street past Appleton Street as I found out after I turned left onto Appleton to see the WRONG WAY/ONE WAY sign) Damn! I hate that!
But we went up, circled back and found it.
We parked just down the street from the restaurant and as soon as we got a good whiff coming from the cooking exhaust vent, I knew we had chosen well!
The restaurant is very well appointed in an Old World style, the waitstaff is all men, and the food was very, very tasty.
The first course was Avgolemono, a Greek egg/lemon soup, so good that the first thing I did last night upon returning to the office was google recipes.
This was followed by a simple green salad with two kinds of really tasty Greek dressing.
Tom ordered the chicken with feta, I had Mousaka, a kind of Greek lasagna with egg plant replacing noodles, and Jay went with the Lamb Brochette.
We skipped dessert -- but not entirely. When we got b ack to our exit, we all got custard at Culver's.
After being jolted out of bed with alarms and the arrival of fire trucks Sunday morning, we figured we may as well get our butts dressed and on the way back up to Green Bay as I needed to find strategic parking north of Lambeau so that we could get on the road as quickly as possible after the game since Jay had to be on the air at 6AM.
Breakfast at Perkins and we were parked and on our way to the stadium by 10:15AM. We "people watched" out in the Lambeau lot for some time then located our seats which were in row 60, right below the railing to the upper bleacher seats.
Thanks to occasional guest appearances of the sun, we never really got chilled all afternoon.
After the"pooch" kick, 94 yard run back, I settled down and stop worrying quite so much about the game, although I feel The Pack needs to "finish" their games second half with more of a killer instinct -- go for blood!
One more thing. Just to give you an example of how great Packer fans are: Just before half, a lady siting in row 59 who had watched me struggle all the way up those giant cement steps with my replacement knee, turned and asked me if I would like anything from concessions as she had seen how much trouble I had with the leg.
I love Wisconsin!
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