stereotypical single woman

Honestly, I don’t watch sports. I really couldn’t care less most of the time. But tomorrow there’s a hockey game that, while I won’t watch it due to that whole not having cable thing, I’ll still definitely be rooting for a team. Tomorrow night the Carolina Hurricanes play the Buffalo Sabres in the Stanley Cup finals.

I’ve lived in both places. I spent two years in Buffalo going to a small college and three years in Chapel Hill (close enough to Raleigh) when I was in grad school. Living in North Carolina was a signifigantly better experience in my life. The three years I was there I grew professionally and academically. I fell in love with the south. Southerners and their mannerisms just make me giggle. I made so many good friends and contacts in the business. The seafood was always fresh, plentiful, and cheap. Autumn was gorgeous and lasted for four months. Winter was approximately a month long, it snowed for a week, maybe. Flowers bloomed in February. Sure it’s hot and muggy in the summer, but even the cheapest apartments came with central air. Raleigh also has the best Farmer’s Market I have ever seen, I’d go on Sunday afternoons with my friends and family if they were visiting.The only really bad thing I can say about the area- well, is Duke is there*. All in all - I adored North Carolina and miss it.

As much as I love North Carolina, I dislike Buffalo and I hate the Sabres. Winter never ends - shoveling your car out from the roof down more than once in a week is not a pleasant experience. Sure the wings there were good, but do you have to put blue cheese dressing on everything? The sun wouldn’t come out for months. And when I was in college in Buffalo I had a group of friends who loved the Sabres almost like it was a religion. The guys all wanted to play for them, even though the majority of them were a slightly tubby English majors without much athletic skill. Things did not end well with this group of people, and although everyone grows up, lets go, forgives, forgets and moves on in life and I wish them nothing but the best, I still cannot stand the Sabres. They represent a very bad time in my life. It’s a petty and stupid point of view, I am well aware of this. But I still really really dislike them. I always gloated whenever the Redwings won a game against them (and yes, I gloated when the Redwings won the Stanley cup from the Hurricanes a few years ago too.) So tonight the game is not just between two hockey teams. To me it’s a battle between good and evil.

*The fine print on my diploma from UNC states that I must bash Duke whenver the opportunity presents itself.