In our last day in Dallas, we got up early to go to the Stars practice, so after dropping Stellina at doggie day-care, Jen, Sam and I headed out to Frisco once again! The boys were already out on the ice by the time we got there, but that was okay! We still had an awesome time standing around, watching them practice their drills, their set plays and shoot on Marty and Alex in net. Mike Modano looked really good out there on the ice, but poor Jere Lehtinen looked a little slow. Mike “Skeezy” Ribeiro makes my skin crawl. Seriously, I’ve never felt anything like it! But it was good to see “the old boys” again (Steve Ott, Brenden Morrow, Mike Modano, Jere Lehtinen, Stephane Robidas… even Trevor “Ghetto” Daley, who I’d still trade for a Starbucks coffee and a bag of chips!) out on the ice. And it was really interesting to see the new guys, the “young guns” out there too. Guys like James Neal and Jamie Benn, Matt Niskanen and Tom Wandell. And of course, our new “veterans” like Brad Richards and, of course, Skeezy. I say it with a very distant love, I swear!

After practice, the three of us waited in the autograph line to wait for 6 players: Jere Lehtinen, Mike Modano (unlikely spotting as he usually ducks out the back), Brenden Morrow, Steve Ott, Stephane Robidas and Marty Turco.

Skeezy came out of the locker room first, apparently he does that a lot, because then he usually runs back into the locker room “for something” and does the line twice, just in case someone missed him the first time. *Rolls eyes*

Brenden came out first (of our list) and was very happy to pose quickly for a photo. He was smiling, happily putting his arm around each of us and didn’t complain at all, even though the tunnel was bitterly cold with the wind coming through it. A lady who was standing near us got Brenden to sign a piece of paper, which we thought was weird, and then after a few of the other boys came out, she’d gotten Trevor Daley’s autograph. She then came to me and asked who he was! I replied, “Trevor Daley.” She didn’t understand my accent. I even had to phonetically spell it for her! It was rather unusual, and yet hilarious.

Next off our list was Stephane Robidas, who was gracious as always and like Brenden, happy to pose and smile. Jere Lehtinen was next and, well, Jere doesn’t smile, but he was happy to pose for the photo and was then on his way. Otter was next, and happily smiled and posed with us. He’s a real champ!

Marty Turco is notoriously the last member of the team out of the locker room. Whether it be onto the ice for practice or out of the locker room to go home from practice or a game (which is ironic because during a game he’s the first one onto the ice!). In 2006, we had gotten a frosty reception from Marty, which was a little disconcerting as we’d never spoken to the man before. I said to Sam that maybe he was having a bad day, or perhaps he was just in a rush and didn’t want to hang around. We were near the end of the line after all. So, in 2009 we wanted to give him another chance.

Shouldn’t have bothered, really. Marty, dressed in a suit, came out of the locker room last and we politely asked him if we could have a photo taken with him. We didn’t want anything signed, just a photo. He said, “Sure, no problem!” loudly, and then Sam and I turned around and posed. Marty kind of rubbed his hands together and then just stood there while Jen lined up the shot.

Marty muttered, “C’mon, c’mon, just take the damn photo!”

Whether he meant for Sam and I to hear it or not I don’t know, but it was rude and uncalled for. I don’t care how cold he might have been from the tunnel – we’d been standing out there in that cold cement tunnel for an hour waiting for them. The least he could do was be courteous and keep his thoughts to himself. Jen didn’t hear him, but she did say that Marty in the photo wasn’t Marty. Usually he was all over the fans, and they’d had trouble getting him to shut up.

Maybe it was just Sam and I?

Whatever it was, I then said to Jen and Sam that I wanted to leave then and go to the store. I didn’t want to hang around and see if Mike snuck down the tunnel after everyone had left. I didn’t want to chance my heart being broken a second time by a player I adored above all others, after Marty Turco was just rude to us for the second time in 3 years.

We went into the Stars Stuff Store and got a few more things that we wanted (Sam got a jacket and a couple of t-shirts. I got a scarf, and a couple of other things). After we got our loot, we headed to Ulta, a cosmetics store near Jen’s that sells brand names often on sale. She was sure I’d be able to replace what I’d lost through Bella’s washing machine!

Jen was right, they sold EVERYTHING. >From perfume to cosmetics, hair care and even fluffy robes and slippers. A truely pampering place. I managed to get L’Oreal foundation, powder, 3 different eyeshadows, eyeliner, and consealer, and 3 Revlon lipsticks all for $73USD, which at the moment is about $77AUD.  Can you believe that? The lipsticks alone were $3.99 each! Back home, those exact lipsticks are $20.95 each! BARGIN! With the money we had left over, Sam got some cologne from Bvlgari – OMG SO GORGEOUS. I love it!

Then it was time to head home to Jen’s and wait for Jesse and Rhonda, who were coming over after work so that all of us could go to Jen’s parent’s house for Chicken Fried Steak and watch The Hangover. Our friend Julie also came along (she lives in Fort Worth, like Jen’s parents, and she’s friends with everyone – we met Julie through Jen!) which was awesome because we had only seen her twice – at the basketball game and she also came to Stratvos with us and Rhonda’s family.

Jen’s Mum is a riot. She’s so like Jen! While we waited for Julie to get there from work, Rhonda, Jesse, Jen, Sam and I played some weird card game we’d never played before called Skipbo (a game that was created in Texas in 1967), but it was a lot of fun!  When Julie arrived, we’d moved onto Uno and Jen had disappeared from the table. Dinner was old fashioned southern chicken fried steak, veges and gravy, with sourdough biscuits on the side. It was DELICIOUS! After dinner, we watched The Hangover. While it was funny in parts, it wasn’t really Sam’s and my cup of tea. But it was entertaining none the less.

By the time the movie was over, it was midnight, and time to head back to Dallas and say our farewells. We said goodnight to Jen’s parents, and then goodbye to Julie in the carpark of the motel where Jen’s Mum is the live-in manager. The hour long drive back to Dallas seemed to take no time at all, and then it was time to say farewell to Jesse, who isn’t into long goodbyes. Leaving Jesse is hard for me, because he’s such an awesome guy and I love him to pieces. Anyway, we said “See you later!” because it’s not a goodbye, according to Jesse, and then he left and went home.

Rhonda stayed a little longer and she and I snuggled on Jen’s couch before it was time for her to leave too because she had school in the morning. Hugs and kisses and fond farewells later, and it was time for us to go to our room and pass out on the bed. Tomorrow it’s time to pack up and ship out… well… fly out. It’s the end of our journey, but boy have we got a ton of wonderful memories to take home to Australia!

Sunday dawned rather early for us considering the late night we had on Saturday night. We were being picked up at 10:15am to hang out with very special friends, while all our “gang” were going to a memorial service for someone very special for them (it was for someone we didn’t know very well so we thought it was best we didn’t go). Jen had very kindly let us borrow her car for our appointment at 5pm, so we grabbed the keys off her before we left with Mickie and off we went.

Mickie and Frederick have been such wonderful friends to us over the years, and it was Mickie who first messaged the Dallas Stars and asked them to do something special for us the last time we were there – which started the whole ball rolling with being the Stars Fans Of The Game, being at the first game early enough to meet Ralph on the concourse, who got us in to see Mike Modano through Rob Scichili… they really were the catalyst for how brilliantly our trip was last time here in Big D, so there was no way we weren’t going to spend some time with them this time around!

Their 14 yr old son Alex plays hockey for a team called the Stars on Sunday mornings (Bantem level I think?), so we were invited to watch him play, and then they took us and Alex’s friend out for lunch. Alex’s game was as the StarCenter in Plano, so Mickie picked us up from the hotel, and with a stop at Starbucks (for caffeination) we were on our way. The StarCenters are owned by The Dallas Stars, and help to build hockey in Texas. They have 2 sheets of ice in the buildings along with a Stars Stuff Store. The Plano SC was overrun with families preparing for and leaving games that had just finished. By the time we got there, Alex’s team was on ice and warming up!

They were pretty good! We got some great photos of Alex’s team playing, and of Alex who is a winger. He also got a few penalties – oops! – but he was strong on the forecheck and seemed to have good positioning. There were a few players out there who were just so, so fast! And a few scary parents in the crowd too! But the people we were sitting with were just lovely. I think the couple beside me were parents of another child on Alex’s team, and they were interested in hockey in Australia as well as our trip. Everyone is fascinated with the weather difference. It’s kind of bizarre but whatever!

Alex’s team won 5-3, it was all very exciting because at one stage it was 3-2, then 3-3, then 4-3 so it was rather edge of your seat stuff. After the game, Mickie took us down to the Stars Stuff Store to have a look around. We saw their clearance rack had different stuff from the Frisco rink, so we went at it, buying 6 shirts for $10 each! And I got an Ipod case for my classic Ipod for only $14! It’s AWESOME! We also picked up some car decal’s for our “Dallas” back home, and Sam bought me a Stars bracelet that I liked. All in all, it was a pretty good haul for $140! Plus, on the items that weren’t on sale, Mickie let us use her season ticket holder’s discount of 15%, so that was very generous of her!

Then it was off to lunch at SeaBreeze. We had a seafood basket that had a toasted lobster sandwich, fries and coleslaw (though I don’t eat coleslaw so I just had the sandwich and most of the fries), like Mickie did. Frederick had muscles (I think) and fish, and I’m not sure what the kids had, but it all looked so good. Over lunch, Sam and I gave them a small book on Australian Wildlife, as a very small token of our very large appreciation for what they’ve done for us over the years. Really, there are no words and nothing big enough that could ever compensate, but a little something goes a long way.

During lunch, we mentioned that we hadn’t done any of the things that we had wanted to while we were here, such as the Gallery or the Museum or even the grassy knoll where JFK was assassinated. Mickie and Frederick immediately offered to drop the kids off at home and take us downtown to see it! So that’s what we did!

Elm Street, ironically where it happened, still looks like it did on November 22, 1963. The buildings are all the same, the road hasn’t changed and even has white X’s on the road where the shots hit JFK. It was morbidly awesome! And there is even a tour that you can go on that follows the procession’s route, to the point of speeding up after the grassy knoll and driving to the hospital they took JFK to.

After the Grassy Knoll, we walked around downtown and passed the TGI Fridays we went to last time we were in Dallas in 2006. Good times. By the time we got back to the car, it was time to head to the hotel to drop us off because we had an appointment with Bob Shaw from Shaw’s Tattoo Studio at 5pm. We chatted to Mickie and Frederick in the parking lot of the motel until we had to leave.

We got to Bob’s at 5pm on the dot, and Bob was waiting for us, chilling out and watching the Cowboys game on tv (they were losing to San Diego, 7-10 at the time). After our introductions, and Bob mentioning that he knew nothing about hockey, and me telling him to watch a real sport instead of this padded NFL crap, we got down to business and checked out the designs he’d sketched out. They were exactly what we wanted.

When we had discussed the designs with Josh on Wednesday, he’d mentioned that they probably wouldn’t be able to do the shading on the celtic knots on the sides of my Stars logo. Bob, however, merely shugged his shoulders and said he’d adjusted the design just a little to make it wide enough to do the shading I wanted, instead of having to fill the whole thing in.

Sam went first, because he’s a whiney little girl and needed to go first for fear of backing out – he doesn’t like pain, and he’s terrified of needles. How he’s managed to get three tattoos before is a miracle I’ve yet to work out! Anyway, Bob shaved Sam’s back, lined up the tatt, made sure it was where Sam wanted it, right across his shoulders, checked the shade of green we wanted for the star in the middle – the largest part of shading so it had to be right – and then got him straddled on the chair and set down to work.

Sam’s tattoo took about two hours to do, and Sam spent most of that time calling out expletives and grouching at me when I told him to “Suck it up princess! You’re the one who wanted this!” Bob thought this was hilarious. He was also amused by both of us singing along to Sublime on the playlist he had going through the studio while he worked, and me dancing and singing along to Eminem as well.

Sam kept saying to me, “Just wait until you get yours done, you’ll be crying out too!” Which just made me all the more determined not to say anything when I got mine done, even if it did hurt. Bob thought we were hilarious! At least, he kept chuckling the entire time. By the time Sam’s was done though, Bob needed a break.

When he came back, we got me set up, the tattoo placed on my lower back where I wanted it, got me situated on the chair and then got down to work. Mine took about an hour and a half to do, as it is a little smaller than Sam’s. Sam took off to get us some coffee, and Bob and I talked family, kids and married life. It was kinda cool. He could tell when it hurt, because my back would stiffen a little, but I didn’t complain about the pain until nearly at the end when he was doing the shading on the Star right on my spine. That really hurt. Bob did say at the end though that I took my tattoo like a trooper! I was so proud, really!

After we paid him (including a nice tip), we headed to Wal-Mart to pick up some Aquaphor ointment for the tatts, and I found some Dallas Stars pj pants in my size – I was so excited! I picked up a pair that are DS Green with the Stars logo all over them, and a green and white plaid pair with the logo stitched on in one corner. We spent the rest of the night chilling out at our motel, after trying to walk Jen’s dog, Stellina (unsuccessfully I might add – we tried three times!), with some Jack In The Box for dinner. It was a quite night, online and letting our tatts breathe.

It’s my birthday and i’ll party if i want to, party if i want to, party if i… we’ll get to that.

It’s day 40, which means we’re in the last week of our trip and on the downward slide to flying home (booooo).  Today I turn the ripe old age of 34. hahaha

The day started pretty sad, as we had to return our rental car to Enterprise.  The rental, a 2008 Ford Focus was a great little car and in the 10 days we rented it, we drove over 1500 miles.  that’s somewhere between 2000 and shitloads of KM’s for those in the metric part of the world.  The focus here is different to that in Australia and is US built.  Unfortunately, while it shared the name, the car itself was nothing on the Australian/English/German counterpart.  It was doing some wiggy noise stuff by the time we returned it, so probably a good thing we did return it today.  Jen was great and drove with us to the airport and then gave us a ride back to the hotel again.

By the time we got back we decided to go down the road for lunch.  There was this little chinese takeout/restaurant type place down on Forest Lane that we decided to checkout, so walked down there.  I had the Garlic Chicken (can’t go wrong with that) and Wendy went with the General Tsao Chicken, which she’d read about.  Turns out, General Tsao isn’t all that nice, and my garlic chicken was overly salty.  The rice was kinda wiggy also, and we couldn’t help but wonder how much MSG was in it (it’s not banned here like back home).  Overall, it was tasty, but dodgy.. hence the name we gave it; Dodgy Wok.

After lunch we went nextdoor to pick up a Starbucks coffee and then walked back to the hotel again to hang out and wait for our friend Leni to arrive. We met Leni on the Stars Forum 4 years ago and she and Wendy are quite good friends. She was even there at Frisco the day that we met Mike Modano in March 2006! Since that time, she’s been collecting Mike Modano things for Wendy, such as posters, mini bobble heads and 503 memorabilia for when Mike broke the record for the most goals scored by an American born player. When Leni arrived, we got to see her newest pride and joy – a volvo convertible (very nice!) and the three of us went for coffee and a wonderful chat about hockey. That’s probably what we love most about Leni – she’s just so good to talk Stars hockey with!

All too soon, it was time to get back to the hotel and get ready for our evening out; a Dallas Stars watching party / birthday part at Val’s house.  The Stars were playing the San Jose Sharks, a team we love playing at the Shark Tank, so we knew it would be a great game. Which meant yet another sad goodbye, an all too common occurrence through our trip!

Jen had promised to “doll” Wendy up for the night, so she took off next door to get all dressed up and stuff while i got ready in our room.  Wendy eventually comes back wearing a jacket… apparently to hide whatever Jen had put her in.  Bit of a surprise ya see.  I was cool with that as it only made for more excitement and entertainment.  We all jumped in Jens Mustang and headed over there with a slight detour at Krogers (grocery store) to pick up some things and my cake, which they made me choose.  Isn’t that just nasty. hehehe

We had a pretty good turnout for the party; Wendy and myself, Jen, Rhonda, Jesse, Adam and Amber (was GREAT to see them), Clay and Harry, Val, Nathan and the kids, Julie and Jeff.  (did i miss anybody?)  We all had sausages and burgers for dinner and I washed them down with some Shiner Bock that Adam and Amber bought me (OMG that’s nice beer!).  Clay and Harry bought me a 6-pack of Shiner Bohemian, which is the the premium stout beer that Shiner make.. and OMG even nicer.  Anyway, back on track.

The game went pretty well but gave massive cause for concern when it went to overtime and then into the shootout.  For those in the know, Marty Turco, the Stars goaly has been pretty mediocre (see: crap) in the shootout this season, so the entire rooms energy levels deflated when the OT period ended.  Marty Turco just have known it was my birthday or something, because he was steller today, saving shot after shot.  Unfortunately, Nabby at the other end of the ice was just as good and after 3 shooters the game was yet to be won so more shooters were needed.  It became a battle of the goalies with shooter after shooter going up until eventually Matt Niskanen (Stars defenseman) finally got the goal that won the game for the Stars.  Not only did the Stars pick up the 2pts, but Marty was kick-ass in the shootout through 11 rounds!  Now that’s a birthday present i can handle!

As it was getting late we all had some cake before saying our goodbyes and departing back to the hotel where we collapsed and talked for a bit before finally heading to bed.

Great friends, great company, great hockey… it was a long, but absolutely fantastic day!