The One with Sir Purr

This weekend my awesome wonderful roomie invited me home with her because they had an extra ticket to the Panthers game (her sister has finals so couldn't come home) and she wanted me to meet her parents. We set off at around 11 on Friday morning. Meagan has a Volvo and it's very nice with leather seats and nothing falling off anywhere :) It also smelled nice, unlike other Volvos I have been in previously (sorry Dad!) It only takes around two hours to drive from Boone to Charlotte, but Meagan kind of lives on the outskirts on the other side, so it took an extra half hour to get to Meagan's house.

First thing when we got in the door we were greeted by 1) her amazing fluffy soft cute dog called Casey and 2) her lovely Mum with a VERY strong New York accent. Firstly, I was shown Aisling's room which has two beds so I got the one they dont normally use (Aisling is Meagan's sister, pronounced ASH-LING). Meagan's house is GORGEOUS. It's really nice, everything is decorated nicely and she has so many awesome things. Upstairs she has a "playroom" which has a sofa and a chair which are suede and are the kind that recline and have a footrest, and a cupholder in the armrest. She has a MASSIVE tv in there with a PS2 and another console I think. She has Guitar Hero World Tour which has drums and a bass as well as a normal guitar. Downstairs is a lovely big kitchen with one of those tvs that come down from under the cupboard, and a big dining table next to french doors that lead out onto a lovely wooden deck with a chair and a barbecue. They also have a living room which they don't use much, a dining room ditto, and then a "den" which is like another lounge with comfy chairs and a big tv and a fireplace. I LOVE Meagan's house :)

On Friday we spent the entire day lounging on the awesome chairs upstairs watching TV. We had fajitas which her dad cooked on the grill outside which were delicious. We also watched Jeopardy which is like a family tradition in their house, it's a game show and it's fun because the questions are quite hard so it's a challenge. Meagan and her dad are RIDICULOUSLY fast at answering, my brain's not that quick! We went to bed after watching Friday Night with Jonathan Ross (they get it on BBC America here).

On Saturday Meagan and I got up and had breakfast, then went shopping. We went to Target, Borders and Harris Teeter (a supermarket) where we bought eggnog (I'd never had it before). Boone has no decent shops, so having proper shops was very exciting. We returned home and then watched a bit of TV. Then we went to church (I'd never been to a Catholic mass before but it was quite interesting) and then out to a really nice Italian restaurant for dinner. When we got back we watched more Jeopardy and then the 25th anniversary concert of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

On Sunday we woke up, had breakfast, then set off for the game. We were going to walk through the downtown area of Charlotte first to show me around. We saw the Bank of America building where Meagan's Dad works, and lots of other big bank buildings (Charlotte is North Carolinas financial capital even though Raleigh is the actual capital). The Christmas decorations were beautiful, and there was a cute little ice skating rink in the middle. We got to the stadium, called the Bank of America stadium, and we had to walk up lots of ramps to get up to the second tier which is where Meagan's family's season ticket seats are. They go to pretty much every game so they are always prepared. They brought seat pads for everyone (it's a thing here in America, because usually the seats are cold and hard, so you have seat cushions with your team on them). We had our Panthers seat cushions x 4, our Panthers baseball caps (because we were on the sunny side) x 4, scarves, gloves, coats, jumpers, we were really warm and snug as bugs in a rug. It wasn't that cold at the start of the game but it got worse towards the middle of the third quarter.

At the start, there was an address from a local Rabbi, then the national anthem was sung by TAYLOR HICKS!!!!! He won season 5 of American Idol and he was actually quite good. He's playing Danny in a Broadway version of Grease now. The Panthers have a mascot called Sir Purr (a panther) and their team of cheerleaders are called the Top Cats. There were lots of goings on at the beginning, the usual warm-ups and presentations of awards and stuff... I was loving it. Being so high up meant that we had a view of the whole field. This really helped me to understand what was going on even more because I could see exactly where penalty flags were being thrown down and which yard things were happening at. I feel like I can understand football quite well now. The stadium is MASSIVE, with 73,778 seats in total. Not all the seats were full, but it was still a pretty good turnout. The Tampa Bay Bucanneers from Florida were supposedly a good team, but we beat them with the final score of 16-6. Although it was quite a low scoring game, it was still REALLY exciting. I had a really good time, I didn't think I'd ever properly enjoy football but being at this massive stadium watching a proper NFL game was awesome! There's a "kickoff specialist" on the Panthers from Dover called Rhys Lloyd so I was rooting for him :)

After the game we went back to the car and went to a noodle place for food (we were all hungry by then). It was delicious. We then finished packing up our stuff and left to drive back to Boone. We knew it had snowed on Saturday, so we saw lots of snow still on the ground and the temperature dropped from around 40 in Charlotte to 29 in Boone. There is still snow on te ground this morning, and it looks very pretty :) So I had a really amazing weekend, Meagan's parents were really nice and her dog was so cute!