Last Thursday Brian, Austin and I woke up BEFORE 5:00 am so we could pick Brandon and Dana up at their apartment at 5:45. We all happily drove to Dallas to see Mimi. I had posted on facebook that not many people can get me to wake up at 4:45 am, but Mimi is one of them. A friend rained on my parade by reminding me that in 5 more months William will also be added to that list. Nevertheless, for now Mimi is one of the select few. And seeing the smile, the NEAR tears, and the excitement on her face when she saw all 5 of us standing at the door made it all worth it. I'm glad we woke up early and there was no traffic, because it was a pretty short trip and I enjoyed the little time we did have to just sit around her house visiting.
Laura came a little bit later bearing gifts (subway) and we all sat around gossipping, eating subway, and waiting for the stadium tour. The tours are generally a minimum of 20 people but my uncle wanted it to be just our family I believe, so he reserved a private tour for 20 even though there were just 10 of us. Our tour guide thoroughly enjoyed this fact and took every opportunity to comment on our private (and "illegal) excursions around the stadium.
Vietta, pronounced viiiiii-eeettta, was a character - Laura and I both commented, the moment we left, that she was a little too similar to Kelly Pickler. But, she loved her job and she loooooved to tell us all the facts about the stadium, whether they were true or unverified. We caught her in a few lies (like telling us the TV screen is "impossible" for a punter to hit. wait...didn't that just happen?) but we were more amused than offended.
The tour started off with us seated in the general seating area of the stadium being bombarded with facts. The stadium is X square feet, has X number of windows, almost 900 concession stands and 3,000 tvs! (clearly I didn't remember ALL the facts) I think the TV screen is a bit excessive and unnecessary, a start to Jerry Jones' need for sparkle, but this picture still doesn't do it justice. The thing is just massive. The thing I noticed first, though, when we sat down was that the seats throughout the stadium are padded and quite comfortable - even the "cheap" seats. But let's just be honest here, there are no cheap seats.
After our view of the tv screen and being educated on the entering and exiting via the sliding glass windows of the stadium, we were on our way to the suites. The suites in the stadium cost anywhere between $1.4M and $5M to RENT the box for 20 years, then the season tickets to actually use the box range are $300+. Vietta wanted to show us the difference between a small and a large suite, but really the large suite was just a small suite with more seats, so we had our fun in this deluxe suite and then moved on to bigger and better things...like stealing napkins from the bathrooms. I wondered why they only had 5 or 6 napkins on the counter at a time, but then I felt how nice they were and realized that people, like myself, would steal as many as possible. And I did.
As we navigated our way around, seeing the entrances to the field, the various levels of suites, the room that holds all the different turf fields, and the other areas of the stadium that Vietta wanted us to think were off limits, we found ourselves in elevators with portraits of Cowboy legends. How odd was it that we ended up in the elevator with my aunt's boyfriend's picture? I just had to get a shot of it. The stadium was meticulously decorated, and everything was shiny and sparkly. The floors had marble tile with sparkly speckles of cowboy blue, there was a cotton bowl museum with shiny silver helmets hanging throughout, the bathrooms were fancy, trashcans were shiny - it was all glitz and glam, I almost forgot it was a FOOTBALL stadium. No detail was forgotten - and I'd hope not, with a grand total of $1.4 BILLION as the final cost. Pretty extravagant, over the top, excessive, and arguably unnecessary for football...but that's Jerry Jones' style. Gotta be the best of the best.
One of the last stops on the tour was, by far, my favorite: the locker room. The main locker room was for all players except rookies, and it was organized by position. There was a back room for all the rookies - poor little guys :) There was a sign between Tony Romo and Jason Witten's lockers saying that you are not to climb on or in the lockers, but I decided to pretend I never saw it for the sake of getting a picture as close to Martellus Bennett as I've ever been. Generally you'd THINK when you see someone doing something "illegal" you'd kindly whisper to them that they're not allowed...but not my family. I wasn't in Martellus's locker for 2 seconds before Brandon, Brian, and Laura all decided to SCREAM from across the locker room that I was breaking the rules. Thanks guys, you've reminded me why I'm a rule follower 99.9% of the time.
In the end, we got to see Mimi's brick laid in the ground outside the stadium. Although it was placed in a spot to where Mimi was unable to see it, the 5 of us were eager and excited to find it and have it photographed. (I think we were equally excited that we weren't the idiots to paid $150 for a brick that said "ROMO & TO SUPERBOWL BOUND")
Mimi has her place in Cowboys' history!
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