Sue Chavers Game Central

Boston Fan looking for the ideal weekend to watch Celtics game?

I am a die-hard Celtics fan from Vancouver. I want to go to Boston for around 4 days early next year to catch a Celtics game, but would also like to see either the Bruins / Patriots / Red Sox….ideally all of them but I realize seasons don’t overlap enough..

The problem I am having is finding the ‘ideal’ weekend to go…I can go from Thursday to Sunday or Friday to Monday…

Any advice would be appreciated…

The Red Sox and Celtics would only overlap during the spring. Patriots won’t be playing then.

Patriots, Red Sox overlap in fall. NBA season starts in November, baseball is all done in October – maybe September if the Sox don’t make the playoffs.

Bruins season hits right on the hairy edge of the Red Sox. Starts roughly Oct 1, ends first week April.

Odds of the Bruins making the playoffs – 50/50 (everyone makes the playoffs in hockey don’t they). Therefore coming in the spring hoping for Bruins/Red Sox overlap is a long shot. Also the Red Sox always start out on the road because the weather is to unpredictable. In 2008 they open the season in Japan.

Odds of the Celtics making the playoffs – excellent.
Odds of the Red Sox making the playoffs – 80%

You would need to decide which you want to see more, the Patriots or the Red Sox. It won’t be possible to come at a time when all 4 all playing.

If you live in Vancouver you can go to Seattle to see the Celtics and Red Sox every year. Probably easier to get tickets there than it will be here. The Bruins come to Vancouver (assume you mean Vancouver BC?), the Patriots would be the hardest to find local to you.

Therefore – I’d say come in the fall, get Red Sox, Patriots – maybe you could pick up a Bruins game? This would be in October and you would need the Red Sox to be in the playoffs and you would have to be lucky enough to get playoff tickets.

Be aware that getting tickets for any of these teams except the Bruins is next to impossible. Look at the prices on stubhub.com.

I was at game 1 of the 2007 world series, talked to numerous people from Denver who paid $1200+ per seat. Granted it was the world series. I paid face value $150 each for my seats.

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Turn Your Family Gift Exchange Into A Game

It used to be that families had no rules about gift buying. Everyone bought for everyone else, and gifts were exchanged when the family all got together somewhere during the Christmas season.

These days, it’s more common for people to draw a name out of a hat or get assigned a person to buy for. Or the family creates a type of “white elephant” exchange instead of having family members buy for individuals in particular. So, what many families need is a fun way to exchange the gifts, whether they be for a specific person or whether they are ‘white elephant” type gifts.

If the family members drew names, there are several fun things you can do. The gifts can be hidden and clues given as to the location of the gifts. So, if you arrive at grandma’s house with your gift for Aunt Martha, you might tuck her gift into a kitchen cabinet. Then you’d create a series of clue as to here it is. You might say, “Cinnamon lurks here” or “it’s the hub of the home, but not always the home of the hub”.

The clues can be silly or deadly serious. They can be designed so someone will know where to find their present in just minutes, or designed so that it takes a series of clues to get someone right to their gift. If the group is small or the house particularly large, and the participants have the time you can always create a hunt where more than one tip is left and one tip leads to another, which leads to another until the gift is finally found.

Why should the kids have all the fun? Create some fun gift exchange ideas for adults. Whether the family is doing a name draw and exchanging regular gifts or not, you can have some good family fun with a white elephant gift exchange. How about a themed white elephant gift exchange? If the family is into fishing, you could create that as a theme. Everyone must bring a gift related to fishing (this could be anything from sporting goods items, to a singing bass that goes on the wall). It could be a hand held electronic fishing game or a board game with fishing as a theme.

In that same vein, you could create a “cooking” white elephant exchange or a camping themed gift exchange. Again, it’s more about what will please members of the family than anything. Then create some fun games for the exchange itself. Perhaps everyone draws a number and gets to pick their gifts from the pile in the middle based on their number. Perhaps you begin the game that way, but then also people to ‘steal’ someone else’s gift if they choose.

You can require that the gift recipient shakes a gift, studies a gift and makes a good, educated guess as to its contents before opening it. If they are right, they can “steal” someone else’s gift, but if they are wrong, they keep theirs. Add to the silliness factor by playing a card game and dictating that people can’t get their gift and open it until they win a hand in the card game (ideally something fairly quick like poker or rummy).

The idea behind any family gift exchange should be enjoying each other’s company and enjoying the Christmas spirit. As long as it’s fun and engaging, there’s no reason why the adults in the family can’t have some fun games for exchanging gifts just the kids might.

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Late ’60s Ideal Game ads + Motorific