Anyone up for some tennis?

For Brent, working in the corporate world of banking has its perks - and it had better have its perks for all the crazy long hours he's working!




One of the perks is if he's lucky, he can sometimes score free tickets to sporting events. This year, he was able to get each of us a ticket to the 2008 U.S. Open.



I have to admit that I didn't exactly jump up and down when he told me we had a chance to go to two matches - a women's match followed by a men's match. That's a whole hell of a lot of tennis in one evening!

But I went anyway and ended up having a blast!

Not did I have an entire evening alone with my husband (and more than 23,000 tennis fans!) but we got to have a VERY RARE middle-of-the-week night out in New York City doing something fun we've never done together before.

The evening started off with us roaming the grounds surrounding the Arthur Ashe Stadium in Queens watching the not-so-famous tennis players on the smaller courts while we kept an eye out for the Citibank hospitality tent so we could eat what Brent called the best, juiciest hamburgers he's ever eaten (he went to the open with colleagues last year before I moved to the city).

Though the hamburgers this year were a little disappointing, the hospitality tent awesome - free booze, free food, and table tennis in the corner, but I still felt uncomfortable.

First of all, I knew no one and in my jeans, black flats, and a tank top covered with a white sweater, I was easily the most under dressed. Everyone else was in khakis or skirts and some guys were even still wearing ties.

Even after Brent introduced me to a colleague he was chatting with, I still felt invisible and uncomfortable. I have nothing in common with bankers - except that I married one - and to be honest, the work they do would bore me to tears. But Brent loves it, so the more power to him. I'll leave the stuffy corporate world to him.

Luckily, we only stayed to eat and have one drink because we got to the venue more than an hour later than Brent wanted to, and Serena Williams had already started warming up for her match against a woman I'd never heard of in the second round of the Open.

Williams ended up winning in straight sets, and though our seats were really high up - we were in Row H of the upper deck - I thought they were great. We were low enough to see everything going on, but high enough to talk to each other whenever we wanted to* even when people sitting lower had to be quiet to not disturb the players.

(*I wanted to talk a whole lot more than Brent did. He took a keen interest in just watching the games.)

Following Serena was Rafael Nadal, the No. 1 men's single player in the world, who easily beat American Ryler DeHeart. Though I was excited to see Nadal play live, I still cheered for the American player.

Nadal also won in straight sets, and we watched him score the match point while power walking toward the subway that would take us back into the city.

If we would have waited until the match were truly over, we would have had 23,000 people to contend with as we all tried to get on the train at the same time. I doubt we would have easily won that battle!