To break some of the inevitable tension building toward tonight's game, we offer this story from last night: we headed to a local favorite establishment to watch the Twins game with M.C. Creme Fraiche, only to find the game was officially rained out. Thanks for nothing, Mother Nature and optimistic blog reports.

So instead, we were stuck watching that fright-pig of a first half between the Panthers and Cowboys. Luckily, there were some highlights, such as: M.C. and us successfully predicting a Jake Delhomme INT the very play after the Panthers became the first team in dozens of years to successfully pick up a first down on a third-and-long draw play.

But the bst part was the Cowboys fan next to us, who didn't really seem to like that we yelled "hit the board!" every time the punter came out. "That was just one time, and it was in practice," he said. "Nope, it was in a game," M.C. corrected. "They built the board to NFL specs," he said. "The punt hit the board," M.C. reminded him. This continued for a while.

We know the Cowboys ended up winning 21-7. But all we saw was the first half, a 7-0 Panthers lead and an irked Dallas fan. That was really enough for us.

Question: is hoping a punt hits a video board enough reason to watch Cowboys games when they are on? Because that's all we've really got.