Carrie Underwood: Hockey Lockout Scrapped January Plans

Carrie Underwood admits she was one of the last holdouts when it came to getting on the Twitter bandwagon, but now that she's tried it she is loving it. In fact, fans might have seen a few more tweets from Carrie this month, because she has something rare going on in her life: time on her hands.

"I purposely took January off so I could be home a lot more and watch hockey, and here we are, there's not been any hockey," the singer says with a rueful laugh while speaking to a group of journalists recently in Nashville.

Hubby Mike Fisher is a forward for the Nashville Predators professional hockey team, and Carrie is quite a fan of the sport. "At least I get to watch a couple games before we go back out on the road," she says, relieved that the NHL lockout is finally over. "I guess that will have to be enough."

There are a few more home games for the Predators before Carrie heads for Colorado Feb. 13 for her first two shows of the 2013 Blown Away tour. While she says she hasn't really checked schedules to see if her path will cross with Mike's on the road, it's possible she could catch a Predators game in Anaheim, Calif. on Feb. 27, when they play the Ducks, because she will be between dates in California. (On Feb. 25, Carrie has a show in Oakland, and on the 26th she will be in Stockton.)

Carrie will try not to miss many Predators games, however, saying, "I'll have to make sure we have Hockey Center Ice on the bus, but that's not nearly as much fun."

The couple can keep up via Twitter, because Carrie has become quite a fan of late. One of the things she likes is reading her fans comments about her concerts.

"When you put on a concert and then you go to another city to put on the next show, Twitter allows you to experience some of the aftermath of being someplace," Carrie explains. "It's really cool. Doing the show is not so much work, because you get up there, you do your thing, it was great and you have fun.

"Then I read my Twitter posts and I get to realize that other people had that much fun too. They are tweeting pictures, they are so excited, they want to go to another show. It makes it a little more real when you actually see people talking about it afterwards, which is really cool."

Carrie will be performing on the 55th Annual Grammy Awards on Feb. 10. The show will air live from Los Angeles' Staples Center on CBS.

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