Questions About Myself

1. Is this what I want to be doing?

No.  When I worked in mortgage foreclosures I had no issues with taking someone’s home; it was a necessary evil.  Since I managed in the loss mitigation department I had the ability to get a clear picture of someone through their income and expenses.  I learned that numerous people felt they needed items to appear wealthy but in were over extended in all most every aspect of their life.  I didn’t have any sympathy for people that lived above their means for reasons of perceived status.  The Industry I’m in now is not like that at all.  I really have a bad feeling about everything they do.  I feel as if they are consistently taking advantage of people that are doing everything they can to make their bills.  I need out and I’ve already started to look.  Hopefully I’ll know a little more next week but my exit strategy is already in stage 2 of planning.

2. What do I want to change about me?

There are quite a few things that I would like to change but I’ll keep this more on an overview level than a detailed explanation.

1.      Physical- I want to get into better shape.  I don’t see myself getting back into military shape since I’m not humping a 90lbs. pack 13 miles, working out to muscle fatigue every morning or running ops for 12 hours.  At the same time I know that a few years ago I weighed less, felt better, and I want to get back to that.  I planned a lot of races this year to help motivate me to get into shape, but with the recent ear of my calf those have been put on hold.  Momentarily I might add.

2.      Mental- I’ve always felt the best when I’m learning new things.  I feel right at home in a library and love to get entrenched into new subjects.  I made a goal for myself of reading for at least an hour 3 times a week.  I also want to learn a couple languages this year.  Spanish and French are goals this year but my goal is to know at least 5 languages at some point in my life.  Studying different cultures, different periods in time, and different industries have always appealed to me and I need to get back on track for that.

3. How much junk do I need?

I just moved and I got rid of a lot of things.  Shoes, shirts, pants, etc all went to Good Will.  Now that I’m in my new place the closet is a lot smaller than at my old place.  I’ve got too much junk.  I have at least 100 T-shirts and I might wear 10 in rotation.  I own maybe 17 pairs of shoes and wear 4-5 regularly (not counting my dress shoes) so I should donate some of those.  I think a lot of this stuff would better benefit someone that needs these items as opposed to me who only uses them a few times a year.  It’s hard though.  I look at my baby blue and yellow eS shoes that I wear a handful of times or the 8 pairs of DC tennis shoes that I casually wear and wish I could wear them more often.  The truth is that with the business casual wardrobe taking over 5-6 days a week I just don’t have the time.  I should give these items away.

4. What memories am I/ did I miss out on?

As we get older some of the things that were very high on our priority list seems to fall to the wayside.  Traveling has been the biggest one for me these past few years.  I’ve become a lot more stable in the last year or so.  I used to regularly take impromptu trips to Austin, Houston, NYC, Boston, California, and anywhere else that I wanted to take a trip too.  With more responsibility the commitments become greater and things that played a greater importance in your life long goals seem to change.  I’ve noticed that as I work longer and was promoted these spur of the moment trips became less and less.  Austin turned into a twice a year deal and Houston changed to about the same.  I’ve missed out on some memories that I know would have been great along with growing apart from some of those friends.  I guess time will tell if those decisions not to go where worth it or it is was just another missed opportunity.

Conceptual Reality and the Power of Words

Since I’m not too good at staying on track with one topic, and since it is my blog I really don’t care, I’ve decided to tackle two separate topics that have been on my mind.  Both are due to conversations that I had with people recently.  One was an employee of mine in the Weatherford location and the other is my friend Bad News (BN).  To be fair to him he’s not really bad news, it just always works out when we get together we end up partying till the sun comes up and crazy shenanigans happen.  So when the two of us are together it’s always bad news. 

I had asked Bad this question last night.  What do you call someone that is straight but acts very flaming and feminine?  I assumed that if there was a slang term or nickname for people like this Bad would know, he knows these kinds of things.  His response was “Gay”, so I replied that was what I called him but I thought there was another term.  Bad took slight offence to this and said that I was being mean to his people noting that only he could say that.  I told him that I could say Gay, it’s not a protected derogatory word such as “nigger”, “kike” or “faggot”, it’s a term used to describe an emotion,  a common sexual preference, a person’s and first last name.  I also told him that his people couldn’t own that term as derogatory.  He disagreed.  Now I personally don’t consider Gay as a hateful term.  If someone can rightfully use the term on billboards, government sponsored pamphlets, and name numerous organizations with that term I don’t feel you can put it into the same classification as the above mentioned words.  Now here is where Bad and I do agree; I replied to him that a sentence has meaning because of the role it plays in our lives and experiences.  The same can and should be said about words.  Now my experiences with the term gay were all in relation to growing up and as it was used as something that was un-cool or lame.  It wasn’t hateful or offensive like Queer was or some of the other childish terms.  It was usually in reference to an action taking place or a location.  But my experience with the word is not his.  He might have a different relationship with the word, maybe it was something that people harassed and bullied him with or used in an offensive manner directed at him.  I relate to two common terms as an adult we hear regularly, skinny and fat.  Now someone who has a weight problem may cringe every time they hear the term fat due to being picked on throughout childhood for being overweight.  Even a person that is now in shape might have an eating disorder or consistently works out for their fear of becoming overweight.  The term fat brings back horrible memories to some people.  Skinny can bring the same memories.  Some people that are naturally skinny shudder when they think of being called bean pole or twig in relation to their slender build.  Whereas someone like me uses those terms regularly when they describe their body or what size they want to be; I’m fat now, but I’d like to be skinny.  Using that as my reference point I still don’t think I consider the term gay a demeaning one.

My other thought is regarding a person’s concept of reality.  We were discussing murder since there was a recent murder in Weatherford.  One of the employees stated that things had now gotten pretty bad.  Her concept of bad was in direct correlation to the fact that she couldn’t remember when there were more than 2 murders in a year in Weatherford.  Using her age as a starting point, 22, then we can guesstimate that she became aware of murder about the same time she started to read the local newspaper for current events and watch the news.  If we use 14 (conservatively) as the age she became socially aware of murder in her town then for the past 8 years she assumes that 2 murders were committed per year in her small town.  If you look at this as a whole you should consider population growth in relation to murder.  At 14 she wasn’t fully aware of the size of the population, but at 22 she has a better concept of it.  To think that 2 murders out of 7,000 (conceptual number based on her 14 year old view) is understandable, but 4 of 23,000 (based on her 22 year old view) is a direct link to things being bad doesn’t make sense to me.  I know not everyone is a numbers person like me, but rationally wouldn’t this come to play at some point during your thought process?  The increase of population, either perceived due to your limited knowledge of it or genuine due to growth would obviously affect social norms, crime, employment, and housing. 

Time to rant:

I brought up the quote that war is peace as we were talking about this.  I described growing up and living in a country such as Somalia where war is all some people have known for generations.  Their SOP is walking out of the house with enough ammo for the weapon slung across their backs and going to work there is always a possibility of not coming home.  This is their reality but to us in the USA it’s so abstract.  We can’t imagine living in a country where all of your basic needs aren’t readily available, where you have such a diverse choice in housing and food.  I know we take this for granted when we concern ourselves more with what celebrities are doing and who wins a singing concert as opposed to how much the people educating our children are making.  When I was in the Military we were treated with such an indifference I had never before felt.  Before 9/11 people in the Military were treated like a burden in the towns and cities surrounding their bases.  The same people fighting to allow us all of the freedoms that we’ve become accustomed to were being dealt with as second class citizens.  As Americans we have such a short term narrow minded view on things.  We believe the rhetoric of the mass media when they tell us that every conservative right winger wants to control women’s bodies by making abortion illegal regardless of the situation or the liberal left wants to make it illegal for anyone to own a gun.  As a person I feel it’s our duty to actually do your own research and see what you believe and what changes will affect your life.  I firmly believe we need to get out of the bubble that we live in and put the focus back on educating our self, caring for our family and friends, while realizing how good we do have it here.

People are becoming more and more stupid.

I don’t know when it happened or if I’m just noticing it more the older I get but I’m pretty sure people are becoming more and more stupid.  It really got me thinking when I was talking to a recruiter yesterday on the phone.  This recruiter shot me an email about an opening at one the big 3 mortgage banks.  She gave me her contact information and asked for an updated copy of my resume.  Later in the day she called to go over my resume.  She told me the job was for X and asked if I had any experience in the mortgage default business.  When I asked her if she had a copy of my resume in front of her she replied yes.  Well to anyone who has ever been in the mortgage default business word like Loss Mitigation, Foreclosure, and default management are all common terms that denote this.  I explained this to her and she wasn’t familiar with the terms.  I don’t understand why you would be a recruiter for the mortgage industry and not be familiar with the terms.  Not only that, but if your job was to recruit top talent for a specific field wouldn’t you learn what the basic terminology and lingo used was?  I felt like I was teaching a 4 year old about mortgage default through the whole conversation. 

More often it seems these days’ people rely on directions more than common sense.  I can’t tell you how often I’ve trained people and get asked the same questions in situations that are 90% identical.  I also like to reply back with “what do you think you should do?”  It amazes me when people truly don’t know.  If the difference between situation A and situation B is their name but the figures are the issue why are people concerned with details that don’t matter?  During standardized test week we always had a section that was titled reading comprehension.  The gist of it was to read a paragraph and answer questions about the information you just read.  The paragraph contained a mixture of pertinent and non-essential information.  I think job applicants should be required to take tests such as this.  It doesn’t matter that John Smith lives in Washington and Mike Jones lives in Houston when you are trying to figure out their per diem or doing data entry on their PITI payment. 

Sometimes a person is smart but people are dumb; have you heard the old adage of “mob mentality”?  I think this is a proven fact.  I hear reasonably intelligent people making the dumbest arguments because people will agree with them.  Congress and a good portion of laws they enact are a good example of these.  After the Arizona shooting NY Rep. Peter King calls to impose a ban on carrying a firearm within 1,000 feet of any “high profile” public official.  Can you imagine a constantly moving gun free zone?  The fact that Michael Bloomberg and others agree with this is ridiculous.  Another trend that is starting to develop is when kids in high school get caught sexting and the DA tries to convict them for child pornography.  If a 15 or 16 year old sends an inappropriate picture to another 15 or 16 year old they should not be branded for the rest of their life as a sex offender.  Nor should they receive the same punishment guidelines that a 30 year old man receives if he is caught with child pornography.  I think you need to make a clear distinction in these cases as they are not near the same.

Well I was going to write some more things about idiotic people and the laws that are enacted but as it turns out I have to deal with some pretty ignorant people right now.  I have a guy who has watched just enough Law and Order that he thinks if he uses a few buzz words here and there in a threatening manner while bringing up suing our company and me individually it will scare me into giving into his demands.  Sorry folks, but that’s not how it works.  We provide a service and if you violate the terms of the contract and not make your obligated payments then we take action against you.  Just because you were a good (or in this case adequate) customer at one point doesn’t give you the right to harass or threaten the company’s employee’s.  In the words of Herb Kelleher- “The customer is not always right”

1st Winter Indoor Game

Our first indoor soccer game of the new season was this past Sunday.  We now play in the over 30 league and it’s already been an improvement over the open division.  All of the HS and college players had a huge cardio advantage over us.  The majority of our team isn’t in the greatest shape.  We have some skill, but we definitely don’t have the cardio to match up with them.  We won our first game and it was pretty nice, although they had a girl (I use the term loosely) who seemed to take out her frustration on failing at life on our team.  This baby buffalo of a person was intent on knocking, hitting, pushing, elbowing anyone that was near her/ it.  When I saw her fall the first time from her complete lack of coordination, she was built like a pear; she pulled the jersey of the closest opposing player to bring them down with it.  That person was me.  Normally when this happens the offender apologizes to the opposing player since this is a co-ed over 30 league and not everyone has played.  This oil drum of a person flopped on the ground and acted as if I knocked her down.  This is pretty much how the rest of the game worked itself out.  The half Orca/ half pig would intentionally try and knock people down, dead leg them, or just elbow them.  I know ultra competitive guys (which I happen to be) that give it their all, but when a person of knowingly less talent plays as dirty as this one did with no regard for anyone it gets to me.  That’s why I came up with the only logical conclusion.  She blames everyone else for every pitfall and missed opportunity in her life.  She can’t take responsibility for any instance where she was bested; it was always due to something underhanded.  I guess in the end it worked out.  We won, her team lost and this allowed more vinegar to fuel her bitter rage.  I probably added some octane booster as well with my sarcastic words of encouragement.  I am pretty sore though from her 5’10” 290 lbs continuously crashing up against me.  I can’t see how guys on BBW sites do it, they are much stronger than me.

Life Changes

I’ve got a lot on my mind today.  I started reading a new book titled “Replay” by Ken Grimwood last night.  The idea of the book is a man dies and comes back in his freshman self and year with all of the knowledge that he gained along the way.  Since I just started the book I’m not sure what avenue it will go but it did get me thinking about my life.  People always talk about if you could do one thing over again or change something what would it be?  The politically correct answer is obviously “nothing”.  I figure anyone that says nothing isn’t looking at the whole picture or hasn’t made many life changes.  That got me looking at some of my friends lives and what all they have done.  The vast majority of them haven’t made a life changing or difficult decision or have made maybe one decision that changes their life.  I’m not talking about the decision where if they would have showed up 15 minutes early they would have walked right in the middle of a robbery, but the decisions where you know if you choose A you will forever change your life and if you stick with B then things stay the same.  There are very few people that make the choice to move across the country, hell even across the state knowing the decision will have a lasting impact that could possibly be negative for them. 

Looking back on my life up to this point I see a few major junctures that came where my life was drastically different when I made the decision that I did.  The first one is coming out of highschool- I opted to join the Army instead of going directly to College like most of my friends or like my parents had wanted to me.  The experience definitely changed me as a person and had I chosen the college route my life would have been infinitely different.  I can’t even imagine what the changes would be; I just know that a good number of things would be different considering how the Army has shaped my thought process and logistical sense.  Hell, college might have even made me a democratic.  I doubt it though

Once I got out of the Army I worked at a gym and then worked as an account representative for a Semi-conductor manufacturing plant.  When I was there they had a second facility in Austin, I had never been to Austin before in my life but for some reason I lobbied the VP, Jack Wherle, who was head of the Austin plant to take me along and move me there.  To this day I have no reason why I wanted to move to Austin.  I knew 1 person in Austin; all of my friends and family were in the Dallas area or scattered throughout the US.  He offered, I took it and now the majority of my very close friends are all people that I met while I was in Austin.  My roommate Fiona started talking to a guy, Zack Fogleman, who basically introduced me to everyone that I now consider dear.  I can’t say enough about my time in Austin and the people that I met there.  Days spent on the lake wakeboarding, nights spent downtown, house parties, great (nothing compares to it) food, just about everything was great about Austin- except the pay.  When the semi-conductor industry went bust I went looking for a new job.  Like everyone in Austin I worked at Dell at one point, I did the Sunset Direct gig and hated it, oil and gas commodities purchasing which was freaking horrible, and I never could find anything that I really liked.  I was talking to a friend of mine from high school, Nancy Boy, and he had interned at a law firm in Addison part time through College.  So once again I had a decision to make.  Do I leave all that I love to go to Dallas?  I chose to go to Dallas and start over.  Once more I left all that I loved along with my friends that I became so close with to see what else is out there.

More recently I had been with the above mentioned law firm for the last 7 years, lived in the same apartment for the past 5 years, and had the same car for at least that long.  With things in constant decline at the firm; top talent was leaving weekly, the pay raises were coming less frequently, and more control was being handed over to people who had the confidence but not the competence to achieve the desired results I made another decision.  Things in my personal life had become stagnant as well.  I had been finished with the scene factory that is Dallas for some time, the hose beast I was dating, while beautiful, wasn’t trustworthy and more embarrassing situations than I care to name had occurred with more frequency.  I had the same friends mostly doing the same things and I had become distracted from a lot of things that I wanted to do with my life.  Instead of taking charge of it and making decisions that would be beneficial I was more along for the ride.  I knew I was unhappy about a number of things but I wasn’t doing anything to change them.  After some consideration I took a job in a field that I never worked in where the job was 65 miles away and I would be going to training in Houston which I knew would surely end this warped idea of a relationship.  I can’t tell you how things have turned out because I’m one month into it.

Each time that I’ve made a major decision it’s always hard at first.  Anytime you change one aspect of your life that has become a constant then it’s difficult on you both physically and emotionally.  Of all the decisions I wonder about the most I’d say going into the Army and moving away from Austin are the two biggest ones that I always question. 

The Army was a difficult decision that I think about weekly.  When people ask me if I liked it I always reply that it was fun but equally sucked.  You make lifelong friends while you are there.  I know people still that would come half way across the world if I needed them to without even asking them.  The unspoken bound formed with people is amazing.  You can hate someone in your unit with every bone in your body and when you’ve been on a 30 day field problem slogging through the swamps they are every bit your equal; they have shared the same taste of WP, the burning CS gas, the upper decker thermite MP adventures and you know that they have your back regardless of the situation.  With all of the situations and things I learned from being in the Army I can’t think of the person I would be without it.  If I had gone to Hardin Simmons I wonder if I would have stayed there.  I wonder if I would have met someone like so many do in small town colleges and moved to Dallas right away and started a family shortly after graduation.

While I don’t miss making $32.5 K/ yr in some dead end job in Austin with everyone else while living with 4 roommates I do miss my friends and the numerous different experiences that Austin allows you to have.  Austin is like no other place that I’ve been too.  It has a vibe and a feeling to it that you can’t explain unless you have been there and soaked it up.  There are so many different facades to Austin.  It’s not just 6^th street, The University of Texas, Lake Austin, Lake Travis, South by Southwest, Austin City Limits, or 4^th Street.  Each of those pieces make up some part of what makes it so magical.  For me Austin will always be about the Lake and the food.  Two of my best friends in the world, Cory and Jacob, were entrenched in the Austin Wakeboarding scene while I lived there.  It pretty much dominated my life for 3 years.  Both Jacob and Corey could tell you some hilarious stories about me and the adventures we all had during that time. 

I wonder about people that don’t make life changing decisions.  Are they scared to try something new?  Do they think they will feel ashamed if they try and fail?  Are things in the area they grew up with so perfect they don’t believe life could be any better?  I’ve never understood people that live their whole life in a town or city.  They grew up there, went to college (maybe) someplace within a couple hours, and then promptly moved right back after graduation to hang out with the same people they went to high school with.  Not to knock the people I went to high school with but I’ve met so many great people since then.  Most of my close friends I didn’t go to high school with. Maybe that’s a small piece of it.  I don’t ever consider the family piece since I’ve never been close with my family.  I still contend that the world has gotten a lot smaller in the past 10 years.  Skype, mobile phones, social networking and email makes things incredibly instant.  Airfare prices have come down as well so I can’t see that being a major factor.  I’m not sure what causes people to become complacent in their lives and I hope I never do.

“History and experience tell us that moral progress comes not in comfortable and complacent times, but out of trial and confusion.”-Gerald R. Ford

Wade Bowen "Resurrection" at 2010 Americana Jam in Gruene

Such a Waste

On Saturday night a friend and I were having a conversation with someone that we know, not real well, but mainly through passing.  I was giving her (we’ll call her Star so it’s not so obvious who she is and I don’t want her laundry known) a bit of advice on her relationship status.  Granted, I’m not the best person to give advice of this nature but in this particular situation I feel qualified. 

She has been “not-dating” a guy for about a year.  She wouldn’t go into his reasoning for not claiming her or entering into an actual relationship with her.  She said that he has certain reasons and she understands.  I don’t think she truly understands, but it’s a convenient explanation.  From getting to knew her a little better I’m very pleasantly surprised about her.  She is a (very!) beautiful girl with an amazing body.  From my first impression I thought she was going to be a party/ club type girl that was physically attractive but lacking the mental piece that so many girls as gorgeous as she is usually missing.  To her credit she’s got her stuff together.  She goes to school full time, she goes to church, she has ambition, drive, no kids, and knows what she wants in life.  She’s easy to talk to and hold conversations with and very intelligent as well.  Honestly she’s as close to perfect as I could imagine.    I can’t figure out for the life of me why this guy doesn’t want to claim her and start building the fundamentals necessary to develop a sound relationship.

I know that he has some reasoning (however flawed it might be) about her tattoos or maybe it’s race or the fact that she bartends when she’s not in school.  Since she didn’t go into it I can only guess what common issues people have when they won’t take the step from “hanging out” to claiming the person and getting into the relationship area.  I was in a relationship where the girl didn’t want to even go to the title dating.  She still refers to people she’s dating as hanging out.  With us though I knew her reasoning, she felt that dating and then girlfriend terminology eventually would trap her.  She’s afraid to be along, but doesn’t want to be trapped into settling down.  She also felt that I definitely wasn’t the one she wanted to settle down with if it came to that.  I was too different than the idea of the person she eventually wanted to be with.  I wasn’t heroin sheik thin, I didn’t have the hipster/ metrosexual dress, and I spoke my mind about everything.  I told Star all about this and what my theory on this is.  I truly feel if you like someone a lot or especially if you love someone then all the little BS gets thrown to the side.  You don’t care if they aren’t your idea of a perfect person (let’s face it, that person doesn’t exist because you made them up and until the total recall thing happens they aren’t going to) but they make you so happy all of the time that certain things no longer matter.  Look at it as a hypothetical sliding scale; at first they have 10 things going for them and 10 things going against them.  Say item A going for them is their conversational ability.  Once you’ve spent 4 or 5 long nights locked in in-depth conversation about life, happiness, and what not that now knocks off a couple items of things you didn’t like or were unsure about previously.  As you grow and get to know this person each thing that you like gets amplified, while the other stuff gets forgotten. 

I tried to get this point across to her, but with people in relationships it’s difficult.  I know my last one sure was.  She was crazy, did crazy retarded things all of the time but for some reason I stayed in the relationship.  I see it all of the time and it’s easy to be on the outside looking in.  For some reason it’s never as simple as it seems when it’s you as opposed to someone else.  One thing I can’t seem to understand is why this guy isn’t taking advantage of having a really great girl who is phenomenally looking with an outstanding personality.  He seems more concerned with other people’s initial perception of her.  I’ve dated people that have a bad reputation or have certain negative qualities about them and I go back to saying that if you are really interested in them then all of that is moot.  Some things are definitely deal breakers but then you wouldn’t get involved with them from the first point if that’s the case.   

Thoughts from the Weekend

Friday was NYE, I had originally planned to drive to Austin and spend NYE with some good friends there.  By the time Friday came I wasn’t really up to making the 3 hr drive and they didn’t really have much planned either.  There were a few parties going on but I didn’t want to drive to Dallas.  I went to Central Market on the way home and picked up a nice NY Strip along with some Jalapenos wrapped in bacon and stuffed with Chorizo along with a couple bottles of wine.  I had a low key night of cooking for one followed by finishing up Adam Carolla’s book.  There aren’t that many books that cause me to fall off the sofa laughing but his does.  It’s the first book since “I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell” that has sent me into coughing fits from the amount of laughter.  Hands down funniest book I’ve ever read.  I’ve had the same theme for NYE the last 10-12 years and I wanted to start this one off a different way. 

Saturday I was up early, did some laundry and cleaned my place.  I haven’t had a full weekend to myself in a long time.  I’ve been out of town or had things going in for the last month that it’s made it pretty hard to get my new apartment straight.  I also decided that I want this year to me about me and the things I want to accomplish.  All too often I feel most of us have goals that we would like to accomplish but really don’t ever get around to it.  We get caught up in life and things that we told ourselves would mean a lot or that we put on our bucket list seems to be an afterthought.  Some friends and I have got together and decided to do the Rock and Roll half marathon.  I haven’t ran 13 miles since I was in the military, I’m not even sure if we ever ran that far then.  It was usually road marches with 70-80lbs of gear but rarely just a run.  Since I committed to that at the end of March I need to start getting in shape for that.  Nathan also signed us up to do the Hotter than Hell 102 mile bike ride in Wichita Falls again this year.  We’re also going to do the MS150 in April.  We did the HTH ride last year and it really was hard, but I think the hardest part was mentally when a major accident happened about 3 miles in and every sat on the course for 45 min just waiting for car flight to leave.  Since I feel I’ve already done the 102 I want to make it a little harder so I want to add the 13 mile off road ride on Friday.  I guess I’m to the point where I want to start doing things for my body and mind.  Besides masturbation I think working out is the only other thing you do for your body and yourself.

After having lunch with Jamie and Jimmy on Saturday afternoon I went over to watch the TCU game at Randy and Julie’s place.  I’m so happy TCU won and I think it’s awesome they went to the Rose Bowl.  Traditionally the Rose Bowl has always been USC Vs Ohio State or Michigan Vs USC.  For TCU to just be invited to the dance was great, the fact they proved all the pundits wrong and won against a Wisconsin team that averages 40 something points and runs all over everyone made it even sweeter.  I LOVED TCU’s helmets.  Having the purple helmet with the horned frog having the rose it in its mouth was so cool.  That was a very nice trick up to their uniforms, the fact that it was on the biggest stage they’ve ever played on while smashing Wisconsin in the mouth couldn’t have been better.  I love College football!

I saw the coolest thing in the world on Sunday.  Jack was taking Clay and I back to my car and in the middle of the parking lot in front of Chipotle a Hawk had just snatched a dove out of the air. The hawk had the dove on the ground and was eating it while the dove was still barely alive.  The hawk had a piece of the dove in its mouth and the dove was shaking and screeching.  He started mean mugging Clay and I when we went to take a picture and then flew off with the dove in its talons and blood dripping.  By far the coolest thing that I’ve seen in a long, long time.