Time to write again

Well, in one more day it would be an entire month since I last wrote on my blog, so it's definitely time to write again. The last month has been a truly transformational time for me . During this last month I have celebrated the beginning of a new year, gone to 2 funerals for mothers of friends of mine, seen Uncle Dan show the true spirit of the holidays to those less fortunate, and of course watch my Horns win a national championship among other very important things.
Hook'em.

Instead of starting my blogging back with something heavy, I want to tell a couple of stories. Stories are always more entertaining to both write and read, so to those of you who will be reading this here goes.

Because I was not planning to work on Monday (Thank you Dr. ML King's parents for his timely birth) I decided that I would attend UT's National Championship Celebration in Royal Memorial Stadium on Sunday evening. Unfortunately, Amanda was not able to be there for this momentus occasion, because she had to work, but one of my work friends happens to be as big of Texas fan as I am (Garrett) so we wemt to the deal together.

Now, this was UT's first National Championship in a longggg time, so there was a ton of hype about this celebration! Everytime you turned on the the radio or tv you could hear about how "more than 100,000 are expected to turn out for this event!" Garrett and I, being the orangebloods that we are wanted to make sure that we had a seat. We showed up at 3:45 of the event that didnt even kick off untill 6:30 just so that we could stand in line to get seats!
Let's just say that there is a big difference between 60,000 and more than a 100,000, because Garrett and I sat in the stands, in our decent seats for 2 hours for nothing, because the stadium didnt even fill up! But there were a lot of people there.

When the program finally started, Garrett and I burst into laughter because of the speakers. There is just something that really takes the Oomph out of a celebration when boring old people speak.
It was like the event planners got together and said "You know what would really get the crowd going, lets have only congressmen and administrators speak at this thing. The college kids will love it! Nothing says "Go Team" like the 75 year old chairman of the board of regents getting everyone pumped up! Its ok that they don't know who Vince Young or David Thomas is..."
After hearing from Rick Perry, a couple of people running for Congressional Seats, and UT's President, the best speaker of the evening came up. He is the chancellor at UT. Garrett and I noticed that everyone's speech sounded a little wierd. We thought that it was just the microphone or something untill this guy. Apparently the administrators took a trip to 6th street before and were all hammered for the celebration! The Chancellor was so drunk that he couldn't even complete an entire sentence! He got up and slurred something that no one understood and then says,
"I'mmmm, soorryyyyy, i'llll t t ttryyyyyy to sppeak mrore slllowwwwlyyyy...Forget it, GGGoooo hornssssssss." and then with horns raised sat down.
Part of the reason that this was so funny to us was because we thought about what it would be like if ACU won a national championship and we had this same type of celebration at Shotwell. Something tells me that Dr. VanRheenan and Dr. Money would have a little more restraint, but hey, still kind of funny to think about.

After the celebration, we drove back to Abilene ready to begin another week of work.
As I mentioned above I had no plans to work on Monday, so I got to spend the day doing what I wanted. Around 8PM I decided that I wanted to go hit golf balls, so I made the 12 minute voyage to the other side of town to the only place that has a lit driving range. After wasting some hard earned money on a bucket of balls, I decided that it was time to pack up and go home. On the South side of town is a barbeque place called "Ronnie Ingalls Pit Bar-B-Q." After countless times of passing it up for the likes of Joe Allen's or Harold's, I decided to give it a go.
As a I walked in, I was transported back to the old west saloon. As the only customer in the place, I had my run of it so I selected a seat close to the exit, then the wierdness started...
My waiter was a young lady who was in her low to mid twenties. She seemed nice enough, in fact she was a little too nice. She seemed really awestruck that I'd selected their establishment to dine at that evening. Her language was littered with more than the usual "Yes sirs" and "right away sirs." For the time being I blew this off and thought, oh she's just being nice until less than 5 minutes after I orded my meal, The Manager brought me an ENORMOUS plate of food. They threw all sorts of junk on there so that the poor plastic plate was literally bending under the weight of the food. The manager seemed elated as well at my presence and was most gracious. At this point I was ready to call up the local food critic and suggest that everyone eat here! This was awesome! Nothing like good barbeque to fill you up! Surely this was how they treated everyone...Well, maybe not.
After eating as much as possible (and trust me, I'm a good eater!) I asked for a doggie bag and my check. Inside the box was placed MORE food from the kitchen and then the waitress scraped what was left off of my plate. Wow, what a place...
As I raised to leave the waitress stopped me and said, "Hey, should I know you from somewhere sir?" After going through my typical "I have a twin" song and dance, and that she may know him, she was still convinced that she knew me. The she asked "Are you a professional athelete?" After pausing for a moment to think whether or not playing intramural sports into my midtwenties counted, I indicated that I was not. Then she goes "Yeah right, sure your not, I get it, I tell you what, my boss and I want you to come back next time your in town, and be sure to bring your buddies too, we'll feed all of you, we'll even put your picture on the wall so you can sign it!"
Sounds like a bunch of us are going to eat for free during Sing Song Weekend. Any takers?
I wonder who she thought I was?