Alabama Trip

Last Friday, the high school senior daughter C and I kicked off a gameday weekend to watch the Aggies take on the Tide in Tuscaloosa. But first we had to attend an out-of-town football game where she was cheering. Sure enough, we ended up with lightning that did NOT stop the game. Which was a scary prospect since we were all perched on metal bleachers. Then the sky opened up and poured buckets in the 4th quarter. Since the cheer coach can't seem to get her act together with the rain ponchos, this is the second game this season where the cheerleaders have gotten soaked to the bone standing out in the crappy weather. With C's low body fat, she ends up cold and shivering in her sopping wet uniform, shoes and socks. Her dad and I are definitely not a fan of that.

After making our way to the Austin airport hotel since a 1.5 hr drive back home was out of the question at 10 pm when we had to fly the next morning before the butt crack of dawn, we were hanging wet things all over the hotel room to dry. Thankfully, I had an umbrella in the car and so all that got soaked on me was my shoes and the bottom 6" of my pant legs. 

After changing planes in Atlanta, we hit the Birmingham airport rental car place and skidded out of there on two wheels headed towards Tuscaloosa. The sun was shining and the air temp on the car readout said 91. Not perfect game watching weather, but coulda been worse. And then by golly it was...

About the time we found our assigned parking lot at the Coliseum, the bottom fell out. So instead of getting to peruse the cool booths of Bama wear and fan goodies while checking out the tailgating situation, we sat in the car and waited for the torrential rain to cease.

With kickoff at 2:30, we exited the car with our mini umbrellas in hand around 2:15 and started the trek to the stadium in sprinkles. Along the way, we dashed into a shop to pick up a couple of rain ponchos. By the time we cleared security, grabbed a drink at the concession stand and got to our seats, the sun was shining bright once again. And then it was Louisiana humid, thick enough to cut the air with a knife and not a whiff of a breeze, and so the sweat was pouring off me. Thanks to my old lady planning, I had bought our seats on Stub Hub for a rather outrageous amount just to make sure the sun would be located behind us rather than beating directly down on us, and NOT in our eyes. Plus we had seat backs. I surfed some Bama fan websites to find a really great section/row with good field visibility for the game and big screens from about the 40-45 yard line on the home side. Pricey, and yet we had a GREAT location for game viewing... to watch the Tide roll over the Aggies.

When it became obvious by the end of the 3rd quarter that there was no way the Aggies would be able to come back for a win against a team that really brought its A game (pun intended), we hit the road to make the drive from Tuscaloosa to Auburn. No, we weren't headed for the Auburn vs Arkansas showdown to make this a college gameday doubleheader. We made the trek to Auburn so the senior could visit with her boyfriend on Sunday. 

While they toured campus and had lunch and caught up, I saw a movie and poked around the local mall for several hours to kill time until we had to drive back to Birmingham that evening for our flights home the next morning. 

Sure it was rushed and kinda crazy, but also fun. The weather didn't always cooperate, but we made it through the weekend without any serious glitches. TAG, dad's it for the next campus visit to Clemson at the end of November for them to get a look at the business school. And the daughter can celebrate her 18th birthday with the boyfriend at Auburn that weekend. 

An accidental buzz cut

Unable to bear the doggy stench any longer, especially since Ollie and Pepper like to lounge on the master bed, I called up and booked them in for a same day bath and mini groom. Which basically means they just clip the hair on their feet, face and butts. Plus undercarriage, if you know what I mean, for our boy Ollie. 

So I dropped them off and headed over to the grocery store in the same strip center as the grooming place to gather up a few items since it was near rush hour and I didn't want to bother with driving in more traffic. About 15 min into the usual hour long wait, I received a call from the grooming place. It seems the groomer working on Pepper girl thought she was getting a full groom and had already buzzed off several strips on her coat before Ollie's groomer freaked with the OMG, it's just a mini groom, WTH are you doing?!

After apologizing for the mix-up, I said it was fine for both dogs to get a full groom. It is still hot and humid here in Texas and will be for a few more months. Upside of the accidental full groom is that I only had to pay for the mini groom since it was their mistake. As you can see, they're still happy cairn terrier campers despite their accidentally cropped coats.

College football, y'all

This next weekend, I'm taking the high school senior to Tuscaloosa to probably watch the Texas A&M Aggies NOT beat the hell outta Bama. I've got a feeling the Crimson Tide will roll all over them. We'll see how it goes. I bought us a pair of tickets on the home side 45 yard line on Stub Hub, in the seats with backs and eventual shade since the game starts at 2:30. Since we land in Birmingham at 12:15, it will be a mad rush to get there for any sort of pre-game frivolities in advance of kickoff. I've got a couple of shirts to rep for both teams and just not sure which one I"ll wear yet. I'll wave at y'all for the TV cameras, so look for me!

Hurricane Florence

As we've all heard and seen this week, Hurricane Flo was bearing down on the southeast coast of the US. Predicted to make land on the coast of North Carolina, she has now turned a bit south for the moment and is creeping along at a snail's pace, wreaking havoc.

Since our graduate student daughter attends Wake Forest in Winston-Salem, NC, I figured she needed my expertise gleaned from growing up about a 45 minute drive from the Gulf of Mexico in southeast Texas. So I pecked her like a hen from afar with my texts. Make a Walmart run for these things. Get some cash at the ATM. Gas up your car. Start watching the local weather reports. Keep your phone charged to 100% starting the day the hurricane hits land in case you lose electricity.

More concerned about her interviews with two of the big four accounting firms for her winter internship this week than watching the progress of some hurricane out in the Atlantic, she grudgingly agreed to make sure she had bottled water, candles, matches and munchies on hand in case things went south. Or rather the storm decided to track northwest from the coast and thus right over the top of her.

Micromanaging from afar is my thing, y'all. I'm even better in person because I just take over and get it done. A silver lining on the rain clouds of this hurricane is that the grad student landed an internship at her fav Big 4 firm and it's in her first choice city of Chicago. She wants the pretty Chicago in the financial district, with the water boats, cool architecture and Miracle Mile boutiques/coffee shops when she visited over the summer. We want her well distanced from the Chicago we hear about on the news every weekend where it seems like they need to institute martial law and bring in the military to get a handle on the shootings and death count. She needs to stay well north of this scary Chicago when she kicks off her internship gig in January.

Friday night flop

It was the first home football game of the daughter's senior year. We got all perched in the stands to watch her cheer and about halfway through the first quarter it started sprinkling. While hustling to the parking lot to fetch an umbrella, the bottom fell out. And so we bailed for supper at a local restaurant and made it home around 9 pm. The game was postponed due to lightning, and then was finally cancelled at 9:45. Our poor baby returned home soaking wet... uniform, poms, shoes and all. Hopefully we'll be out from beneath the clouds by our next game week for some dry Friday night lights.

Bleacher Bums

Yesterday evening we kicked off our last year of having a child participate in Texas football's Friday night lights. The senior's Panthers kicked the Royals to the curb and won by 14 points. We were all a little sweaty in the stands, but at least the skeeters weren't biting.