Thanksgiving Weekend

"I promise I might, not walk on by, maybe next time, but not this time..., even though I know, I don't want to know, yeah I guess I know, I just hate how it sounds..., if I traded it all, if I gave it all away for one thing, just for one thing..., if I sorted it out, if I knew all about this one thing, wouldn't that be something?" -Finger Eleven- (One Thing)

"I'm wide awake and I can see the perfect sky is torn, I'm all out of faith, this is how I feel..." -Natalie Imbruglia- (Torn)

"I can't light, no more of your darkness..., all my pictures, seem to fade to black and white..., I'm growing tired, and time stands still before me..., frozen here, on the ladder of my life..."
-Roger Daltrey- (Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me)



Good afternoon everyone.  I'm sitting here at the Littleton Public Library hurting these keys when I could be at home watching college football (what am I thinking?!)...  This has been a very long Thanksgiving Weekend for me to say the least, but now I'm on my second day off of two in a row, so I thought that I'd say hi to you.  I worked from 3:30 p.m. til 12:30 a.m. on Thanksgiving, and we actually weren't as busy as I thought we were going to be.  Let me qualify that previous statement by saying that we had lines at all of our registers from 6:00 p.m. thru about 9:15 p.m. - I just assumed that the standing lines at our registers were going to last longer I guess.  I ran into my friend Kari here on Main Street yesterday (she has seemingly gained some sort of "fame" for her walks downtown).  Anyway, I was mentioning working on Thanksgiving, and Kari said that she's cautious about going out in those crowds (for several reasons).  I kind of shrugged it off because our event went pretty well on Thanksgiving night, but later when I was perusing Facebook yesterday, it seems that SEVERAL places had problems with people getting trampled, with multiple injuries and even deaths occurring.  I myself have never shopped on Thanksgiving or 'Black Friday' for deals, and I don't think that I ever will... 

For the second week in a row, my 'Football Friday' post at Coach's Parlay Card came out late, but if you want to see what Joey, Pete, and myself think about this weekend's football games (both NCAA and NFL), our favorite bets are there.  We went 5-4 last week, so there still might be a little bit of hope left for us.  Speaking of Pete, he just had another birthday this week.  It's amazing how fast we get old, isn't it?

Speaking of age, this is the portion of the program where we segue to stealing stuff from our friends...  ;)

   
My friend Kristen shared this one on Facebook earlier in the week, and if I adhere to this, you won't be seeing much of me up here in the White Mountains for quite a while..  :)  And since we're on the topic of 'Peanuts' and Thanksgiving, my friend Callie posted this cartoon on the internet a few days back...

The only turkey that I had for the holiday was at work, so I'm still a little bitter.  "Woof..."  And this one is dedicated to those of you who prepared meals over the holiday, via my friend Megan and her toddler Coy...

It must have been fun trying to clean that mess up...  :)  And this meme goes out to those of you who may have bitten into your meals just a little too soon, via my friend Shae...

And this photo goes out as encouragement to all of us who are going to be in dire need of losing weight and getting more physically fit after the holiday season ends...

This is my friend Leanne, who is now only two weeks out from competing in her first show.  I have featured Leanne a few times throughout the course of writing 'Bikini Hill,' and now I can honestly say that she might be able to take me in a fight..., MAYBE...  :)  Best of luck to you Leanne!  Back to the holidays, I'm telling you up front that you should not waste your time trying to figure out this meme, and that if you do, you'll be disappointed.  You can blame my friend Mary...  :)

My friend Ashley shared a timely thought for those of you who may doubt yourselves unnecessarily, because you put too much stock in what others think of you...

And this one is an oldie but goodie that I found, basically along those lines...

 

And this one is the sun going down on me...

I know what you're saying to yourself - "could Coach possibly share more 'Peanuts' strips in his blog???"  Well, the sun going down on this post is probably my cue to go and watch the rest of that Ohio State/Michigan game...  ;)  Have a great weekend and I'll see you soon!

Hopeless

"You know it's hot when the highlight of your day is someone bringing you a freeze pop..."
 -Destiny Perez-




Good afternoon everyone.  It appears that this is going to be my SIXTH post since my entry on March 31st.  I definitely have to start pacing myself...  Ironically, this will also be the post where my total pageviews go over the 90,000 mark, which is an incredible milestone considering the fact that I don't write.

As a potentially classic Men's Final at Wimbledon plays out of the t.v. beside me, I guess that I'll write a little.  I'll begin with work, which has been extremely busy since I took my new job at the start of March.  In my job with ITS, we see a huge number of projects during the summer as you might imagine, because that's when the students are gone and we can do more work without disturbing them.  We do work in preparation for their return to campus, in addition to everything that happens in and around the football stadium, for the return of Longhorn Football in early September.  We already had several ongoing projects this year before the summer rush hit, so I've been working quite a bit.  During the past week, I worked 3.5 hours of overtime on Tuesday and Wednesday, 3 hours on Thursday, and 2.5 extra hours on Friday.  I also expect a lot more overtime before the students return to campus.  Don't get me wrong, UT has summer school, but there are over 50,000 students wandering around here during the long semesters...

In the world of sports, I still plan on doing football picks again.  These will be moved to one of my newer blogs (don't worry, you haven't missed anything - I don't write in my newer blogs either), Coach's Parlay Card.  I believe that Joey still plans on making picks with me.  I've barely cracked the covers on my college and pro football magazines, for what you'd expect from me anyway.  In baseball, the Red Sox and Yankees will be on TBS in about five minutes.  The Sox are 5 1/2 games back if I'm correct (the Yankees in first), so the whole division will be within 4 1/2 games of the lead at the All-Star Break should Boston win today.  The Sox were favored to win the division (and more) coming into the season, so the second half could be very interesting...  And of course, there's the Spurs offseason.  It's interesting to see where free agents want to sign, and the jerks on the teams that they're deciding not to play with...

Despite the moniker of this blog, I've spent nearly all of my free time at home recharging from work, so I don't have tons to report about San Marcos or Austin.  My friend Cindy from campus put her house up for sale recently, and has had people coming to look at it virtually IMMEDIATELY after it listed, so the housing/rental market here in Austin is still ridiculously strong, a fact that I curse every time that I write my monthly rent check.  Following along on facebook, it seems that people were incredibly generous in the wake of the late spring flooding in San Marcos and Wimberley, as I saw that all kinds of benefits were held for victims.  In some San Marcos and sports news, the Texas State Bobcats will be opening up their football season at Florida State University.  That should be interesting...  :)

Hopefully that's enough to tide you over for a week, or a month, or longer...  :)  Have a great week and I'll talk to again sometime...  ;)