Fridays feed, and football.

Last Friday was a fun day. First off, the "Eagle shit", as my old pappy used to say. The bank, which was holding onto most of the money I'd deposited a week earlier from the sale of my land, finally let loose of the funds and my checking account balance went through the roof. So that was one reason to celebrate. I'd already set up the online bill pay to disburse about 2/3rds of the funds to various folks (the money goes out today), so it won't be in there long. But until then, I'm rich beotch!

So when Denise and I headed over to Temple to pick up the other two women in my life, I was determined to begin the celebration by treating everyone to dinner. There was one more reason to celebrate the day, but since my sister doesn't want to appear in this blog, we won't go there.

So we loaded everyone into Denise's Camry and headed to BJ's Brewhouse, in Temple. It's one of our favorite places to eat in town, but we hadn't been there in a long time. I left the ladies in front of the place and went on to park. By the time I joined them they'd already been lead on in to a table. We ordered drinks and appetizers. Mom and sis had top shelf margaritas, Denise had a Shandy, and I went for the Harvest Hefeweizen (their home-made wheat beer).

For appetizers, we had the Santa Fe Spring Rolls (crispy spring rolls filled with tender chicken, black beans, fire-roasted red peppers, cilantro, sweet corn, jalapeños and Monterey jack cheese, served with our Santa Fe dressing and avocado cream sauce, then garnished with green onions, fresh red peppers and red cabbage), and Tater Skins (shredded jack and cheddar cheeses melted over lightly fried potato skins, topped with Applewood smoked bacon bits and green onions, served with sour cream dip and ranch dressing).

For dinner, Sis chose the Fish and Chips platter (fillets of Pacific cod dipped in our special light batter made with Brewhouse Blonde beer, then deep fried to a golden brown, served with your choice of crispythin or wedge-cut seasoned fries, tartar sauce and malt vinegar), Mom chose the Cuban Burger (a half-pound burger served sandwich-style topped with oven-roasted ham, Swiss cheese, crispy dill pickles, dijonnaise and mustard).

Denise chose the Parmesan Crusted Chicken (marinated chicken breasts coated with Parmesan cheese and crunchy Panko breadcrumbs, lightly pounded and pan fried to a golden brown, served with white cheddar mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli and topped with a lemon Chardonnay butter sauce, sun-dried tomatoes, fresh basil and Parmesan cheese), and I went for the Sourdough bacon Cheeseburger (a juicy Angus burger served on Parmesan grilled sourdough bread with tomatoes, pickles, lettuce and 1000 Island dressing). "Very messy but very good!" they say, "available with Applewood smoked bacon and cheddar cheese."

It was all good, and it was great to be able to get us all together and have a good time without it ending badly. I couldn't get any pictures because my sister reacts violently to anyone trying to take her picture, and I'm not supposed to even be mentioning her here, so I'll stop.

After dinner, Denise and I drove down to Florence to watch the first football game of the season.



About a half dozen of my students are on this team (in purple). They were going up against the Bruceville-Eddy Eagles.



We got there at half-time, in time to watch the two schools bands take the field.



It was an exciting game. The score was something like 24 to 10 (Florence winning) when we got there, and it was 36 to 20 by the time it all ended.



There was a brief moment there in the fourth quarter when the tide looked like it was shifting. But just as the Eagles started to move the ball down the field, an interception killed their chances. But they did a decent job. Hell, their JV team got beat by something like 40 to zip the day before, so this was much better.

This Friday the Florence Buffaloes go to Crawford, Texas, George W's vacation home. But we'll probably avoid the drive and opt for a local game in Academy, where I used to take dad all the time. It'll be fun.

Anyway, that was Friday. The rest of the weekend was placid by comparison, but that's another post. Cheers!