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!

Just realized I forgot to tell y'all about Fridays football game.

Last Friday morning, the kids in Florence were in rare form. They told me during class that the controls on the schools computer system were down, and we could get YouTube. So, of course, I clicked on it and it came up. Then they started shouting out funny things for me to look up, and eventually turned me on to this little number. Enjoy.




Love the hell out of that. They also showed me the Village Sniper video that I posted last week. Part of me wanted to show them the Monkey Sex video, but didn't go there. Last thing I need right now is to get fired for that kind of crap. Hell, they've probably seen it anyway.

Anyway, Friday night, after eating our traditional Chinese dinner at Dynasty, Dad and I drove down I-35 to the town of Jerrel and watched the Academy Bees play the Jerrel... whatevers. I think Cougars. You may remember Jerrel from the nasty tornado that ripped them a new one, killing 30 people on May 27th, 1997.

I saw the whole thing happen. I was reluctantly going back to grad school then, needing 18 hours of credit in Government so I could begin teaching it. Only being qualified to teach History left my income in a sad state. Getting 18 hours of Government would double the course load and get me on the move. It took me a long time to get my mind around it, not wanting to go back to school, but eventually I bit the bullet and went down to San Marcos, south of Austin, and enrolled in the program at South West Texas State University.


I'd driven down that particular day to close the deal on an apartment and was driving back north towards Temple when I noticed that the traffic was being detoured off I-35 to the access road. Like a few others, I tried to drive north on the access road until the highway patrol came zipping over the grass to stop us. I drove back south to a Texaco that sits on a rise next to an overpass south of Jerrel. I got out of my Jeep and stood there, along with a lot of other folks, and looked North. All you could see was a huge slowly spinning cloud. It looked like it was about a half mile across and heading our direction. I'd never experienced anything like it. Stunning and fascinating to see.


We all watched that thing heading our way for a good 10 minutes, almost like it was driving down the interstate. Pretty soon the clockwise spinning started to visibly slow, and the cloud began to break up into lots of smaller ones. As it did, many of us onlookers decided that everything was over, got back in our cars and headed north along the access road.


Next thing I know a highway patrolman is driving across the grass to stop me. He says that the tornado is reforming and that I should take cover. I drove up, parked the jeep, and took shelter under the next underpass. I stood there with about 15 other people watching the tornado slowly break apart, and I was totally absorbed in how cool this experience was , until I saw insulation from someones house falling out of the sky. Seeing that woke me up to the tragedy I'd witnessed, and come very close to being part of.

There was a huge relief effort after that, and it came in handy that I was moving and could get rid of a lot of clothes and stuff by donating it all to the relief effort. They've rebuilt the place since then, and Dad and I were glad to see Friday that the folks down in Jerrel have recovered from that tragedy and built themselves, among other things, a nice new high school and football stadium.




Got a good shot of Dad while he watched the game. The wind was blowin' a bit and chilly, but we'd dressed dad in lined jeans and I brought a coat for him to put on. Still, he only lasted till half time. That's usually when he make our exit.



Florence did OK at first, but the score went back and forth. This Black kid on the left is a great punt returner/receiver who can run and make points, when they manage to get him the ball.



Unfortunately, their QB isn't the most accurate guy in the game. When we left, the score was in Jerrel's favor by one touchdown. I found out later that they'd eventually won the game in a dramatic way by the margin of one point. Maybe one of these days I'll get to watch the end of a game, but I don't want to think about what will need to happen to make that possible.



Oh, and when I went to the air show last Sunday I got Dad a new hat. I'll surprise him with it when we go out this Friday. The kids in Florence play Jerrel Friday, and I think Academy plays Rogers. We'll be there, and I'll tell ya how it went. Take care. Cheers.