Mississippi Football Games

You know how some email jokes come back around, every year or so? In sort of the same way you used to get jokes faxed to you? You know the kind - there's one about Memphis drivers and roadways. (There really is an intersection about a mile from me. All four ways to turn have different road names, and there's only 2 streets intersecting. Or the one about 'midtown directions could say 'go to East Parkway and drive until you get to North Parkway, go West on North Parkway until you get to West Parkway. True, it exists).

Anyway, there's this one about football games at a particular Mississippi college. It talks about how the women dress up, how the boys where khaki's, how they hide whiskey in flaks versus . . . I suppose yankee's going to football games in old jeans and t-shirts drinking cheap beer. I haven't read it in a while, but it's out there.

Yesterday, in all my 39 years, was my first time to go to a game at this college, just over an hour away. All the rumors? They're true.

Tents all in the grassy areas with people set up like they are catering meals. It's all family, so if you don't know someone, you don't get none. I swear to you, CABLE DISHES and FLAT SCREEN TV's set up. Chafing trays (the expensive ones, not the cheap, throw-away aluminum ones). Girls in high heels. Men in khaki's. It was. . . . unique, to say the least. Take the concept of tail-gating, throw it away, and just start with "hosting a lawn party." Lots of them. One after one after one, row after row, after row.

Last home game? Someone cut the rope marking off the band's practice area to set up more tents. (Not that they wouldn't KNOW the band practiced there before the game, mind you.) So the band director sent someone out to buy yards and yards of chain metal, painted security yellow. Ha, cut that!

To be normally expected, lots of college pride colors, logo's, emblems, etc. But this is how invasive they are - the college paints rows in the grass and puts up signs that say something like "EMERGENCY PATH - DO NOT FILL" and "STAY OFF THIS GRASS" because if you didn't, there would be no paths. They just pop up next to each other into infinity. All over the place.

And booze? Well, they said last year and years before you could smell it on the breeze. This year there's a new mandate that you can't have it. But security can't sip your cup or open your cooler if there's a lock on it. So just don't show it. Kind of funny.

The whole thing was kind of funny, really. I'll see if I can find that email joke somewhere. Too True.

I'm not racist, I'm just scared!

The best college game story I've got is drunk-white-boy standing 3 feet away. The band is in their warm-up spot just playing little warm-up diddys (once upon a time I knew the correct term for them) and there's these 3 guys next to me. All well into their enjoyment of the intoxicating evening.

One of them must work at some chain store, he struck me as the type, and his 'boss' is in the band playing the trombone. So drunk boy is heckling his boss with great lines like "You can SLIDE one in me!" and "You can BLOW me!" Him and his two buddies just howl with laughter.

A fellow bandmate turns around, a young black gentleman, and looks at them. Heckler, who up to this moment has just been mildly drunk and not particularly annoying yet, says, "Hey! It's all about the love! You wantsum? Cause I don't do black guys!"

Uh. The pause from his drunk-white-heckler-pals, the look on the black guy's face, it's clear. There was a little line there, and you just stepped over it. Maybe not intentional, your mouth was just running faster than your brain. But you did it. You stepped over it.

He yells "I'm not racist, I'm just scared!" Young black band guy changes to sort of a smile and a shake of his head and turns around. Drunk guy says, "It was the only thing I could think of."

One of his pals says, "I'll tell that story for years."

I said, "Yeah, I will to."

It would of been a great story, too, if the three heckler drunks had stopped there. But they kept heckling their pal long after it stopped being funny. Oh well.

They weren't particularly really cute, but the great thing about college aged guys is even the ugly ones are cute. Here's a little snap of a drunk, white, straight boy whose not racist, just scared.

an uncle

An uncle with his favorite niece, or a niece with her favorite uncle? Either way, the picture tells the story best.

Post Secret

This is NOT my secret. It's not my card. I didn't think of it. Can't take credit for it. But it's how I feel every single time I make the drive to his house, then turn around and drive back 2 days later. It is, I always hope, how he feels on Sunday afternoons when he gets back to his home.

It's 6:45a.m.

and I hear jamie giggling. The day will start soon.

Molly's

It's 6a.m.

and the weekend of the C-Y festival. For the first time since 1999, I'm not 20 feet away tucked in my adorable apartment. 'course, this apartment is a lot more roomy. But this morning I would like to hear the tinker of Wal-Mart tents being popped up and boxes being unloaded and muffled chatter over coffee while vendors of a variety of useless and beautiful (and sometimes tacky) objects put out their wares.

I liked leaving notes on my door that said, "No. The car left in the street is not mine. Please don't knock" after a couple of years of having go-rounds with vendors. One year they just popped their tent over the car and set stuff up on it. Gotta do what you gotta do.

Well, we're going to the festival this morning. It's just a little hurtful to my sense of sentiment that I have to DRIVE!

It's 6a.m.

It's 6a.m. and I've spent the better part of a week waiting for the weekend to come, waiting for the morning when I can sleep in with MyFella laying next to me. Instead, I'm wide awake and he's in the front bedroom. My part? Oh, going to bed drunk does that to me. His part? Jamie wakes up and tends to stay up, talking to himself and playing with the laundry in his overnight bag, unless someone lays down next to him.

But at least we're here together. And at least we had fun tonight with an "old style" gathering of friends at "our place." It was just like back in the day, when we were young and single and had (we thought) more money than we knew what to do with. When we could just order "another" and then do it again. When we closed the place down. (I left early when Jamie got tired, some body else might have closed the place down. Red's jeep is still parked outside where it was when she came by here.)

264

That's my weight this morning. I can't remember if that's up or down from 90 days ago. I'm sure I wrote it down somewhere, but I don't know where.

This morning they took the blood for lab works to make sure the cholesterol pills aren't ruining my liver, to make sure I'm doing some good with lowering my sugar, etc. Let's keep our fingers crossed on the results.

Back went out, did I tell you? Two weeks ago. Chiropractor doctor's been giving it to me good. He's cute, in his own way. I'm not attracted to him, but he's fairly young and nice.

Best thing to come out of campaign rhetoric lately is Sarah's husband. What a cutie he is.

Watched the two episode season closer from last season's House. You know I'm a House fan by association. My friends J&K watch it, so I watch it with them. I knew I had to catch last season's closer on rerun so I would be ready for the new season. The first of the two part episode was arguably the worst & best written. Kind of funny, kind of out there, didn't make sense, too much of House's attitude and not enough good writing but at the same time very out of their normal box. Then the second episode - emotional roller coaster that had me bawling my eyes out at the end. So there I am, darned near 40 years old, crying in front of my friends after dinner, just sniveling at poor Amber.

I got to get a grip on that stuff.

I'm in love with Todd Pallin.

Come on now, can you blame me? He's a total hottie. This isn't his best pic, but he's quite handsome. Hard worker. Union man. Rugged and outdoorsy. Virile.

Lions and tigers and bears. Oh my.