Texas A&M vs. Baylor

The Aggies open up Big 12 play today under a cloud of controversy and fears of a bad season. News broke this week that Coach Fran was secretly selling information to boosters for $1200 a year; information that he was withholding from the media and the public. Apparently, this limited secret subscription has been going on for three years in order to "underwrite his personal website, coachfran.com." Franchione has discontinued the newsletter since the news came out, but that in and of itself gives the appearance of some impropriety or at least some ethical dilemma. In any event, this is the last thing the Aggies need as the team is coming off a miserable performance against Miami a week and a half ago and embarking on what could prove to be a very poor showing in conference play.

Big 12 season play begins today against Baylor who has seen improvement in the past few years as well as a victory over the Aggies in Waco three years ago. The Aggies need this win at home to give them a boost of confidence before embarking on what will undoubtedly be a vicious road schedule in two weeks. I truly want the players to have success, but I am losing what little faith I have left in Coach Fran. That being said, Gig 'Em Aggies! BTHO baylor!

UPDATE: Ags win by a score of 34-10. From the writeup, it sounds like the passing game got going again but I worry about that since this is only Baylor. Even though they have improved in recent years, they are still Baylor and we will have to play against far tougher defenses this year. The field goal kicker missed a bunch more attempts which does not bode well down the road, but this is still one for the win column.

In other news around the Big 12 and the Top 25, it is shaping up to be a weekend of upsets. Of note in the Big 12, #3 Oklahoma was defeated by unranked Colorado today and unranked K-State is currently beating #7 Texas near the end of the third quarter. There is still a lot of time left in Austin and Texas is a strong finisher, but K-State succeeded in knocking-off the Longhorns at home last year. A victory in Austin would certainly help the perception of the Big 12 North.

UPDATE: Well, Texas did indeed lose in grand fashion but it didn't end there. A total of seven ranked teams lost to unranked or opponents this weekend. Quite a day for the underdog and great day in college football!

Texas A&M at Miami

Tonight is the Aggies last non-conference game before Big 12 play starts next weekend and it is a doozie! We'll be playing on the road, on national TV against the Miami Hurricanes. They got rolled a couple of weeks ago by Oklahoma so frankly I'm a little worried, but I will remain cautiously optimistic about our chances. We just have to play a lot better than we did against Fresno State. Gig 'Em Aggies! BTHO miami!

UPDATE: It's not even half-time yet and I am already embarrassed that this game is on TV.

UPDATE: The Aggies are not a good football team. We got destroyed tonight although the score (34-17) does not reflect how badly we really played. And before everybody gets too excited about Jerrod Johnson's scramble and touchdown pass in the final minutes of the game, remember that there always seems to be another quarterback that will get it done next year. The simple fact is that Coach Dennis Franchione has not and will not EVER put our guys into a mindset and a position that they believe that they can play and beat any team in the country. Tonight was ridiculous and Miami isn't even going to be the toughest team we are scheduled to play this year! Overrated doesn't even begin to describe our status in college football. I honestly don't think that Fran will be able to survive this season.

Texas A&M vs. Louisiana-Monroe

After last week's televised triple-overtime win over Fresno State, the Aggies will take the home field against the University of Louisiana at Monroe Warhawks in an un-televised game. Part of me would like to watch it but another part of me is okay with not having it readily available in case the Aggies take another non-conference team in stride. I'll be fine having to settle for the recap later this evening. Gig 'Em Ags and BTHO ulm!

UPDATE: The Aggies played a more balanced game tonight and defeated UL-Monroe by a score of 54-14. Unfortunately, this will probably be the easiest game we will play all year. Things will be heating up in this short week with a road trip to Miami on Thursday. After that, Big 12 play starts up. Things will be tough to say the least!

Hola, Humberto!

Sometime after midnight last night, Tropical Storm Humberto was southwest of Galveston. A few hours later, it had turned northeast and became a Category 1 hurricane as it made landfall near the Texas-Louisiana State line. Now this is really no big deal compared to the powerful Katrina and Rita that hit two year ago, but there are still risks of flooding and tornadoes as we are on the eastern side of the storm. Roxi and I are hopping these hurricanes get this out of their system now because we have a wedding in New Orleans in 23 days!

It's Six Years Later...

...And I will still never forget that fateful day.

Texas A&M vs. Fresno State

I don't know much about this game going into other than the personal story. This is the first Aggie game I attend in almost three years and it is also serving as my pseudo-bachelor party with my old friends from A&M. They are mostly married with kids now so we are hanging out for the day, getting some food, drinking some beer and watching the Fightin' Texas Aggies beat the Hell outta Fresno State! A pretty good day if I do say so myself. Stay tuned for some game day pictures.

UPDATE: The Aggies won...but barely. At the end of the third overtime period, the Aggies came out ahead by a score of 47-45. The game was great for a fan of football, but excruciatingly hard to watch as an Aggie fan. It should never have come to triple overtime. But on the bright side of things, we got our money's worth and had a great time hanging out as a group again probably for the first time since we graduated. So despite the close game and the less than stellar prospects for the rest of the season, the sun was shinning on the Aggies.

al Qaeda Public Relations Department

CNN and everybody else is reporting that al Qaeda's media production group (!) has announced that Osama bin Laden will release a videotaped message on September 11 to coincide with the sixth anniversary of his attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. I wonder if there will be an IM Q&A session following the press conference...

al Qaeda has a PR department? When is the State of the Jihad address?

Texas A&M vs. Montana State

College football season kicked off on Thursday night and is officially in full swing again over this long holiday weekend. As mentioned in my previous post, I spent the past two days traveling two and from Lake Whitney in Texas for a pre-wedding shower. Needless to say, I was predisposed during the Fightin' Texas Aggies opening game against the Montana State Bobcats on Saturday night, but I will be making up for it next week by attending the game against the Fresno State Bulldogs.

In this weekends game, the Aggies were victorious by a score of 38-7. The post-game write up certainly makes it sound like there is work to be done and improvement to be made on both sides of the ball, but one can't complain too much for a win to start off the season. It will take a lot to handle the upcoming schedule, so here's to hoping that Coach Fran and his staff can make the necessary adjustments required each week for this year's team to build on last year's brush with conference glory (remember...last year's team's three regular season loses were by a combined six points with two games being decided by only one point).

A Long, Long Overdue Update

Happy Labor Day to all 13th Generation readers. I haven't been able to post much recently due to Roxi and my rapidly approaching wedding in October. She and I (but mostly she) have been working very hard for the past few months with things getting pushed into high gear these past few weeks as we continued to compile address for invitees while we were hand making all of the wedding invitations.

We were quite a site to see two weeks ago as we made a trip to San Francisco for Roxi to attend the APA convention. We spent the better part of the flight assembling and stuffing wedding invitations that we had printed and prepped the previous evening. By the time we arrived in the city by the Bay, we had completed a majority of the invitations and mailed them off. We celebrated my 30th birthday in grand fashion on our first night when Roxi surprised me with reservations to a dinner show at Teatro ZinZanni, a music/comedy/acrobatics show in the vein of Cirque du Soleil. It was a fantastic birthday surprise as only Roxi could give me.



We spent the bulk of our next two days seeing the wonderful sites of San Francisco but the absolute highlight of our touring experience was our rental of the GoCar. The GoCare is almost exactly like the name sounds: it is essentially a glorified go-cart that is street legal and is equipped with a GPS guided tour. You can follow a specified tour path or you can deviate and drive around wherever you want to except highways and bridges. We spent about three and a half hours of our last afternoon seeing the sites from Fisherman's Wharf, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Persidio and into Golden Gate Park before returning the rental center via a trip down the "crookedest" part of Lombard Street. We got lots of pictures and videos of the beautiful vistas, but while we drove down Lombard Street we became a tourist attraction unto ourselves as people photographed our funny little car making it's way down the switchbacks.











I returned home directly while Roxi spent some time in New Orleans with her mother to have another meeting with our wedding coordinator to finalize some more details of our big day. She returned at the end of the week just in time for our first wedding shower. After all the hard work leading up to the wedding, we could finally sit back and have some fun with our friends. A group of Roxi's best girl friends got together and hosted a Stock the Bar shower last weekend and we had a ball. We had some fantastic jambalaya, great snacks, plenty to drink and we received some wonderful gifts to stock our bar.





This past weekend, we made a trip to Lake Whitney in Texas for the second of our showers hosted by Roxi's family friends. It was my first of what I'm sure will be many trips to the lake and I had a great time finally getting to meet many of the people I have been hearing about for the two and a half years that Roxi and I have been together. Our hosts threw a great shower with fantastic food and drinks as well as the aforementioned great company. It was a long haul getting there and back in just two days, but it was well worth it to meet such great people who are all so happy for Roxi and I to be getting married.











Now we're back in Lafayette for Labor Day and my brother Garrett and his girlfriend Nicole are on town for a few days as a stop on their move from Brooklyn to San Diego. We are planning to just relax with them today before a short week of work and my last out of town trip before the wedding. I'll be making the trip to College Station next week for my bachelor party with my old A&M buddies and my first Aggie football game in a couple of years. I'm looking forward to it but I think I'll enjoy my down time for the rest of the day!