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!