Return To The Land Up North

I'm flying back to Ohio in 9 hours!!! And I am soo excited. I will miss Texas and all of the fun people here, but I'm looking forward to hanging out with friends and family back home. When I get back to Cincinnasssty, I think I want to eat some sky-line chili, and then go buy some grippos BBQ chips mmmmm. I just got back from the midnight rodeo so I got my two-stepping in before going back home.

I really hope it doesn't rain. It's rained a record amount here....the most ever recorded!! It rains just about every day. But it's weird b/c it will rain half the day, and then be kind of sunny the other half....so it's not too bad. Except last night, me and Bobby Brown and two of his friends were at this country concert sort of deal and it starts pouring down rain. The concert is about over so we decide to leave anyway. Bobby goes to get his truck, only to find out that his truck, as well as his friend's SUV had been towed. At the same time I am finding this out, I ran into these two girls (Lauren and Erin) that I had met about a month or two ago....they'd randomly come up to me trying to figure out why the recognized me. So anyway, I decide to go see if my car is still there. In true Huckleberry Finn fashion, I rolled up my pants, took off my sandals, and walked (you get more wet if you run, mythbusters did a thing on it once) the quarter-half mile to my car in the pouring rain. So when I get in my car, Lauren and Erin call me (they got my number from my roommate, who Lauren is friends with) and tell me they got their car towed as well!! To quicken the story, we ended up rolling 7 deep in my luxury Buick Century to this super shady towing lot out in the country. It ended up costing them $600 all together to get all 3 cars back!!! I'm proud of my Buick for coming through in such a clutch situation. Alright well I really didn't intend to write that story so I'm gonna go to bed so I have lots of energy for tomorrow!!!

Goodbye Texas...for now.

Hello Sunny OHIO!! :-D

Good times with great people

Highlights of this last week:

- Dinner at this place called Matt's El Ranco something or other with a bunch (like 20) of the co-ops from work. It was like a Tex-mex sort of place. Pretty good...although I ordered a plate with a tamale in hopes to figure out what this mysterious non-Midwestern food really is, but I never actually got one. Oh well, some day soon I will know....

- Thursday, we (me and a bunch of other co-ops from work) played flag football in the rain. Later on, me and Bobby Brown and some lady friends of his went to this place called Midnight Rodeo where I got my two-step on. This was my second two-stepping experience. Midnight Rodeo was a lot dirtier (and I don't mean dirt from the ground) than the Broken Spoke, but it was still fun getting to meet a bunch of random people (friend's of Bobby's) and two-steping once again.

- Friday I went cowboy-hat shopping. But I think they are too expensive for something I would probably never really wear in Ohio. Friday night, I slept 12 hours, which was pretty much amazing.....

- Saturday, I went to church and then hung out with some friends from church all day long. Went to a friends house for lunch....her mom made the most amazing Italian lunch mmmm.

- Today, I went to Schlitterbahn (which is supposedly the best water park in the world) with Nate. It was pretty fun. They had this really cool ride where you could boogie board or surf (kind of) on this fake wave sort of deal. They also had a few rides that shot you uphill with water. Pretty cool. Then we went to San Antonio and met up with Nate's sister, brother, brother's friend, and Dad. We went down to the Riverwalk and had dinner. The Spurs parade was going on so there was literally about a million nutty Spurs fans down there. The parade was kinda cool, though, b/c it was on the water so all the players came floating down. We saw Duncan, Popavich, Ginobli, Bowen, and some others I didn't really know. No Tony Parker....or Eva Longoria, for that matter. We also saw the Alamo....which was kind of neat. Some pictures for you to enjoy:

Sorry gotta say it, "Remember the alamo!"

Riverwalk and all the crazy Spurs fans.
Tim Duncan with the trophy....that should be LeBron's ;-)
Some funky looking building that looks like it belongs in Seattle.
This hotel we parked in front of....just thought it was a cool shot.


It's weird though. I can feel it coming over me. At first, I thought people were just a little crazy. But it's starting to take over me. I'm talking about this love people have for Austin. A lot of it is the friends I've been making and people I've been hanging out with. I was talking to a friend from church last night, and we were talking about how you are going to find great people wherever you go and, really, can be happy (he's getting ready to move to the Dallas area with his wife for a new job) regardless of where you are. And, if you aren't, a lot of it is probably you're own fault. But beyond all that, Austin is just a really great place. I absolutely love hill country. I would love to have a house out there sometime. There is so much to do here, so much culture, so much pride for the city and state. It's not like they go around saying Austin and/or Texas is better than anything else (although they might say that to themselves), but people here just like where they live....and that makes people like me like being here. I talked to a prof at UT this week about grad school here. Also talked to some guys at work about grad school here, as well as jobs at AMD along the lines of what I want to be doing. It's all here. I don't know if this is where God wants me yet...I'll have to pray about that and find out. Regardless, I'm gonna try to enjoy every day here while it lasts, go back to Cincy and enjoy every day in Ohio for the next 9 months, and where the road leads from there, we shall soon see........

Becoming a Texan

So last Saturday night I went Texas Two-Stepping with some folks at this place called the Broken Spoke. It was pretty much a good ole' honky tonk. Apparently, the Queen of England came there when she was in Texas and wanted to see a real honky tonk. It was actually really fun. Everyone had on cowboy hats and boots and the girls were all wearing their country dresses. And me, I was wearing my white K-Swisses.....representing Ohio. Haha, I suppose I looked kind of funny, but these are the type of folk who don't really care about such a thing. And I think I decided that my future wife should have a little country in her, because I enjoy that type of thing from time to time :-)

Otherwise, life is good in Texas. Last Saturday I went down to the pool and played pool-volleyball with some random people for about two-and-a-half hours....it was pretty amazing. We had Bible Study at our place Monday night, which was pretty cool and tonight a bunch of the co-ops got together, as we do every Thursday now, and played flag football in the 90 degree heat!

I started looking into grad school this last week. I really don't want to take the GRE and do all that grad school stuff, but a guess it's part of the deal. Not quite sure where I'll apply yet, although I do have a few schools in mind. I'm mostly just looking at cool locations now. I'm pretty sure I won't be in the Nati though, just b/c I want to get my Masters from a different school. But there is a lotta living left to be done in Ohio before I really start dealing with grad school.

Well I really don't have anything to write about, so gonna go root for the Cavs!!