Bringing the Drama

sunday was the day i had been kind of dreading for a couple of weeks. not the saints losing (which happened), but that the season was over. i had really gotten caught up in following the team, and enjoyed how close everyone in the area felt. i don’t live in new orleans, but even in the suburbs there was “GO SAINTS!” signs on the local banks, there were “WHO DAT!” messages on the causeway. how can you not help but come to love it all? never before have i felt a part of something like that before. it is amazing what one football team can do to a region. i know the bandwagon fans felt good for the underdog and “oh they’re doing so good for the city”, but this was the saints. this was the team i grew up following. this was the team my aunt used to have season tickets, the one my mom’s company used to have seats to and we’d go to some games every year. the team will always be a part of where i’m from, and this season was just beyond words incredible. i was telling someone today, the monday night game i went to back in september, i was there and i knew as i was standing there, i would remember it for the rest of my life. this season was just so uniting for everyone….because everyone could get behind the saints.

after the game, jacob and i went over to the airport because the team was due back from chicago at 9:30. we didn’t face much traffic at all. there were a lot of cars, but we parked at the end of the line (which was about a mile away from the terminal) and walked back to the terminal where all the news crews were. there were a lot of people there, and as we walked we heard people listening to the end of the colts/pats game (GO PEYTON!) and having a great time. it was like we were all friends out there. it was drizziling, but there were still a lot of people. we went back to the car after surveying the gate area, and listened to the news of the flight being delayed over two hours (they didn’t actually get back till 12:45). we decided that there were enough people to cheer them on, and went home. as we were driving out, cars lined the road for another two miles, and there were at least 30 more cars wanting to turn onto the two lane road that went back to the private jet terminal. it was a great feeling, even if we were going to have to leave it all.

i read an article today written by an espn writer that pretty much sums up sunday night. even though the saints lost, we were still excited about our team. it brought us such joy to see them do well and for everyone to come together. i can’t wait for next season.

so what do you do on a friday night when all your married friends choose to have date/family night tonight, and your single friends live out of town? you eat a bowl of special k, drink some turbodog, and commence typing about what you actually listened to in 2006. i wrote about my top 10 of 2006, but i was looking at jacob’s blog earlier and saw he had gotten this idea allegedly from hynes. all of us have last.fm accounts, which is a website that keeps track of everything you listen to (as long as you have the software plugin installed, don’t worry, it’s not nearly rocket science, it’s not even 7th grade life science) for you. mine is located here. anyway, here we go…

10) whiskeytown - stranger’s almanac
i LOVE this record. i listened to it several times throughout the year. i like it better than ‘pneumonia‘.
9) jason morant - abandon
ok, i’ll admit it….this was one of those albums where i loaded a bunch of music and left it playing. sorry jason. i love his new one, ‘open‘. nothing on ‘abandon‘ really stuck out for me, i’m not sure how this got in the top 10 over open and city of two rivers.
nickel creek - why should the fire die?
i started listening to this album a lot after i saw them at the house of blues. it became one of my favorites because when i first got it, i didn’t like it that much.
7) sufjan stevens - illinois
again, i started listening to this more after i saw him live. at first i listened to him to try to understand all the pub about him, and i still don’t really “get” him like some of my friends. seeing him live though was pretty special though, and i like this album.
6) ryan adams - jacksonville city nights
i listen to ‘my heart is broken’ a LOT. i love the steel guitar intro. so i guess this would be the highest ranking ryan adams record of the year, and that’d probably be about right.
5) earthsuit - the rise of modern simulation
i definitely missed the bus for earthsuit when they were still around, but i’ve come to appreciate their talent in the bands that have spawned since they broke up (macrosick, club of the sons, and mute math). this record has some great songs like “bloodshot fanatical” and “noise for your eyes”. it was on heavy rotation for a lot of the summer.
4) family force 5 - business up front/party in the back
this is the only top 10 record to make it to the last.fm top 10. imagine that. anyway, i still listen to this record a lot, it’s pretty much been a mainstay since the night jacob gave me his copy that he didn’t want (can you believe that?).
3) david crowder band - a collision
this record was my favorite of 2005, and i still listen to it a lot. no surprise that it’s ranked this high.
2) johnny cash - the legend of johnny cash
i got this record the day ‘walk the line’ came out on dvd because best buy was having a sale. it’s pretty much a greatest hits record. i have the two prison albums and a lot of other random cash stuff, but this record introduced me to the song ‘one piece at a time’. check it out.
1) the fray - how to save a life
chad had asked me about them early last year, and i told him i had heard good things. the week after that mention, i got a copy, and listened to it numerous times. i listened to it many many times over the summer, and really loved a lot of the tracks. i don’t watch ‘grey’s anatomy’, so i didn’t have ‘how to save a life’ overplayed. it didn’t count on my top 10 because it came out in 2005.

interesting notes…..mute math had 7 of the top 10 tracks i listened to for the year, yet somehow the album was not listed….i guess that was last.fm’s fault. i listened to MM a LOT. and pearl jam’s eponymous album was #11. i listened to 4 tracks on that album quite a bit, and skipped the rest.

sports always get sensationalized in order to somehow make sports more dramatic than they already are. granted, this can get annoying, but i can’t understand people hating a team just because they have a great story attached to them. i’ve come across some people this weekend who hate the saints (they’re from out of town) because of the drama and emotion that keeps being talked about on tv. i’m amazed at their ignorance, and almost feel sorry for them, because the story IS a great story and it IS great to be a part of. you don’t have to get on the bandwagon or anything, but don’t hate our team because this season has been historic.

last night i went with jacob and his wife over to the south shore to catch the saints game at this guy mike’s house. i think by the time the game kicked off, there were 30 people at the house. half of us stood, even though there were plenty enough seats to sit down at some point during the game. three of us had jerseys on, but i was the only one with the joe horn jersey. there’s something to be said about the saints winning this year. it has brought such happiness to the people around here, me included. last night after they finally cinched up the win, one of the ladies was crying. this doesn’t happen for teams that make the playoffs every year, or make it to the conference title game every few years. granted, some of this joy does come from all the katrina stuff, but a lot of it is how we’ve been through thick and thin with the saints. i know a lot of the national commentators this week will try to say how all the katrina drama is what is causing the saints’ season to be special. they’d be partly right, but i think a lot of people would be having the same reaction had katrina never come. this is our team, and so far, this has been our year. it’s hard to describe the feeling of watching the team do well. it’s like some kind of out of body experience. i woke up this morning and had to make sure last night actually happened. it still did, and next week the same kind of camaraderie, the same kind of togetherness gets to permeate the city once again. i can’t wait.

just finished watching the first two episodes of 24, and it’s going to be a great season.

saturday night the saints play the eagles. i woke up this morning thinking today (thursday) was gameday. tomorrow is not even gameday, it’s two days from now. good thing i don’t have work tomorrow, my mind is going to be on saturday night.

one of my christmas presents was an electric blanket. i have used it this week since it’s been pretty cold. it is truly an amazing invention. when i get in the bed, it’s not cold, it’s warm!

i finally got my top 10 albums for 2006 done and posted it over on corner table. of course, jacob got the big article, but the writers got together and had 5 lists (mine included). check it out.

so tonight i went over to the radio shack at the mall to get a special kind of battery, a 12v. it’s never good when you ask the salesgirl at radio shack a specific question “i’m looking for a 12v battery” and she looks at you as if you are speaking another language. she works there, isn’t she supposed to kind of know where stuff is? anyway, in the midst of her wondering what i was talking about, i spotted what i needed behind the counter. i bought it while she was awkwardly trying to flirt with me. how can you make a 12v battery a topic of conversation? i was just trying to be nice, not pick up the radio shack girl who wasn’t my type. anyway, the entire experience took about 20 minutes, to and from. obviously if you want a non crowded mall shopping experience, it’s best to go on a wednesday night at 7:30.

also, on the way out, i was walking through jcpenney and was asked by one of the kids working there for my opinion on something. one of his co-workers had these crazy gold dress shoes on. not glittery, kind of that old gold color. he asked me whether or not the shoes looked stupid, i guess because they were too flashy for him. i looked at the shoes on the kid, i looked at the kid, and said “those look good, they match your shirt” (which they did). it totally made the kid’s night, and then the guy that had stopped me tried to make me feel bad by saying “man, i thought you were my bro…” his disappointment serves him right for trying to embarrass his co-worker…that or he was looking for justification of not wearing the golden shoes to work first.

i started my online class tonight. i downloaded the entire lecture, and watched the first 15 minutes of it. i need to get a notebook before i watch the class in its entirety. the people in the actual class on campus are lucky, they have the option of going or just watching the video. why would anyone actually go to the class all the time? i wish i had that option when i was in school.

this weekend i just kind of bummed around. i watched some dvds, finished reading a book (cash by johnny cash, and it was excellent), did some stuff around the house, nothing too exciting. i watched the entire first season of that show ‘how i met your mother’. i started watching it almost at the end of last season, so watching it from the beginning was good. i am convinced after watching the first season, that had my friend andy and i been living in NYC, we’d have been ted and barney. you have to know my friend andy to realize how much barney he actually is, on down to the snappy wardrobe and the sayings. i think the writers may have met andy a couple of years ago and based the character on him. when i first met andy, i thought his house was decorated too nice, and that we wouldn’t be friends, but that all changed the more i got to know him. then i’m ted (but i wouldn’t have been stupid enough to dump victoria, especially like how it went down!), in ways that i’ll not describe here. i guess when my friend len got engaged, i just kind of lost whatever safety net i had about being single. i had a group going in 2003 that i loved. and then everyone either got married or moved to houston by the middle of 2005. all that was okay, and i’ve met some great people since then, but i don’t have a group i can call to hang out except one night a week, and even then, sometimes i get “sorry, hangin with the wife tonight.”

i guess that’s why i’ve set goals for this year to do things i have not done before, like go to the grand canyon. i want something to happen this year that makes it memorable, something life changing. i’m sick of being bored.

i am not one to make new year’s resolutions. maybe sometimes i remind myself of things i should do, but then i forget soon after. this year i’ll try to keep a list and see how close i can get to meeting them.

1) stop cursing so much - since katrina, my profanity level has shot through the roof. and i’m not even talking bad language on thursdays….my usual exclamation when someone cuts me off is a word i never used to say, ever. i’m going to try to cut back this year.
2) read more - i’m going to try to read 15 books this year. compared to my friend kari, that is only a month’s worth, but considering last year i might have read 5, 15 is really pushing the limit.
3) get at least one haircut during the year - i went the entire year of 2006 without having my haircut. well, that is a lie because i got it cut on december 30th, but it had been at least a year since the last time. anyway, i wont let it grow that long again.
4) go to the grand canyon - i will go this year. and yes, i was inspired by a book.
5) maintain a cleaner house - this will be tough, but i’m going to attempt to do that this year. i spent most of my christmas holiday throwing junk away, and i like the updated version of my house so far, a lot.

i have others, but i’ll keep those to myself and a few close friends. for some reason i’m excited for this year, so we’ll see how it goes.