Sunday morning I woke up and went to early church. I hadn’t been to early church in a long time, but this Sunday happened to also be the week my mom was doing the scripture reading. The sermon was once again not really on the mark for me, but I enjoyed being up early on a Sunday seeing friends and family at church. After church I went to the store to pick up some things, and on my way home thought I would stop at the Quiznos near my house. I hadn’t been in a while and I wanted to stop off and have someone make me lunch. About 11 I pulled into the parking lot and parked the car. I started walking up and noticed a ‘For Lease’ sign in the window. QUIZNOS WAS CLOSED! The tragedy comes from the fact that now the only food places on my side of the interstate are Krystal and Sonic. Of course, there’s tons of stuff across the interstate but when there’s a lot of traffic, it’s not the most convenient trip to make. I went home and made myself a PB&J.

My grad school class project team has been meeting each Sunday night. I am the CEO of our fake company, and Sunday I was also up in the rotation for typing out the agenda and leading the meeting. Since the Saints game was not until 3, I set about to get that night’s meeting organized. I edited some of the final presentation slides and typed the email out to the team. The plan was for everyone to edit the presentation and send out their edits during the week, but I guess with the test we had last week no one really had time.

I had about 2 hours before the Saints game, so I went out to try to cut my grass. My lawnmower had to have some maintenance done to it because I had overfilled the oil. I had to replace the spark plug and the air filter, which wasn’t a big deal. With all the stuff that’s been going on with going out of town and working late and studying for tests, I had not been able to do anything with my yard. After a struggle to add oil and figuring out what the dipstick was actually saying, I had the oil done during the Saints game. I would go out to the garage during commercials and check on the oil, and add some. At halftime, I went out and tried to cut part of my backyard. The game had been going terrible for the Saints, but I had not lost all hope yet. I was outside cutting the grass and emptying the grass catcher when I heard loud cheering in my neighborhood. I remembered meeting Marlon and him telling me the Saints party was at his house Sunday and realized they were cheering, so obviously the Saints had done something really great. (it ended up being Darren Sharper’s INT return for a TD at the beginning of the 2nd half). The cool thing was it wasn’t just that crowd that I heard, it was multiple people from multiple houses in my neighborhood. I thought that was pretty cool, the community feel. That was one of the things I liked so much about the 2006 season.

I finished up with the lawnmower and went inside to watch the rest of the game. I had my team project meeting at 6 pm, and the game was still going on. I was going to have to multitask. The meeting started and I was steering us very well. I was watching the game on TV that was behind my laptop, so I didn’t miss much. I saw Reggie’s leap for a TD and everything. When Carney missed the XP, I remember back when he missed the XP after the most incredible last second play in Saints history. When they went ahead 40-34 I thought “it’s only 6 points! They need more!” Then I saw Tracy Porter get the INT and run it back for a TD and they locked the game away.

During all of this, I was leading this team project meeting. We’re assigned a mentor who ties in to all of our meetings. At the beginning of the meeting, he asked me if I was watching the Saints game. I told him I was and that if I randomly yelled out it had to do with the game not the meeting. At one point while I was typing something and said “NICE!” when the Saints scored, then had to cover saying “I said ‘Nice’ when referring to Drew Brees throwing another TD, not really this slide” which was about marketing or something. Once the game ended it was easier to focus on the meeting, and we actually finished half an hour early. The meeting ran really well, and I got props from the mentor guy. After such a crappy week last week (except for IMGL), the weekend was awesome. I need to find an SI with the new Saints cover!

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