Bringing the Drama

So I post on Saints Report now, after having finally joined back in December. Recently they had a thread where you could draw a favorite Saints moment using MS Paint. Obviously most of the drawings come out quite crude and like a child did them, but I thought it was awesome. I have since contributed two and I’ll post them here. My readers who are Saints fans will know exactly the moment I have captured so perfectly. For everyone else, the first is Reggie Bush against the Bears in the 2006 playoffs, and the 2nd is from this year’s game against the Redskins. I’ve included links to articles or video so you can get the context. Enjoy.

About two weeks ago I went and hung out with Running at the gym. It was too cold to run outside, so I went to the gym, then showered and all that. I came out and got in my car and sat there a couple of seconds, basically decompressing like “okay, I’m done and I’m going to drive home.” It was about 8 pm I think. I was parked over by the drug store since the parking spots around the gym fill up on weeknights. I’ve done it before, nothing out of the ordinary. Then as I’m sitting there in my few seconds of decompression, this lady walks along the sidewalk in front of my car and motions to me. I rolled down my window and she walks closer and starts talking to me in a “will fall apart into full on crying” voice. She tells me she’s from St Bernard (the parish) and she’s trying to get to the hospital to see her mom. She thought she was at Slidell Memorial, but she’s actually at St Tammany Parish Hospital and now she’s out of gas. I told her I wasn’t going that way (it was 25 miles away) She asked me if I could help her get some gas. I told her I didn’t have a gas can with me. I wasn’t going to drive her to go get any either. So I had $3 in my wallet, and gave it to her. She thanked me and walked off. I figured if she had a fuel efficient car, that would buy her a gallon of gas and she’d be able to drive the 20 or so miles to the other hospital. Besides, the only other bill I had was a $20.

I thought about her story though on my way home and it was such garbage. Did she tell me she was from St Bernard so I’d feel sorry for her? I have family in St Bernard, they wouldn’t leave their house with no money or credit cards with little or no gas. They would confirm what hospital to go to before showing up at the wrong one. They wouldn’t stop in a parking lot a few blocks away from the wrong hospital and beg for money. I surmised though, that I only gave her $3, so if she was going to do something like go buy a bottle of Jack, she’d have to find 8 other people like me.

Fast forward to last night. I stopped at Academy Sports to get a Saints NFC Championship shirt. It was about 8 pm. I walked out to my car and was about to open the door when THE SAME LADY comes up to me and says “excuse me, I’m trying to get to St Tammany Parish Hospital…” She was even using that stupid “about to cry” voice. I cut her off and said “that’s okay, I saw you a week ago.” She looked at me, and immediately turned and walked toward the IHOP nearby. I got home and after telling someone about it right when I got home, was encouraged to call the police to see if what the lady was doing was illegal. I called the sheriff’s office, and talked to a lady there, who said it was illegal to commit fraud, which this lady was surely doing. She laughed a little when I told her how I saw the same lady and she tried to use the same story on me in the exact same way. She took down a description and said she would call the local police about it since it was more a local police issue.

I hung up the phone and ate a leftover gameday burger and drank a High Life. The entire fiasco brightened up an otherwise gloomy evening. I hope the cops found her and gave her something to really cry about. Then I realized, I should have asked for my $3 back.

Back in May I typed about how Minnesota should sign Brett Favre. Now as I sit in a world where New Orleans Saints will host the NFC Championship game against the Vikings, I feel a tinge of regret. Little did I know last spring that Brett Favre would become a direct enemy of my Saints. That he and his team would be standing between the Saints and the Super Bowl.

I have been a Favre fan for as long as I can remember. I always wanted to see him do well in Green Bay. Maybe that admiration was helped by the Saints never playing the Packers in a really meaningful game, but I always thought it was cool that a guy from my general area of the country was one of the greatest QBs of all time.

This past Saturday night, I went to a Mardi Gras ball and had a great time. Someone at our table asked me who I wanted the Saints to play in the NFC title game. I told the lady I wanted Favre because of all the talk this season that has highlighted Favre’s play over Drew Brees. Part of me possibly didn’t want the Saints to play Dallas again, but mostly because I wanted the Saints to take down Brett Favre.

Now the game is upon us. The Saints won’t have to travel to a city up north and face a horribly insulting crowd in the snow. They get to play at home. They get to have their defense back and 91% full strength. They get to have the amazing Reggie Bush back at full strength. They also get Brett Favre, who will take away most of the media hype of this game.

As the game approaches, I am reminded of one of my favorite movie quotes from the film Rushmore for what I think the Saints should do: “Take dead aim on the rich boys, get them in the crosshairs, and take them down”. WHO DAT!

Shortly after making the Coffee Cake for Thanksgiving, I went looking for dessert recipes that involved coffee and buttermilk. I didn’t want to find anything that caused me to get 10 additional ingredients or anything, I wanted to use what I had, esp the buttermilk. I have two food blogs on my feed, Pioneer Woman and Smitten Kitchen. I searched both of those sites for a recipe and found the Tiramisu Cake. Not only did it look delicious, but it appeared challenging. I like a kitchen challenge. Thus began my odyssey for about a week to find mascarpone cheese. I finally found mascarpone at a local grocery, in their specialty cheese ‘boat’ near the deli. I call it the ‘boat’, because that’s what the person called it when I had googled.

I actually didn’t have the make the cake for an occasion, I was just making it to make it and use the buttermilk. I finally found time to make it the day I was going to be going to Kelly Clarkson. It wasn’t quite the rush job like the Coffee Cake, so I was able to take pictures of the process.

First the dry ingredients were mixed first.

BTW, I had a dilemma with the unsalted vs salted butter. I had bought both kinds (unsalted for baking and salted that I thought would be better for normal use), and had used quite a lot of the unsalted for different recipes I used (like the Bobby Flay biscuits I made earlier in the weekend), and the cake called for unsalted. I didn’t really want to go to the store for unsalted butter, so I portioned the butter and used probably 65% unsalted. Now I buy exclusively unsalted since now I have figured out the difference between the two, and don’t really notice a taste difference for normal use.

I greased and floured the cake pans. I’ve become quite good at it.

The wet ingredients came together and were ready to go quickly.

Of course, because I am one of the few people in the U.S. without a printer at home, I had my laptop open with all the instructions. I glanced at it quite often to make sure I was getting everything right.

The whole espresso extract thing, I just used the instant coffee I had. I was able to use my John Wayne coffee mug as a tool in this endeavor. The Kahlua is for the filling/frosting.

One thing I didn’t enjoy was washing the bowls DURING this operation. Maybe I should get more mixing bowls, but I’m just working with one set right now. Once the cakes were out of the oven, I put them on cooling racks and had to wait for them to cool so then I could ice them. (BTW, props to my friend Megan for passing down her extra cooling racks)

The ridges on the edge of the cake were from the parchment the recipe called to line the cake pans. I floured and parchment papered the pans, so maybe it was redundant, but I wouldn’t want to take any chances.

I pretty much just poured the syrup over the cakes, which kind of made a mess, but it worked. I might try something different next time. Getting the cakes from the racks to the plate was interesting, especially after they’ve been soaked with syrup. Making the filling and frosting was easy, and the mascarpone worked well. Once the cake was assembled, it went into the fridge to ‘set’ and left for the concert.

I got back probably at 11 pm and cut into the cake. It was excellent.

Sadly, I had to eat at least one piece of cake everyday during the week since I was going to be leaving for Nashville at the end of it. Don’t hate me.

I did end up with about 1/4 of it left after eating one piece a day and pawning off wedges to friends and family, and it still tasted fine when I got back. Win, win.

I started growing my beard out again the week of the HALF MARATHON. It started out innocently enough, I was just going to do a No Shave November, but then I remembered how I wanted to grow it out for the final two months or so of 2007 and couldn’t. So I was going to grow it out through the end of the year and then shave it. Then I started getting compliments about it. “that beard is epic” “your beard looks good” “it’s so thick!” People liked it, I kept getting unsolicited comments. So then I thought “okay, I can let it go a little while longer.”

I was talking to my friend Brandon at work last week, and told him I was leaning towards shaving it off. He told me I should wait, and I told him that now it’s gotten to the point where if I shave it off, it’s a little over two months’ work gone. Gladly, the beard is not tied to anything sports related, so I didn’t feel compelled to shave because of the Saints or Hornets. I had the beard in Nashville while watching the Cowboys game. [photo credit: Brandi]

Thursday I went to the gym to run since it has been too cold to run outside. I passed CGG as I was leaving, but looked away plus I had my beard and glasses on, and avoided eye contact. Friday I went back to work out, and he noticed me and called me by name. The beard lost it’s disguise factor. Also, I found out CGG is part of the cleaning crew, which makes me think he’s not really related to the owner. That’s another story.

Saturday night my friend Jacob and I were finally going to hang out after two postponements. I shaved my beard down to a mustache. I had just gotten tired of the beard, plus with the disguise factor going away and other factors, it had to go. I had gotten the mustache idea from when Jacob had done it a couple of years ago….to go out with a mustache. I ended up being late because the beard took so long to shave off. I thought the mustache came out pretty well.

Sunday before meeting up with family to go down to the WWII Museum, I shaved the mustache off. I’m clean shaven for the first time since late October. It’s a brave new world.

1 – woke up to a world where the Saints are 11-0 and had dismantled the Patriots on MNF
2 – made an awesome dinner of eggs, tomatos, and red onion
3 – cried laughing at Cake Wrecks
4 – got the analysis model operational that I’ve been trying to get done for a month it seems
5 – hung out with my family and hung ornaments
6 – Saints 12-0! Team project final presentation went awesome!
7 – I found marscapone at the store!
8 – my phone fixed itself!
9 – hang out time with old friends
10 – went to the gym for a run after work
11 – got a bunch of errands done
12 – made biscuits from scratch using wheat flour
13 – 13 and O; tiramisu cake; Kelly Clarkson
14 – made it home from work in spite of fog AND heavy rain at the same time
15 – made it to work safely through some crazy rain and then got a good parking spot
16 – final for my class went well
17 – 2 for 1 domestic’s at Rippy’s; seeing old friends at the Ryman
18 – finally made it to Fido
19 – had sushi for the second time ever
20 – awesome time at church; safe flight home; Vikings lost
21 – eased back into work, made progress with stuff
22 – GREAT parking spot at work
23 – found out I made an A in my class; talked with a corp manager about job stuff and was encouraged
24 – awesome Mass service; family Christmas Eve gathering
25 – my sister loved her gifts that i bought that had nothing to do with her list
26 – finally went and saw a movie in a theatre that was worth my time! (Sherlock Holmes)
27 – found a college transcript to use for job apps, so i won’t have to pay for a new one
28 – watched the MNF game and the Bears won!
29 – Wii swordfighting with my sister
30 – Hornets game with my dad for his birthday
31 – enjoyed fireworks without having to leave my house

Sometimes at work I’ll be looking something up on Wikipedia, and then the next thing I know I’m reading something I had no intention of reading, yet it is fascinating. One day a few months ago, I happened upon the page talking about Andrew Jackson, and read how the famous statue of him on the horse that I knew from Jackson Square in NOLA is also in Nashville and Washington DC. Intrigued, I made a plan to get my picture taken with all 3. At the time I had plans to go to DC for a youth conference, but those plans fizzled. When I made my plans for Nashville, I remembered reading about the statues. Luckily on Saturday, I was able to get my friends Brandi and Aaron to swing by the state capitol and Brandi got my picture. It was ridiculously cold BTW.

So now I have the one in NOLA which obviously shouldn’t be that hard, and the one in DC to get. I have no idea when the next time I’ll be in DC, but I didn’t put a time limit on getting the pictures. I read that there’s one in Jacksonville, FL, but the plaque on the one in Nashville says there are 3, so the one in JAX must be a late addition that won’t be required. However, if I end up in JAX for something, I’ll be sure to make it to the statue.

Because I’ve suffered from severe writers’ block lately but I still want to document the awesome things that happened over the weekend of my triumphant return to Nashville after a 2 year absence, you get the incomplete sentences of the awesome and not so awesome:

- shared plane with inappropriate singer
- lady’s excitement over inappropriate singer
- beer shopping
- trip to recycling collection place
- Dagny!
- well, now don’t you feel horrible for parking where kids in wheelchairs are coming out?
- 2 for 1 High Life
- seeing friends from across the room in the Ryman, feeling like a rock star
- realizing God still chases after me, no matter how unintentionally I seem to run from Him
- sleeping late
- ridiculous federal job app
- meeting blog friend Mandy
- making it to Fido for the first time ever
- Miles!
- Jack White’s house!
- eating sushi for the 2nd time ever
- interesting shop talk
- Hank/Hank Jr mugs
- Jack White’s record studio/shop was closed
- picture of me with Andrew Jackson statue
- Grimey’s with drunk Santa and ‘drunk’ elf
- Saints/Cowboys!
- “chicken/taco/really good whatever it is officially called” soup
- Missed FG! Craziness!
- Saints sadness
- awesome sermon at church
- leading the youth group boys to a gift wrapping championship
- blue coast burrito
- 5 NFL games at once
- free airport wifi
- home

Last night’s Clemson game hurt. I haven’t been that upset after a game since last year’s Bama game. It just hurt to watch GT on the last drive, and it hurt for Clemson to fail on 4th and 1 with 30 seconds remaining. It hurt for CJ Spiller to have such an amazing game and be named MVP, but to lose in the end in excruciatingly painful fashion. Yuck. However, today somewhat made up for it and made me feel a little better.

Tonight was my project team’s final presentation. I caught up on watching class videos before the Saints game this morning, to make sure nothing was talked about in a lecture that would be useful for the presentation, and also to catch up because I was two lecture videos behind. Once the Saints game started, I took a break.

The Saints game didn’t exactly start off that well. The offense was being frustrated by the Redskins D, and the Saints D was not able to get much pressure on Jason Campbell. Weird stuff was happening, like this TD near the end of the first half. Seriously, when have you seen something like that happen? (linky link) A rough transcript of the play from me as the play happened, then as the play was reviewed and confirmed on the field: “oh come on, he didn’t intercept it! It hit the ground! Go Meachem! GO MEACHEM! TOUCHDOWN! No, he did intercept it! He wasn’t down! That is a touchdown!….YES! YES! WHO DAT!”

At halftime I went back to watching video, and had the audio of the game going on in the background. At the beginning of the 4th quarter I went back to watching the game. What happened at the end is still unexplainable to me. The Redskins were driving up 30-23, and got inside the 10 yard line. They went to kick the FG with 2 min to play, and I thought the Saints were dead to rights. The only way they could win now would be to block the FG. I thought this was how it was going to end, and they would have to hope the Vikings would lose tonight to maintain being #1 overall in the NFC. The dream was over. Then it happened. The Redskins missed a 23 yard FG! The Saints took over with no timeouts, and ended up scoring a TD with a little over a minute to play to tie the game at 30. WHAT? They got an INT, then had a chance to win with a 58 yard FG, but missed, and the game went to overtime. The Redskins won the toss, got the ball first, but then there was a fumble and the Saints recovered. They went down and kicked an 18 yard FG and won the game in overtime 33-30. I still cannot believe how it all ended.

Then I had to come down off the high of seeing such a miraculous finish and concentrate on my team’s final presentation. We had met as a team on Wednesday last week to do a rehearsal, and I tripped over my words. It was crazy and very embarrassing. This evening before the meeting, I wrote out what I would say for each slide I was supposed to talk, so I wouldn’t mess anything up. We all logged in for the meeting and the professor joined in shortly after. We did our thing and everything came out great. I was really happy with everything. I had asked our mentor a couple of weeks ago to be really picky with our presentation, because I wanted to make sure we’d be prepared for any questions our professor could think of. I think his questions prepared us for tonight, and we were able to answer our prof’s questions with flying colors. All that is left for me in that class is the final and then I’ll be done, and based on how well I did on the midterm, I feel good about that.

1 – relaxing day following the HALF MARATHON
2 – CRAZY EXCITING Saints win! Also, came back from 60 point deficit in fantasy football to tie on the second to last play of the game! INSANITY!
3 – saw a video my sister took on Halloween of me doing the Cupid Shuffle; became a facebook celebrity
4 – my favorite Hornet (PEJA) hit a 3 to send the game into OT, then they won in OT
5 – i was WIRED when i got home which translated into a FAST run
6 – finally caught a free tshirt at a Hornets game
7 – Clemson moved closer to an ACC title game appearance!
8 – fake company meeting went better than i expected
9 – got my new replacement iPod!; hunkered down for Ida
10 – saw that Jay-Z is playing NOLA in February
11 – found motivation to get to the gym
12 – SWELL SEASON!
13 – drove over to Five Guys in Biloxi for lunch….awesome
14 – ran a 10k!
15 – Nine and Oh
16 – U2 tickets came in the mail!
17 – Pete Yorn show was awesome
18 – tickets for Kelly Clarkson went on sale for half price for the day!
19 – saw the Hornets play well against a good team for the first time all year
20 – peaceful night at home; watched Clemson basketball for first time this year
21 – Clemson locked up their division; Switchfoot in the Parish room!
22 – watched Saints game with friends and didn’t jinx the team; Ten and Oh
23 – made myself go to the gym
24 – Running got me out of a foul mood
25 – I made cake icing from scratch and it came out PERFECT
26 – fun with my dad and friends at Turkey Day race, then Thanksgiving with my family
27 – had a great Black Friday at home
28 – went for a run and the weather was gorgeous
29 – good team project meeting; Clemson beat Butler in a thriller!
30 – Saints 38, Patriots 17