I get a lot of flak for lugging around a huge camera everywhere I go. Occasionally it's worth it. In this digital age I don't print out hard copies of many pictures which is a shame. I do however keep a running folder of some of my "To get printed" pictures. Below is a snip-it of that folder. Enjoy this cop-out post.

This past week I was trying to find a good reason to use my new toys/tools. My parents got me a new air compressor for my birthday and Stephanie gave me a nailer combo kit for Christmas so I put them to work. I decided to build a doghouse for the good puppy dogs. I had never used air tools before and holy crap are they awesome! I just wanted to keep shooting nails just for the fun of it.Anyhow, I made the doghouse with a hinged roof so I can clean it out. This is a must with the diggin' bird dog. I'll add some more trim and put some old carpet on the walls and floor but I had to get some shots with the dogs in their new house. The first thing each of them did was take a leak on it, of course. I guess they thought it was good enough to stake a claim on. Here's Ziegen and Cooper's new house.

So I've had time to mourn (I realize this happened over a month ago) but it still pisses me off that the Red Raiders ended the season with a loss at the Cotton Bowl. That makes this the second Cotton Bowl that I've been to that they've lost. I will attempt to describe what it means to me to be a Red Raider fan.

I am a diehard Red Raider fan. I went to school at Texas Tech for roughly five years and loved every minute of it. I have been on a rollercoaster of elation and deflation ever since I saw Tech beat a #5 ranked Texas A&M team in Lubbock my freshman year, 1999. The crowd rushed the field tore down the goalposts and marched them through the streets. Since that game in 1999 we have been building a football program to compete in a major conference at a location that is 5 hours from anything and a Alumni backing of probably one third the size of A&M or Texas. I might say that I have become even more obsessed with Tech Athletics than I was when I went to school there. We have bought season tickets a few years and made the trek back to the greatness of Lubbock several times. Side note: Invite me to your wedding during a game and I'll wear this. I feel bad because our wedding was on a Tech vs. A&M gameday. All that said, this year the Tech Football team tied its best season in school history with an 11-2 record. What did it all mean?

As a Tech fan I have attended many great games such as;

Tech 42 vs Texas 38 in 2002,

Tech 48 @ A&M 47 OT in 2002,

Tech 23 vs OU 21 in 2005,

Tech 34 vs OU 27 in 2007,

I have also attended some rough ones away from Lubbock;

Alamo Bowl Iowa 19 -Tech 16 in 2001-2002,

Tech 15 @ A&M 33 in 2000-2001

Cotton Bowl - Alabama 13-Tech 10, 2005-2006,

And the latest

Cotton Bowl - Ole Miss 47-Tech 34, 2008-2009,

My sophomore year Mike Leach became our football coach.

He brought scoring and an offense that was fun to watch. He brought attention. We would upset a team we weren’t supposed to beat and we would lose a game we should have won every year. We expanded our stadium. We took down the power houses a few times. Every once in a while we finally got mentioned in the mix of the Big 12.

Then came the 2008-2009 season. We had expectations. We had a star quarterback with experience, a star receiver with “NFL for sure” written all over him, and we had something to prove. We were having a great year with several games on TV (some people don’t even realize how nice this is, aka UT, OU, etc.) and we had made it to the UT game undefeated. We were dominating them the entire 1^st half and they battled back to take the lead at the end of the game. Then the play came. It was amazing. If you don’t know what I’m talking about look it up.

I don’t know how many people are like me but I knew we could win that game. I have seen Tech drive the ball like they did and score with less than a minute before. I have built up a tolerance for having it all riding on the 4^th quarter. I had a churning stomach and high blood pressure during that fourth quarter (like most of our fourth quarters) but I knew we could pull it off.

I didn’t talk trash the next day. I didn’t rub it in because I have been rooting for Texas Tech Athletics for 10 years now and I know that next year probably won’t be like this.

In the end, I was really proud to be a Red Raider this year. I am accepting of the mediocrity and the occasional upset, I’m just not satisfied with it. The chip on my shoulder will remain there but I'll hang the flag out front next Fall.

I have been tagged by Kandice so I will partially comply to her list of demands and mention some of my weird habits and things that irk me. I have been meaning to do this list for awhile, as I am obsessed with lists (a later post perhaps).

Pet Peeves have to meet all three criteria: insignificant, experienced by all, and only you and a few others are annoyed by it.

Idiosyncrasy is defined as an individualizing quality or characteristic of a person or group, and is often used to express eccentricity or peculiarity.

Some of these may be crossovers between both categories but you get the idea, I am weird.


Pet Peeves

1. People in the right hand lane at a stop light that go straight. I try not to do this but sometimes find myself being a culprit.

2. Poor design.

3. Cell phone talkers on elevators. This is unacceptable. As if traveling on an elevator is not awkward enough. Then there's always the 1 floor traveler, ugh!

4. Shopping cart leavers. When I see people just push the cart away from their car I just glare at them. This usually occurs about 30 feet from the cart bin or front door of the store.

*5. Older people that don't hear their cell phone ring the first 6 times. They slowly get the phone out and then stare at the screen to read it, then decide whether or not to answer.

6. Chatty waiters.

7. Tappers (people that tap things like pens, silverware, steering wheels).

This list may be revised as I remember more things that drive me crazy.

Idiosyncrasies

1. I really, really get annoyed when people don't shut doors, drawers, books, and generally anything that can shut all the way. If I walk by a cabinet door anywhere, home, work or someones house that is not shut I can't help myself, I just have to shut it.

2. I get a strange choking feeling when I see any amount of dust. I have had mild asthma since I was probably 12 or so and have had allergy problems forever. Yet, I have never seen an allergist about this problem.

3. Also allergy related, I sneeze about 15 times a day. I usually get the morning kicked off with about 6-8 sneezes @ roughly 8:00am and meet my 15 sneeze quota later on throughout the day.

4. I usually eat meals categorically and I don't like my food to touch the other food on the plate.
i.e. - green bean juice getting on steak, or corn touching chicken. I think this was beaten into my head at an early age by the cafeteria tray.

Simple rules
a. burger first then go for the fries. (When you are in the car on the way home it is generally acceptable to eat the fries out of the top of the bag.)
b. Catfish, then fries, then hush puppies. no slaw, slaw is gross.
c. Sandwich, then chips, then cookies.
e. If a meal has mashed potatoes in it then all rules are off. You can mix anything with mashed potatoes and it becomes awesome.


Side notes

*Pet peeve that has actually turned into a sense of joy for me. I now smile and sometimes laugh when this occurs.

Demolition is fun but is also messy. Of course, my big problem is actually finishing what I have started. Our kitchen is one of the spots in our house that we feel needs the most work. Our latest project has been updating our oven and cooktop. When we moved into the house the kitchen was a lovely flesh color with a muted red above the paneling in the breakfast area. Gag me. We have since painted the cabinets and brick(we hate painted brick but that is another story), tiled the floor, and put in a few new touches but this room still needs a ton of work. We decided that we needed a larger oven the first time Stephanie tried to bake some cookies and the cookie sheet didn't fit in the oven. We decided a freestanding range would be much more efficient than a 24" wall oven and cooktop set into brick pavers (great idea for a cooking surface whoever came up with this one).

This is what the kitchen looked like when we walked through the house prior to buying it (note: that is not our junk everywhere). A few months ago we bought the range and an over-the-range microwave to put in the alcove where the cooktop was. After a little work with a masonry cutting wheel and few weeks without a cooktop we had a nice new range in the kitchen. I salvaged and retrofit the existing cabinets to fit on either side of the range for the time being. Now all we have to do is get new countertops, cabinets, and hang the microwave and we'll be done (right). Anyone, giving construction loans?

Steel brick lentel removed.
I think we'll probably hang the microwave and do countertops this coming year. A few lessons: Brick generates a ton of dust when cut, make sure and seal off the area if you are inside, and always inaugurate your nice clean cooktop with bacon grease splatter.Very secure in my masculinity, huh?

This week started off with my first work related conference which was actually quite fun. Thursday through Saturday morning I attended the Texas Society of Architects convention in the Fort Worth Convention Center. I did the whole seminar and product expo deal and saw a bunch of the guys from my old firm. It was cool to get to see them and catch up, also to know that I was missed a bit. We (the Tech Guys) went to the TTU Architecture Alumni Happy Hour where I saw a few professors I liked and they actually remembered me. I skipped out of the last seminar on Saturday at about 10:45 and made it back home in enough time to catch the kickoff of a great game by the Red Raiders. Here is a picture of my pretty wife getting a scoring update.Stephanie and I were watching and getting ready for Chris and Jessi's wedding so I had to throw on my newly acquired Tech jersey (note the dress shirt underneath). Fortunately the game was in hand by halftime and we were off to the Botanic Garden's. Little did I know that a Japanese Festival was going on that day at the gardens. It forced us to circumnavigate the entire garden. I made the huge mistake of lugging a heavy present to the wedding while the girls all wished they wouldn't have worn heels.
So we got the Mitchell's all married up and stayed for some cake and punch then we were off again. We made it out to Ranch Bash about 5 and saw Cory Morrow, Charlie Robison, and Wade Bowen. That was a pretty crazy scene in Sundance Square.Lastly, Blake, Dennis, Richard and myself made a trip out to the deer lease Sunday afternoon and set up the deer blind we had been building. After a lot of sweating and sneezing (I would make a terrible cowboy, or sniper) we all had a blast catching fish at the stock tank. The fish were really biting so we all had good fortune. It was the perfect ending to a great week.