Seek The Substantial

Some time ago (October 27th to be exact), myself, Justin F. and good friend Brandon traveled to Lubbock to watch our Red Raiders take on the Colorado Buffaloes. Sadly our Red Raiders were turned away with a loss, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t have a good time. First off, we drove on Friday night, which was necessary because the kickoff was scheduled for 11:00 a.m.

The day was beautiful.

Here’s me looking like a badass.

We met our good friend Matty, who lives in Lubbock, and he just might be the best Texas Tech fan ever.

Here’s Justin F. and Matty, as Justin F. is afraid to get his guns up.

Brandon and Matty.

Brandon, myself and Matty.

On the way home, we stopped at this barbecue joint off the side of the road for lunch and it was just about the best barbecue that I’ve ever had.

Good Christmas and lots of fun with the family. I was coming down with a cold/flu and was feeling pretty bad on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. In fact, I’m still coughing, but I think I’ll make it. I only have pictures from Christmas Eve at my parents house, for whatever reason, I don’t take a lot of photos at Sweet Sweet’s parent’s house.

Puppy-dog-cute picture of me an Sweet Sweet.

Ryan.

Nothing says “Celebrate the Birth of Our Lord” like a Dos Equis.

TJ and Mia.

Marilea and Thea (Thea loves her new baby and gives her kisses).

Mom and Dad before posing.

Mom and Dad after posing.

The highlight of the night was a rocket launcher for Jenson. Here we have Grace, Blake, Thea and Sweet Sweet helping Jenson.

Action shots of Jenson.

Thea helping Jenson.

Probably my favorite action shot.

TJ catching the rocket.

Good times with Sweet Sweet and I watching basketball at the AAC. Essentially, I convinced / bribed her to go if we ate at El Fenix afterwards. Not a bad trade-off as far as I’m concerned. The game itself was a little disappointing, but it was still fun to see my Red Raiders play.

Sweet Sweet and I.

Quick story, the wind was blowing at 40 to 50 m.p.h. and we were rushing to find the closest ticket window as we didn’t have tickets to the game and I knew that it wasn’t going to be a sell-out, so I felt pretty comfortable walking up and purchasing tickets.

Some incredibly awesome individual walked up to Sweet Sweet and I and asked us if we would like tickets in the upper deck. Me, not wanting to look a gift-horse in the mouth, said hell yes. We find our seats and there is hardly anyone in the upper deck.

We weren’t exactly very close:

Another good mojo moment comes when the ticket attendants tell us that we can go sit in the lower bowl. At this point, I’m dizzy with excitement. First, I get into the game for free and then I’m told that I can sit in the more expensive seats? Merry Christmas to me.

As you can tell, we got quite a bit closer:

Good times with the wife, and dinner was great.

Two weeks in a row isn’t quite a trend, but it’s better than nothing.

Sweet Sweet and I received some great news yesterday, her platelet level is now at 250,000, whereas before her surgery to remove her spleen her platelet level was hovering at around 35,000. As the doctor told her, we got platelets for Christmas, and honestly, my wife’s health was all I could really ask for this holiday season. Granted, she’s an expensive one, i.e. requiring this surgery and then the back surgery still scheduled for January 21st, but I love her.

With more time from the couple of days off for the Holidays I’ll make sure and post additional photos.  As an aside, Sweet Sweet and I will be going to the TT v. SU game this afternoon.  There will be pictures from that as well.

These photos are from last week’s annual Christmas Party with our friends. Thank you to our gracious hosts, Chris and Landy, for hosting this event.

Myself and Sweet Sweet.

Justin F., Ashley F., Bonnie, Leslie, Tony, Chris, Courtney, Kaylie, and Matt.

Brandon, new couple, Nick, Ryan, Justin F. and Greg.

Nick, Ryan, Justin F., Greg, Richie, Keith, and Chris.

Okay, seriously, it won’t happen again.

Let me explain.

I wasn’t really doing anything. Okay, that’s a lie, I was doing some stuff, but just not a lot of stuff. Case in point, I went to Lubbock for a few football games, by myself once and with some friends on others. Not to mention, DTN is my escape. It used to be PDB, but at some point, writing about my life became a burden rather than a blessing. Or perhaps is more of an idea that I can get completely lost in the HTML, creating tables, statistics and analysis of DTN where that’s not quite the same with PDB.

I’ve got to get away sometimes, rather, most of the time and DTN is the better place for that, at least for me. I know, this does two things, it creates a void in PDB that’s been somewhat consistent for a better part of two years. I hate that, I really do hate that, but if the alternative is having to think about life and all of my problems, then I’m not sure that I want that.

The other part of the equation is that we (and when I say we, I mean my wife and I) are in the process of getting her “fixed”. Right before Thanksgiving, Sweet Sweet had her spleen removed, which we hope fixes her platelet problem. As of right now I think she feels better, but feeling better is buttressed by the fact that she’s still in quite a bit of pain as a result of the herniated disc in her back.

I will say this, when I kissed my wife goodbye when she had her spleen removed, it was perhaps the saddest point of my life. Not because I didn’t know that everything was going to be okay, but because I don’t think I would have been able to live with myself if something happened to my Sweet Sweet. That fear was paralyzing. I kissed my wife goodbye and I stood there and cried. Completely helpless and scared.

As I said above, she is now doing fine. I took a picture of her crooked body for posterity purposes.

I’ve set my Google calendar to send me an email every Saturday morning to make sure that I sit down and give back.  If I don’t keep this up, my life will just flash by me without any sort of recollection of what really happened.  I don’t like the thought of my life being a blur, but I realize that’s what the last 4 months have been.  No real memories and that’s not good.

My family has a number of summer birthdays and we had a family get-together at the house to celebrate everyone’s birthday.

The scene.

Thea.

Marilea, Blake and Dad.

Saralyn, Darius and Dad.

Grace, Darius and Jensen (hiding behind the cup).

Dad, Saralyn and Ryan.

Blake, Thea and Mom.

Jensen, Grace and Dad.

Thea and Marilea.

Dad, Blake, Ryan Mom and Saralyn.

Saralyn, Mom, Grace, Darius, and TJ.

Sweet Sweet, Dad, Thea, Marilea, Blake, Ryan and Saralyn.

Last summer a fairly large tree died, chalk it up to the drought last year or the tree just being old, but about a month ago a large branch (diameter 8″ to 9″) fall on our neighbor’s fence. I rounded up a crew of Sweet Sweet’s father, brother, Stephen and Todd to help get that sucker down.

Here’s the tree in question.

Blurry picture of me.

Stephen taking a chainsaw to the son-of-a-gun.

Loading up the debris.

The tree itself was somewhat unwieldy and difficult to pull down.

This part was the scariest part because it could have fallen on the neighbor’s house.

Randy taking the chainsaw to the son-of-a-gun.

We also had a tree in the front of our yard. Strike that. It wasn’t much of a tree as it was really a totem pole. As you can see the roots were completely rotted and there wasn’t much to pulling it down.

Justin taking the chainsaw to the son-of-a-gun.

I’m sure that we all have something that we hold onto for much longer than we should. I have a number of those things, consider this a character flaw if you wish, but for me it’s all about comfort.

At some point during my high school career, I purchased a pair of Adidas slip-on soccer style shoes. I think this was my sophomore year, but I can’t be sure as that was almost 2 decades ago. Bygones.

I had kept those shoes through thick and thin and they had become a staple of my casual summer wardrobe. Without implicating my wife too much, Sweet Sweet had grown to hate these shoes and I could certainly understand why. They were dirty and quite frankly a little gross, but they were damn comfortable, they had stood up to the test of time and I’m of the school of thought of why should you get rid of something if nothing is wrong with it?

Well, at some point during the summer I promised Sweet Sweet that I would throw them away and this post is in remembrance of those shoes. Cue the sad piano music.

Good times ensued when Greggy, Chris, Justin F. and myself headed to San Antonio for a weekend of Cowboys’ training camp and golfing. First, I’d never taken 183 to San Antonio and couldn’t believe how beautiful the scenery was.

Once again, I was hampered by low batteries upon arrival at the Alamo Dome which is why there are few pictures. My bad.

Practice.

Justin F. and Chris.

Greggy.

Me.

Next, we headed to Pecan Valley for a round of golf, which I did not participate. Golfing beats me to no end and it was damn hot. I did however capture some great golf shots.

Justin F. hitting out of a bunker.

Greggo hitting out of a bunker.

Greggo sinking a long put.

Justin F. putting and sweating.

Me with my new Ocean Pacific sunglasses.

Teeing off with Chris.

Teeing off with Greggo.

Teeing off with Justin F.

Justin F. getting out of a tough situation.

The course was beautiful, complete with an old tree that Santa Anna supposedly sat under with his troops.

Once again, we were finished after golfing. We headed back to the hotel, took showers, separately, and went out to dinner on the Riverwalk for some mediocre Mexican food.

A month ago I headed to Tulsa for a weekend of fellowship. I pulled into town around 10:30 p.m. and upon arrival we headed to the bar. These photographs are from our return from the bar.

Duk.

Big Time.

Blucifer.

Joey.

Me.

The next morning we played golf and it was Team Wolverine (Me, Joey, and Blue) against Team Thundersuck (Big Time and Duck). Before jaunting off to the course.

Joey

Big Time.

Joey and Big Time.

Blue

Team Thundersuck

Team Wolverine

Exhaustion set in as we headed for a very late lunch.

No more photos after that. We quickly ran out of steam after eating at Brother’s Hooligan.  An excellent weekend and much props goes to Duck for planning the event.  I love seeing my law school brothers, every damn one of you.  We don’t do this enough.