update forthcoming

Just give me a day!

Hello my blog faithful!

Sorry that my updates have been few and far between lately! I haven't had a whole lot going on that has been noteworthy lately, so I haven't had much to talk about. I do have a few tidbits for you, though, so let's get to it.

As a reminder, I am the site coordinator at work for our site plus 2 others for a United Way-style giving campaign. It turns out that my work will involve more than I originally thought: public speaking. I will be leading the presentation given to anyone on our campus who wants to attend (generally 40%). 40% is probably 200ish employees. I've never talked in front of 200 people before. That's a scary, yet still exciting, prospect. I better make sure I'm prepared lest I make a fool out of myself in front of a lot of people.

My allergies are still going strong, but not quite as strong as a couple weeks back. Andy has recently caught an alleged cold, and I don't think I'd even be able to tell anymore between my continued allergies and a newly-caught cold from him (or whomever).

Also, a bit of sad news today. Recently, Stella, the family pet, has been pretty sick. The vet told my aunt that the best course of action at this point is to euthanize her. My aunt made the hard decision and it's going to happen today. No need for any tearjerkers, but she has been a great pet to me, my dad, and the rest of my family. She loved many and was loved by many, and made a lot of people very happy.

More frequent posts to come in the future! I promise!

Recap

ACL was a lot of fun, albeit exhausting and allergy-ridden.

On Friday, Taylor, Andy, Kelcey, and I arrived at the park around 12 and we were there until about 9:50PM. Friday was the worst day for my allergies, and I went through three packets of pocket kleenex. I ended up seeing the following bands, with asterisks next to my top picks of the weekend.

• GIVERS
• The Soft Pack
• Blues Traveler
• Miike Snow*
• The Black Keys*
• Spoon
• Vampire Weekend*
• The Strokes
• Phish

On Saturday morning, I rode on my bike to the motorcycle gear shop and picked up a couple cable locks so that we could lock up our helmets and jackets at ACL. We rode to ACL and got there around 12:00 again and the motorcycle lot was conveniently close. Typically you are looking at a 30 minute walk to your car but it was only about 10 at the most. My allergies were still acting up but were a little less evil. However I was very loopy, because I took a Claritin in the morning, a Zyrtec in the early afternoon, and 2 Sudafed every 3 hours from morning until night. And it didn't even really help!

• The Very Best*
• Pete Yorn
• Two Door Cinema Club
• Beats Antique* (only saw them for the briefest time but they were good)
• Broken Bells*
• The Temper Trap
• The xx
• LCD Soundsystem
• Muse*******************

By Sunday morning I was very beat. Combined with the intense allergies, hours in the sun, and exhaustion from walking, I didn't want to get to ACL until much later in the day. Taylor and I finally left at 3, even though I still didn't want to leave yet, and we got there around 3:40ish.

• Yeasayer
• Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
• The Flaming Lips
• Band of Horses
• The National*
• Eagles

Sunday was a mostly disappointing day for me, because of my fatigue and the music that I wasn't very hyped up about. Band of Horses and Flaming Lips were both good, but neither were as good as I was hoping. The National stole the whole day, in my opinion. Eagles were good, but I'm not a big enough fan and their music is too chill for me by that point in the festival. We stayed until about 9 and then left early.

$50 tickets go on sale at a random time this week. Will I be lucky enough to snatch another pair? Let's hope so.

ACL 2010!

I'll be gone to ACL 2010 from Friday-Sunday, see you guys later!

In the meantime, here are the songs I'm looking forward to hearing live:

Firefighters refuse to help man who didn't pay his fee

This has to be the most ridiculous story I've read recently.

Let me set up the story for you. Every year, residents living in the rural area of Obion County must pay a $75 fee for fire fighter service from South Fulton. As you'd expect, this family did not pay the fee that year, for reasons I don't know.

Well, as you can probably assume at this point, their house caught fire and they called 911. "Didn't pay your fee? Whoops, talk to you later!" That's basically the response he got.

This fire went on for hours because garden hoses just wouldn't put it out. It wasn't until that fire spread to a neighbor's property, that anyone would respond.

Turns out, the neighbor had paid the fee.

"I thought they'd come out and put it out, even if you hadn't paid your $75, but I was wrong," said Gene Cranick.

...

It was only when a neighbor's field caught fire, a neighbor who had paid the county fire service fee, that the department responded. Gene Cranick asked the fire chief to make an exception and save his home, the chief wouldn't. 

So, let's get this straight. They denied coming to help him because he didn't pay the fee. Harsh. A short while later, the fire spread to the neighbors house. Then they came to the neighbors house to put out the fire, and continued to ignore the Cranicks' burning house.

Their response seems so ridiculously morally incorrect that it honestly upsets me. Over $75 measly dollars, they refused to come and save a man's residence from burning down. Then, even after they arrived on the scene to help the neighbors' houses, they still refused to help him. Are you shitting me? What happened to civic duty? How about instead of making it optional, you just tax them $75 a year so we don't have these situations? How about instead of refusing to put out a fire, you fine someone $300 if they didn't pay the $75 fee? How about instead of letting a family's residence and possessions get destroyed in a fire over $75, you just help them out because it's the right thing to do? How important is $75 to you that you are willing to risk the obvious media, community, and political backlash? It's so stupid that I can't fathom their thought process.

To give you an idea of just how intense the feelings got in this situation, soon after the fire department returned to the station, the Obion County Sheriff's Department said someone went there and assaulted one of the firefighters.

Good for you.

[Full story via WPSD]

Man oh man

Writing these blog entries can be kind of a chore sometimes. That's the price you pay for becoming a world-famous blog writer, right?

Last week was good, mostly because I can't remember anything. Since I can't remember anything bad, I'll assume it was good. Friday morning I went with Andy to the skate park to take some pictures. Not only have I not used my camera in a long time, but it's hard to take pictures of live action. Trying to focus on him while he's skating around doing tricks was sometimes an exercise in futility. Luckily, I remembered that a high aperture yields me a much bigger depth of field, which helps remedy that situation a bit.

Here are some of Andy's favorites, but check the links above for the full album:

Friday night, we went to see Daniel Tosh, who does live stand-up comedy. He and his two openers were both funnier than I expected. It was also the first time I've seen stand-up live. All-in-all, it was a good night.

On Saturday, we watched the Red River Rivalry — which I still think sounds inferior to its old name, the Red River Shootout — and it was disappointing. Our defense is good, but not good enough to win games by themselves. Our offense and special teams are a joke this year. I can't believe we started the most important and boisterous game of the year with two horizontal passes that netted us -2 yards each. Did you notice how, on third downs, our routes were always well-shy of the first down? What the hell is wrong with our team? Here are some fun stats, courtesy of Burnt Orange Nation:

• 8 -- number of times Texas faced a third down of eight or more yards.
• 6 -- number of times that Garrett Gilbert completed passes short of the first down marker on third down.

What does that say about our team? What about the fact that after DJ Monroe scored a 60+ yard touchdown, he only had 3 more touches the rest of the game? It's really beyond me what's going on.

That's enough about the game. Saturday night we went to see Justin's show at Dizzy Rooster. Show was both good and expectedly loud, so I brought my ear plugs. Much to my surprise, after the show the music blaring out of the bar's sound system was even louder. No wonder today's youth are going deaf.

Sunday was filled with errands, chores, and football.

This week is another, even busier week. I have class on Tuesday, kickball on Wednesday, a makeup class on Thursday, followed by three days of ACL! I'm excited about ACL, but I have to get to the weekend first.

I found my restaurant receipt from New York

I remember now why that trip cost me so much.

*This receipt not to be mistaken for Dez Bryant's recent receipt