My friend Helen from high school got married last weekend. We were invited, but it just wasn't a good weekend for us to be out of town, so we missed it. I didn't realize how much we missed until I saw some of the pictures on facebook.
They had the tiger cub at their wedding! I am so jealous. Nobody even told me that was an option. Considering I couldn't even talk Amy into a cake-topper that looked like us, I don't think I could have talked her into having a Clemson mascot at the wedding. I would have had to surprise her, and it totally would have been worth it.
For those outside of the greater central town limits, you missed quite the storm Sunday afternoon. It didn't last that long, but it was incredibly intense.
Amy and I were rudely awakened from our traditional Sunday afternoon nap by this storm. Upon waking up and walking to the window we saw giant hunk of tree fall on top of our cars and roll of the back.
The Chief, with all the chivalry of a bygone era, took the brunt of the tree hit. Luckily, considering the size of the branch, damage was minimal. A couple of dents on top of the Chief and scratches all around, but still not too bad. Take a look:
I have gotten word that the Clemson Dunkin' Donuts will in fact NOT be giving away a years worth of donuts to the first 50 customers. Despite the fact that many other Dunkin' Donuts in the upstate have done this promotion, the Clemson Dunkin' Donuts apparently hates its customers. The first 100 visitors to the Clemson Dunkin' Donuts will get 2 free breakfasts. 2. This is a borderline reason to completely boycott the Clemson DD altogether. I'm not willing to make that statement yet, but I'm thinking about it.
So the new Dunkin' Donuts in Clemson is rumored to be opening Monday morning at 5:00am. The Dunkin' Donuts is also rumored to be giving away a free years worth of donuts to the first 50 people there. So this leads to an obvious question:
Who is up for camping out at Dunkin' Donuts Sunday night?
So in case you missed Amy's post, we had a good ol' country weekend. We got a (foster) basset hound and went to a Brad Paisley concert. It was clearly an amazing weekend. My take on Friday night's country music extravaganza.
On the whole, the show was just incredible. Over the top in every sense of the word. Those folks know how to put on a show. There were hundreds of square feet of video screens, tons of moving lights, and all of it was perfectly choreographed with the show. During a song about running from the police, Amy and I both got a little motion sick from all the flashing lights combined with our stellar seats.
The music was also fantastic. Sure the lyrics are terrible, but in a charming sort of way. They seem to relish the simple nature of just being a good ol' boy. One of my favorite songs is based on the premise of a guy having to choose between his wife and going fishing. It starts with a long intro proposing the problem, before kicking in with a rowdy "I'm going to miss her, I've got a bite". Its all over the top, but thats what makes it great. If you like the Stephen Colbert then you could easily like country music.
The real show of course was the guitar playing. Brad Paisley is easily one of the best guitar players out there. He can flat out play. Being a country show, I didn't expect too many long guitar solos and jam sessions, but I was wrong. He ripped one in pretty much every song and they were all fantastic. Here is a taste of what I'm talking about:
Yesterday I decided to check out Peter Frampton. He's one of the guys you've heard a lot about, maybe caught a song or two, but what do you really know about him? At least those were my thoughts. I also only found out a year or two ago that Paul Simon was awesome and clearly the brains behind Simon and Garfunkle.
Through the power of netflix's online movie viewing, I watched/listened to a hour and half long concert in detriot from 1999. My conclusions on the show: I just don't know. The songs as a whole were ok. They seemed a little too poppy and just not that outstanding. I'm sure this is probably because they have imitated and copied so many times over the past 30 years that they seem commonplace. I'll bet they were incredible when they came out.
He also seemed like genuinely nerdy and happy to be there. There was no angst or bitterness about being forced to tour and play songs you'd written 25 years ago. I don't know if thats a good thing or not.
On the plus side, once he starts shredding a solo, there's little doubt he can play. I love a good, long, relatively melodic solo. I love his guitar tones and his guitars, both are quite beautiful. Every solo was just a little to clean though. It felt like he wasn't really pushing himself; like they lacked serious emotion. Emotion must be at the key of any great guitar solo. I think I'll just have to file him away with (no offense intended) Stevie Ray Vaughn under amazing guitar players that I think are OK.
I accept that I haven't given him a fair chance as I only listened to one live show from 1999, but that's no reason not to make my mind up about him. Let me know if I've missed the boat completely and he is awesome.
........................................... And Congratulations to staunch defender of unalienable rights, Evan for correctly answering yesterday's bonus question! The answer was in fact McAdams. Stay tuned for next week's bonus question.
I am officially declaring myself a bicycler. The Chief is getting well deserved break after 140,000 miles and I am getting a well deserved workout. And as with most significant life changes, it all started with a bet.
It all sprung from a lunch time discussion around the idea that eating meat resulted in creating more pollution than driving your car. As the discussion naturally heated up, Ed (of the long dormant ebynum.com) agreed to give up eating meat for a month if the Sawyer's would give up one of our cars for a month. Who knows which one is actually better for the environment. That is really irrelevant here. The environment is merely acting as a staging ground for a good ole challenge of will power and manhood.
So for the past ten days I've been using the bike (and the bus) instead of the car, and it has been excellent. The ride is getting easier and I'm feeling better. I have decided to officially declare myself a biker today after successfully replacing the punctured back tire tube this morning.
At this point I've logged about 40 miles with many more to come. Here is the bike:
For some reason my phone camera was taking pictures in black and white, but that's nothing a little photoshop can't clean up!
And here is my riding across campus with a bag of groceries (not pictured), listening to Dave Matthews, and taking a picture with my cell phone. I'm totally a natural!
Discussion Question: What should I name my bike?
Bonus Question: Name the building in the background of my riding picture!
Who is to say whether my middle school years were awkward or not? I have many great memories from the time. I can picture myself hanging around with perhaps the nerdier crowd, but we were the coolest of the nerds without a doubt. Or so I remember. Facebook has something else to say about it: This first one is cool enough. This is me and my middle school girlfriend Heather. A couple of things to note in this picture include the haircut and the shirt. This was and probably is still my favorite haircut of all time. I felt totally cool walking around Irmo Middle School Campus R with this haircut. And the shirt is one of the many diving t-shirts I wore back in the day. I usually got a shirt at every diving meet I went to and I went to a lot of meets.
For comparison, here's me without the sweet haircut. While clearly not as cool, the diving t-shirt helps.
At the time it was taken, this would have easily been the most embarrassing picture from the middle school years. I had made a bet with Heather (a rabid gamecock fan) on the Clemson Carolina game where the loser had to wear the other teams shirt. Unfortunately, it was not Clemson's year. Clemson came up short one Matt Padgett field goal and lost 31-34. But a bet is a bet, so I wore the USC sweatshirt all day(under my Clemson jacket). This would not, however be the most embarrassing picture to escape from 1996.
This would. This wasn't a Wednesday night trip to Books-a-Million to play Magic the Gathering, this is from a birthday party so you can be sure I was looking my best. I wore my best plaid polo (all the way buttoned up of course), tucked into my khakis, and some sweet black and white Nike's. Totally sweet.
So I was wrong. The old new diggs just didn't do it for me.
The new new diggs, however, are totally sweet (many thanks to Photoshop CS3!). So the writing and thoughts are feeling fresh and new. So prepare yourself for a blistering posting pace. Among the topics I'm boldly proclaiming to write about in the very near future include:
