back home and settling in

I had planned on blogging yesterday, but the day went by much faster than I had anticipated. It's amazing how loads of e-mail and snail mail can eat up your time.

It's great being back home! Susie surprised me at the baggage claim area in the airport. She was supposed to just pick me up at the curb, so this was nice. However, after standing there for about 30 seconds, she asked me where the bathroom was. Aha! The ugly truth reared its head.....she needed to go to the bathroom! That was the real reason she came in! Alot of you may not know this, but it's my wife's lifelong quest to visit every rest room in the United States before she dies. She's well on her way to accomplishing that feat.....

My experience with San Antonio was very positive. From what I saw of the city, it's great! I stayed at the Marriott Rivercenter on the Riverwalk, and it was very nice. The river is man-made, about 15 feet wide and 4 feet deep, and it winds through the downtown area. Plenty of shops and restaurants along the river. The food was very good, and I didn't shy away from eating at any time during the trip. I had my first taste of Blue Bell Ice Cream, and it's as good as Texans have always told me. My favorite flavor was Bannana Pudding. Good stuff. There was a mall attached to the Rivercenter, so that was very convenient.

I skipped the end-of-conference party on Saturday night so that I could watch the UT/Florida game. I was pretty near to having a coronary all during the first half, between the offense moving the ball up and down the field and the defense doing their impersonation of Swiss cheese (too many holes). With 6 minutes left, a friend of mine called from the lobby and told me to come down and finish watching the game with her and her husband. I told her that I just couldn't, I was too worked up, but that I would be down after the game, win or lose. I had worn my UT golf shirt during the meetings that day, and got several comments on it. One guy said something to me about it in Tony Roma's, as I was getting some take-out to take back to my room before the game. Turned out he was an attorney from Nashville, so we ended up talking about the game. When Wilhoit missed the extra point, I screamed "NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!" and threw the remote down on the bed with quite a bit of force. However, rather than my normal reaction (they've blown it, it's over), I'm not sure what came over me but I actually said out loud, "they can still win it with a field goal." From then on, it was very exciting. When Wilhoit hit the winning field goal with 6 seconds left, Susie called and my first words were, "it's not over, there's still 6 seconds left". Cindy called from the lobby, and I said the same thing to her. When there was no time left on the clock, I went down to the lobby. I got more comments about my shirt as I got off the elevator from some people I didn't even know, and I responded by giving them the signal for a successful field goal - hands in the air, with a "yeah, baby!" thrown in for good measure. When I got to the area of the lobby with the projection screen, my friends were all there and I gave them the same signal. High fives were exchanged, a little bit of celebratory yelling. All in all, a great night for the Orange Nation. You may wonder why I chose not to watch the game with my friends. I can only watch UT football with VERY close friends and family members because I tend to get a little out of hand with my cheering/yelling/screaming. Our neighbors to our right even commented to Susie that I was very quiet during the game because they couldn't hear my reactions. Susie said, "Oh, he was in San Antonio." Our neighbor said, "Oh, OK, that makes sense. We knew he wouldn't be able to be that quiet." Hey, at least I can admit it when people are right about me.

So I'm back home, back at work, and normal life resumes. Back to budgets and spreadsheets, homework and Playstation 2, and snuggling with Susie at night. Life could be much worse......