Everything's Bigger In Texas

Happy belated Fourth of July, everybody! Hope it was great for all of you.

We went to Texas over the long weekend. It was the first time I'd been back since we moved away in Februrary 2002, and it was hot. It's easy to forget how toasty 98 degrees can feel when it's mostly been in the upper 70s and low 80s here - if this is what summer is typically like here, I am seriously in favor.

Once we arrived, we went to pick up our rental car. We had reserved a midsize car, but the agent was extremely friendly and chatted with us while he was taking down all our information, and then gave us a free upgrade to a premium car. "Everything's bigger in Texas," he said, with a big grin. "Even our hearts!" So we got to spend several days driving around DFW in a Buick LeSabre with free XM radio. Very nice, although we were the youngest ones we saw in a Buick by several decades.

The real reason we were in Texas, though, was for Joy and Cory's wedding! Saturday night, they hosted a get-together for all the families and out-of-town guests and we had a great time. It was wonderful to get to meet Cory's family and hang out with Randy's family, some of whom I had never (or only once or twice) met before. My parents were also able to come down for the wedding, so it was great to have the chance to hang out with them as well.

It was also at the get-together Saturday night that Joy distributed all our to-do lists. This past semester, she's been working full-time, planning a wedding, and finishing her final semester of an MA program, so she's had to be incredibly organized to get everything done. I helped with table decorations. Randy was in charge of the present table. Joy and Randy's dad's to-do list? 1. Walk Joy down aisle. 2. Perform wedding ceremony. 3. Take out the reception trash.

The wedding itself, on Sunday, was beautiful as well as organized. Joy wore the gorgeous dress her mom made for her and her dad performed the ceremony admirably. The reception was nice, and made better by the fact that they served chocolate cake and hot fudge sundaes. Now they're off to Hawaii for their honeymoon, and hopefully having lots of fun.

Monday evening, we were able to go see Ruben, who also lives in the Fort Worth area. It was nice to hang out with him and commiserate about being home-owners, since he also just bought his first house. We hung out for a bit, then went to a tasty little Italian place for dinner and went to see Superman Returns, which I really enjoyed. (I think the boys did, too.)

And Tuesday we came home. We weren't scheduled to leave until 4:30 p.m., but we went to the airport early and we were able to get on the 1:25 p.m. flight, which wound up being much nicer. I think we both breathed a sigh of relief when we drove up and saw that our house was still standing.

Since we've been back, I've been catching up on my Tour de France viewing (it's Phil and Paul's 21st year broadcasting together!) and we've been pondering bathroom remodeling. Any suggestions, advice, or desperate warnings?

Boomer! Sooner!

Now that the Tour de France is over (Go Lance!), the countdown to college football season can begin. The first slate of games begin Thursday, September 1st, which, by my calculations, is 5 weeks and 2 days away. Since we're no longer in Big 12 country, we'll be upgrading to digital cable soon so that we can get "ESPN GamePlan", a TV package that airs games not typically shown in your region. In addition, we're in dire need of a new TV. The set we currently have gets blurry on warm colors (yellow, orange, and red), and the remote stopped working some time ago. We've looked at Circuit City, but so far haven't come to any decision on what type of TV we'll get.

This past weekend we had a mini-reunion of sorts with friends from OU. George, Danny, and Rubén all travelled up to our place to hang out for a few days. It made for a full house, but it was a lot of fun. The weather was incredibly hot (Sunday we had a heat index of over 110 degrees), so we pretty much stayed inside all weekend and played board games, with Trivial Pursuit, Pictionary, and Taboo being our games of choice. There was much hilarity. Sunday we also went to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which we all very much enjoyed.

Fortunately the weather cooled down remarkably today. Temperatures were in the low 70's, and it was gray and dreary with a light rain falling all day. It sounds dismal, but it was an incredibly refreshing change.

Toor Day Frants!

It's Tour de France time again! I'm not sure why I love it so much, but I do. OLN shows the race live every morning starting at 7:30 a.m. CDT, and I usually watch it then.

I think part of the reason I enjoy it so much is the commentators, especially in the morning when it's live. They re-show each day's stage in the evening with extended commentary by Al Trautwig and Bob Roll (whose aggressively American pronunciation of Toor day Frants is pretty well known), but in the morning it's broadcast with Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen. Phil and Paul are British and are themselves former cyclists. Phil in particular is pretty excitable, while Paul is fairly laidback. The following exchange, which took place during the prologue time trial a few days ago, pretty well sums up their personalities:

Phil (suddenly extremely excited): And it looks to me as though Stuart O'Grady has just gone through the time check in first place! Oh, this is amazing! No one expected -

Paul (interrupting): Uh, that's actually forty-first place, Phil.

Phil (immediately contrite): Oh, I beg your pardon, Paul.

They're a great team. And the race is amazing, and lots of fun to watch.

In other news, Jill's going to come visit us this Thursday and stay for a long weekend! She and Jay are in the process of moving to Connecticut (actually, Jay's already there), and she was able to take a few days away from visiting her parents in Indiana on her way up to come up and see us. We don't have definite plans, aside from playing Trivial Pursuit with each other. Hooray!