Weekend plans

Angela has the day off today so we'll finally be able to spend some time together. She's even giving up Friday morning golf so we'll be able to get an earlier start on the weekend fun. That means the pressure is on to make it a better day than usual. No moodiness allowed. Not that we have a huge problem with that anyway. My thing is stress. Thoughts of work usually follow me home every day and I end up thinking about things I could have done better for about two hours after I leave the office, but today I'll make every effort to forget all of that as soon as I get to the parking garage. Elevator only. No Virgo madness today.

Speaking of work, I almost gave a guy a heart attack yesterday. He lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas and listens to my midday show there and we've been emailing back and forth for a month or so. I invited him to check out this blog yesterday because sometimes it's easier to let people read what I've already written rather than write things all over again (lazy), but I forgot that I had never mentioned anything to him about Angela or my orientation. I don't talk about it on the air in Fayetteville and it hadn't come up in email conversations, so he had no way of knowing. I'm just so used to myself and so void of straightness that I assume it's obvious to everyone. I guess it's good that it's not something that I'm super conscious about anymore. I used to be.

We're going to the Angelika theater in Plano to see Proof later which excites me, because the theater is awesome and it's one of those movies that highlights the fine line between genius and mental illness. I love genius/nuts movies. Last weekend I had to leave Flightplan an hour into the movie to go home and wait on that silly refrigerator, but this time I should be able to sit through the whole thing. Unless I drink a lot of Diet Dr. Pepper. Then I'll be in and out.

Tomorrow night it's a big party with a bunch of girlfriends. I'm going to take notes so I'll have a good blog on Monday. Have a super weekend!

Pumpkin rocks

We can finally wear long sleeves! It was 104 in Dallas yesterday, but 63 this morning. It's a wonder we didn't all spontaneously combust during that hot-to-cold transition, but at last fall has officially arrived. It's about dang time. I like fall clothes so much more than I like summer clothes. My arms are just too pastey white to be hanging out of short sleeves all year. I'm on to three quarter length now. My wrists are still pastey white, but at least the bulk of the whiteness is covered.

My cousin Kristi reminded me in an email this morning that October 1st marks the beginning of chili-soup-meatloaf-pumpkin cookie season. She won't eat those foods out of season so she waits patiently each year for October to roll around and then indulges freely. And she knows her chili, believe me. She gave me the best Red Chicken Chili recipe ever and it goes perfectly with cheddar cheese, cornbread twists, and a Colts game. (Or in her case, a Kansas State Wildcats game.) My parents even entered this amazing culinary creation in a chili cookoff and won first place. I'm not sure I'm into the meatloaf season as much (even saying those two words together makes me feel bloated and funny), but the chili is definitely worthy of its own calendar designation. And I'm glad pumpkin food season is near because I've been having pumpkin withdrawls lately. Angela and I have overdosed on pumpkin candles, pumkin soap, and pumpkin room spray lately, but we have yet to actually eat anything pumpkin. Pumpkin cookies with cream cheese frosting to the rescue. And my kick ass pumpkin bread. Pumpkin rocks.

Right now though I'm eating Ben & Jerry's Coffee Heath Bar Crunch ice cream. Fall food season doesn't start until Saturday and I had to make room in the freezer.

Jada and Ciara

I haven't posted a picture in awhile and this one is just too cute to keep to myself. These are my nieces--Jada on the left and Ciara on the right. Jada is two and Ciara is almost nine months. My sister and the girls have been staying at my parents' house in Nebraska since they left Texas at the end of July, but they'll be moving to their own place in October.

I hope they haven't forgotten Aunt Nenny and Aunt Alala. My sister says Jada still has quite extensive conversations with us on her toy phone, so I guess she thinks of us every now and then. When I talk to her on the grown up phone she tells me stories about picking cucumbers and finding various letters of the alphabet in her soup and I keep her updated on how the divisions are shaping up in the NFL so far this season. So we're still connecting.

We're planning to go to Nebraska for a few days at Christmas, but in the meantime the withdrawls are pretty severe. For now our dogs are benefitting from the extra love.

Colts Coffee and confidence

My morning got off to a great start today. I woke up wired and in a good mood for no particular reason. Then I got to sip my coffee from an Indianapolis Colts mug and that set me over the happy edge. A friend of ours had to go to a wedding in Indiana this past Saturday and she was able to arrange her schedule so she could be in Indianapolis for the Colts game against the Browns on Sunday. I'm insanely jealous! I couldn't talk to her about it before she went and while we were watching the game I kept moaning to Angela about the fact that she was in the same building with Dwight Freeney and Peyton Manning. She was wearing one of my borrowed Manning jerseys, so at least part of me was there. And she swiped an extra free coffee mug that they were passing out at the stadium and brought it back for me. It's from some Indianapolis fast-food restaurant called Rally's and they're trying to pimp their post-game burgers, but who cares! It's blue and it has the horseshoe and the 2005 schedule on it. And it spent at least a moment of it's life in the RCA Dome. I may start using it for skim milk and wine too. Just not at the same time...that would be silly.

Thomas the protege surprised me last Tuesday and arrived promptly for our 10:00 meeting, so I'll make every effort not to doubt him today. This week his assignment was to sift through an hour of on-air work from one of my Saturday "Best of Kidd" shows and re-record it in his own style. I'm not excited about it. Not because I think Thomas will do a bad job. I think he'll be great. I just don't usually spend a lot of time going back over my own tapes (unless I'm sitting in an air-check meeting with our boss Patrick) because I'm usually sufficiently haunted by thoughts of the things I could have done better and I don't need the audio to remind me. Hearing someone else recreate what I did will only magnify things. But who knows, maybe this mentoring experience with Thomas will help me overcome some of my own weaknesses.

Okay JUST as I was writing that last part, Kelly the receptionist walked into the studio and told me Thomas just called to cancel for like the fifth time in eight weeks. So I'm back to doubting Thomas again, but I'm too lazy to rewrite that part of the blog. At least I don't have to sit through the me re-enactment now. Woohoo!

I'm excited about lunch today. Skim milk in the Colts mug. Still in a great mood...

We can start buying cheese again

The question my friends are asking me the most right now (besides "Do we have to wait until after football season to hang out again") is, "Do you have a refrigerator yet? Yes! Finally.

This has been one of the the biggest customer service hassles ever, but it has finally been resolved. But not without more craziness on Saturday. I won't bore you with all the details, but at 1:30 on Saturday afternoon we were sitting in the theater ready to watch Flightplan and I got a call saying the refrigerator would be delivered between 3 and 6. After the company had cancelled four deliveries prior to this, I was thrilled to know the refrigerator was actually on a truck making its way to us so I was willing to leave the movie early to go home to meet them. Besides, I knew Angela wouldn't mind being alone with Jodie Foster for awhile. ;) So I left at 3:00. At 5:50, I found out the delivery people had not been not able to fit our refrigerator on the truck that morning so they were waiting for a truck to return and they would send the refrigerator out to us sometime in the evening. I missed Jodie Foster for that? Why couldn't they tell me that at 1:30? So I left the house to go fetch Angela from Stonebriar and save her from another hour of wandering aimlessly through Dick's, and we went home and made nachos instead of going out to Gloria's or Cristina's like we had planned. Plan ruiner. The refrigerator was finally delivered at 7:45 that evening. We bought it on September 7th. We gave up our other refrigerator on the 12th so we had been buying bottled water and ice since then. Now I can get my skim milk on again!

I realized something Saturday evening. Angela is truly my better half. I was was stressed out and frustrated with the whole appliance-delivery process while I was waiting at the house alone Saturday afternoon and I felt like I might pop a blood vessel, but once I picked up Angela I became completely calm. Getting repeatedly screwed by an appliance store didn't matter quite as much. I always look for the deeper meaning in things--even in refrigerator debacles--and the fact that I am a complete loon when Angela is not around is the thing that became apparent during this experience. Actually, I already knew it but this just reinforced things.

The first half of Flightplan was awesome! Angela said the rest of it was great too. But then she would be excited about watching Jodie Foster watch the paint peel off the wall. Can't wait to see the rest of it.

Rita

I never thought we'd have to worry about a hurricane living in Dallas, but here we are. The forecast isn't as gloomy as it was yesterday, but it's probably going to rain "like a cow peeing on a flat rock" as my grandma would say. And the satellite will probably go out during NFL Sunday Ticket which will depress me, but at least we'll be safe. I do middays for a station in Tyler and it looks like they're going to get drenched. But then my forecasts for my midday show in Farmington, New Mexico are sunny and 86. Nice.

I wonder how much of the hysteria is created by the media. I'm sure the hurricane will have a negative effect on gas prices, but I wonder if all the talk yesterday helped drain the gas stations around Dallas/Fort Worth and contribute to what seems to be a shortage now. Which is real -- the shortage or the fear of a shortage? I've never seen so many pumps with the little out-of-service baggies on them. Michael Blake and Cruz both waited 45 minutes for gas last night, and I just passed about seven gas stations on the way home that were completely sold out. I finally got some super premium at a 7/11 near the house after waiting for about ten minutes. I've never come close to using super premium before. Stop the madness I say.

We still don't have a refrigerator, it's a crapshoot finding gas, and there's a hurricane brewing, but life is still good! We may go to happy hour with Angela's boss tonight just to celebrate life dang it, and we may go to a movie tomorrow. We want to see Just Like Heaven, but Angela has a major thing for Jodie Foster so we may go see Flightplan instead. Otherwise we'll hang at the house. Hey, quality time!

Our audio diary

Angela bought me a digital voice recorder for my birthday and we used it for the first time last night. We've been needing a way to take verbal notes during some of our deep conversations and this little gadget it the perfect thing. It would be nice if our brains remembered the highlights of our conversations, but anytime we have a conversation with depth and we ask each other later what that one thing of dire importance was, we always come up empty. We need a better way to store our thoughts. If this forgetfulness is happening now, what are we going to be like when we're eighty? We'll need a gadget with a lot more storage.

We took it with us to church last night so we could record our conversation on the way home. Angela went to a class on relationships alone because I'm committed to co-leading the 20something group, so we had to swap stories about each class afterward. The recorder worked splendidly, even with car noise. When we got home we took it inside to continue recording our conversation, but that turned out to be a mild disaster. We let the dogs out and brushed our teeth and went through that whole routine, then crawled into bed and tried to pick up where we left off, but I was a goner. My eyelids were uncontrollably heavy because it was starting to cut into my six hours of sleep, and I ended up drifting off while Angela was talking. I remember hearing, "Are you falling asleep?" I was perfectly coherent inside my own head even though my eyes were closed and her voice was starting to echo, so to prove my awareness I repeated what I thought she had just finished saying. The next thing I knew she was getting up to shut off the light in surrender and wondering aloud how we were ever going to capture our thoughts before we lost them if we couldn't stay awake long enough to get them out while they're fresh. I must not have repeated correctly. I hope she wasn't saying something from the relationship class about listening skills.

We've had about five hours of quality time alone this week so I feel a little off-center. But the weekend should be better. And Thursdays are always home date nights so I'm excited about that. I'll do a shot of espresso around 5:00 so I won't miss anything.

From the neck up

My sister always cuts my hair, but since she moved to Nebraska to be near our parents I don't have a readily-accessible cosmetologist anymore. She's so good, it scares me to go to anyone else. But I did it yesterday and my hair turned out okay. It's shorter than I wanted it and I thought I communicated the length I wanted to the gal, but she just kept chopping and the next thing I knew it was two inches shorter. But I can live with it. Everyone else has to look at it more than I do anyway, and so far Michael Blake hasn't fainted with shock. But then the only time he ever mentions my appearance is when I'm wearing something sports-related. Today it's just an Old Navy polo so there is nothing to take notice of.

The funny thing was, this gal cutting my hair asked me what I did for a living so I told her, and it turned out that she loves Kiss FM and listens all day and she was really excited to tell me all about it. Then she was quiet for a couple of minutes and I thought that meant she was trying to think of the usual questions like, "Is Kellie pregnant yet?" or "Is Al ever going to find a woman?" or "How much does Kidd make?" I don't know the answers to any of those questions. But rather than ask me those she said, "I want to give you microderm abrasion!" What? How random is that. It either means I'm scarey-looking up close and nonsurgical facelift was one of her first thoughts, or it means she loves Kidd's show and the radio station so much she would offer to do something nice for any of us that would happen into wander into her shop. Either way, I'm totally doin' it! Later this morning in fact. Why wait.

She promises it will only take a few minutes and there will be no redness afterward. If I show up all rosey-red for our 2:00 staff meeting I'm going to be mad. Maybe I'll show up looking hot and glowy! I'll think positive. It's nice of her to offer. Random, but nice.

It's Tuesday

I fell asleep during the Cowboys game last night and they were ahead 10-0, so the final score was huge shock when I checked my cell phone this morning. Dang it! The first thing Michael Blake said to me in the studio today was, "This is the worst loss in the history of the Dallas Cowboys." Alarmist. But giving up 14 points in the final four minutes is pretty bad. I tried to tell him the glass was still half full, but he would have none of that. He just told me to shutup and be glad the Colts won this weekend. That does make things a lot better.

Thomas the protege is supposed to show up at 10:00 this morning to go over some tapes. He's the guy who is supposed to come to the radio station to meet with me once a week to get pointers and talk about the lessons he has been assigned through his broadcasting school, but he has only actually made it to the meeting twice since July. So I fully expect to walk out into the lobby in a little while and see Kelli at the front desk roll her eyes and tell me Thomas cancelled again. He's a nice guy. I'm just a lot more deliberate and driven so it's hard for me to understand when people don't take advantage of opportunities. But he could surprise me today, we'll see.

Then it's home to watch the Bill Parcells press conference. And I Tivoed the CMT Crossroads concert with Bon Jovi and Sugarland so I must watch that before Tivo runs out of space and deletes it. Jennifer Nettles rocks!

I didn't know I was going to write this much when I started...

Overall it was a grand birthday weekend. We bought pillows on the way to the Rangers game Friday night. I always love buying stuff for the house so I used the Target gift card that my sister gave me on pillows for the couch and sandalwood scented candles. I bought the new Hootie and the Blowfish CD too. I love me some Hootie! This album is a lot more grown up and contemplative than some of their stuff, which excites me. I like deep thoughts. I mean it's not Socrates or anything, but it's inquisitive and I admire that. So we bought Hootie and listened to it on the way to Arlington. The Rangers beat the Mariners 5-3. We noticed during the game that Ichiro always stands like he has to pee when he's in the batter's box. Whatever works. He sure gets a lot of hits that way. In the fifth inning we started talking about how blessed we feel to have found a relationship that grows constantly and is this happy and healthy. That conversation lasted until the bottom of the ninth. My favorite cousin Kristi (she's the only one who reads this blog) told me in an email on Friday to be grateful for what we have, so I passed that along to Angela and it sparked a lengthy conversation. Thanks Kristi. I love ya.

Saturday was interesting. While I was at work Angela hustled to get the house ready for company that night. The refrigerator that was supposed to be delivered last Tuesday was rescheduled for Saturday, but once again that was cancelled because it "didn't arrive on the truck" from the Kitchenaid peeps. The Great Indoors is doing their best to fix this, but it's a mess right now. So we had that to deal with Saturday morning. I picked Angela up after I got off work so we could go handle some of it together. When we got home from checking out another refrigerator store we were hungry and stressed and we needed to finish mowing the yard and cleaning the house (plus we had the added pressure of needing to make the day better than any other day because it was my birthday). Angela was excited for me to open one of my gifts right when we got home, but I wanted to rest for a minute, so it came across like I wasn't excited about the gift. I totally was. And I felt bad. So all of that stress combined made me cry. Then I felt like a wimp and it made me mad. Then I checked our voice mail and there was a message on there from my mom and dad, my sister Jodi, and my niece Jada singing happy birthday to me. Jada (she's 2) was singing right along with everybody else and at the end she said, "Habby Boot-day Nen!" Oh my. That kid owns me. So that made both of us cry. The first half of Saturday was just nutty.

We had a great time at Mi Cocina Saturday night. My friends Amy and Sara brought "Happy Birthday sport" balloons and tied them to my wallet so the balloons went everywhere I went. Fun! They were decorated with footballs and basketballs, and I loved and appreciated them more than any seven year-old boy ever could. They know me well. We had a table for 14, which turned out to be seven couples including Angela and me. Lisa and Lezli have been together for eleven years, Angela and I for seven years, several couples for three or four years, and one couple had only been dating for a few months. We had the relationship spectrum covered. After dinner we all went back to our house and had a big ole hen party and chatted about life and love and the importance of having socks that you can put in the microwave. This way the partner who is always cold doesn't feel neglected when the partner who is always hot doesn't want to turn the heat on. It's all about balance. I felt incredibly blessed to have been surrounded by all of these awesome couples on my birthday and I'm looking forward to our next big hen party. We're all good for each other.

We still don't have a refrigerator. The coolers worked great Saturday night, but the ice is melted now and I have to go buy more. We have to re-stock for Monday Night Football. Go Cowboys...

The beginning of the sports weekend...

Tonight we're going to our third Rangers game of the season. We got cheap tickets through that Starbucks promotion and it includes two free frappuccinos. I'm excited! I love coffee. Black coffee, coffee with International Foods fat free vanilla creamer, frozen coffee, whatever. My latest Starbucks addiction is a venti sugar-free vanilla non-fat latte. I never know if I get the order of things right. But it tastes good. And if it's really hot I might get a grande carmel light frappuccino, no whip. Whip makes me full. So go Rangers. I haven't decided what ballpark food I want to eat tonight. I had a philly cheesesteak last time and that was awesome, but I'm leaning toward that big heaping pile of supreme nachos that has more condiments on it than chips. I'll just eat it all with a spoon. I'd probably be better off eating whip.

No treadmill today and I'm piggin' out. Self-discipline be danged this weekend.

This was fun. The Dallas Voice asked me to answser a few questions about my ride. (Scroll down past the Miata review.) http://dallasvoice.com/articles/dispArticle.cfm?Article_ID=6620

Virgos are nuts

Tuesday I sent an email to a few friends to see if they wanted to go to dinner with Angela and me on Saturday to celebrate my birthday, and fourteen of them replied yes. I'm incredibly blessed. And nervous! I feel responsible for their happiness because if it weren't for me they would probably be going to a Rangers game or to gay bingo or some other fun event on a Saturday night, and instead they've chosen to celebrate the fact that I'm an over-analytical, over-driven, perfectionist Virgo. Or maybe this is just an excuse for all of them to leave the house. Either way, I love them dearly and I'm grateful that they said yes. I want them to have a great time and I want to be able to spend quality time with each of them.

Do you remember that blog about me not being very good in small groups? It sure seems like I've been in a lot of them lately. I guess God thinks it's time to deal with this perceived weakness and move the heck on. When I'm in a small group I think too much about how everyone else is viewing me and then I view myself through that filter, and in that process whatever I was going to say in the first place either gets watered down and becomes uninteresting, or it gets lost altogether and I just have to burp or something to divert attention. Boy, I'm painting a picture of a real winner. I'm not completely inept, but these are the things that bug me the most about myself and hence, they're blogable. Virgos concentrate more on weakness than strength anyway.

We're going to Mi Cocina near Legacy and the Tollway Saturday night. I get so excited for mexican food! I can already taste the sunset style fajitas. I've never been part of a party of sixteen though. I already know which crazy friend will do most of the talking. And I know which couple will make us all laugh the most. I love my friends. It will be a hoot! After dinner we'll caravan back to our house to play pool or sit on the deck and chat. By that point I probably won't be nervous at all.

The body part blog

I have to go to the dentist today. This will be the first cleaning since getting my braces off so I bet it tickles. My teeth don't have that metal shield workin' anymore. After I got my braces off I discovered that there are two huge spaces that aren't visible but cause enormous problems. These craters are between the teeth in the very back of my mouth on top. Are those molars? Bicuspids? Even though Angela works in a dentist's office I don't know teeth. Anyway, dentists call this big space a food trap for good reason. I have coconut up in my gums right now from a breakfast bar that I ate two hours ago and anytime I eat something that can shred down to this size it wiggles its way into this space and gets lodged up in my gums. Chicken is the worst. I don't have any floss picks in my bag right now so I might have to stop and buy some on the way to the dentist so she doesn't think I'm completely negligent.

I think I lifted too many weights yesterday. I usually just do cardio, but yesterday I felt hungry and weak during my treadmill routine so I stopped about halfway through to go downstairs and eat some peanut butter on a Ritz Chip. You never see Peyton Manning do this during a game, but surely he gets hungry at some point during all that physical exertion. Maybe he snacks at halftime. Anyway, I had to wait a few minutes for the peanut butter to kick in so I used the time to try to tone my arms. Today my arms have that heavy tired feeling and the sudden onset of pain will probably happen later on. I've never understood why muscles wait a day or two to decide that they hurt.

Alrighty, enough about body parts and food. For today at least.

Minor inconvenience

Life without a refrigerator is really inconvenient. You wouldn't think living without one would be that big of deal because all it does is sit there and hold stuff, but the movers took ours away yesterday and things have been weird in the kitchen ever since. But we get to see the tile and paint that used to be covered up. That's cool.

We do have a mini-fridge upstairs close to the pool table, but that is full of ketchup, cheese, and coffee creamer now and there is hardly room for the Rolling Rock Green Light anymore. It's all about priorities I guess. The Green Light must go. Thousands of people without homes right now after the hurricane and all we have to do is survive for a few days without cheese downstairs. I think we'll be okay. The new fridge won't be here until Saturday. The store also told us it would be delivered today, so who knows.

I'm so clean and organized it bothers me when things are out of whack. I have the urge to eat way more than I should in an attempt to make more room in the mini-fridge upstairs and make it look more orderly in there. Surely I can make something yummy out of peach salsa and jalepeno jelly. Now I know why the lunch ladies at school always made chicken noodle soup the day after we had fried chicken. It's all about cleanliness.

It's Monday so it's a football blog...

Angela asked me last night whether or not we would continue to make time for deep talks now that football season is here. Of course! I crave those too. But only Tuesday - Friday. I'm kidding! Seriously, she's the one person who can launch me out of football mode anytime. She's much more important than these silly games. But it sure was fun overdosing on the plethora of games over the weekend.

Well, it wasn't all about football this weekend. We had dinner with my friend Lisa and her friend Chris who were in town from Virginia on Friday night. They're thinking of moving here and they wanted to know all about Oak Lawn and Cathedral of Hope so we told them about our experience. They're the coolest. And on Saturday after I got off work we visited our friend Kristie in the hospital who just had a baby girl. I wouldn't even have thought about football during the visit, except her husband Jason happened to be watching the Michigan/Notre Dame game and I couldn't help but get into a conversation about what an impact Charlie Weiss is having at Notre Dame seven months after winning a Super Bowl with the Patriots. Then Jason and Angela talked about golf. They're nuts for golf like I'm nuts for football. Kristie and her mom chatted about breastfeeding while all the sports talk was going on. The baby's name is Sylvie and she's adorable.

I had an awful weekend predicting NFL winners. I totally regret saying the Vikings would make the Super Bowl in my last blog. That's what I get for wearing a Bucs t-shirt and picking against them. Angela ordered a Peyton Manning women's jersey for me for my birthday (it's this Saturday) and she let me have it early so I could wear it yesterday. I love it! Shirts with numbers on them are just the coolest. This is going to be a great week.

Football Fun. It's mostly about timing.

What is it about football that makes us want to eat? I can't watch a football game without munchies. Last night during the Patriots/Raiders game we ate all kinds of wafery crackers and cheeses. Not exactly standard football munchies, but it was a school night. We had to attempt to keep the carbs to a minimum. I don't think we were successful, but we tried.

Tomorrow night during the Texas/Ohio State game we're grilling pizzas. That's always stressful. Angela hovers over the grill on the patio in the backyard and times the pizza crust (exactly six minutes on each side). After she flips it I have to be there immediatley with the toppings so those can start adhering to the crust. If I'm late with the cheese the crust gets too tough. It's a delicate operation. Did I say we would be doing this during the game? Oops. That's just crazy talk. We'll have to have the pizzas done before the 7:00 kickoff. But Nebraska kicks off at 6:00. Oh boy. Maybe we'll have to time out the crust so we're flipping and topping during a change of possession. So much to consider.

Sunday after church we're picking up an assortment of wings...smokey barbecue, sweet n spicey, and hot. Then it's NFL Sunday ticket time. Oh how I love that. When other satellite companies call to try to get us to switch we tell them we will, as soon as they steal NFL Sunday Ticket from Direct TV. They always hang up defeated. Anyway, Sunday Ticket is about timing too. As soon as the play is over during the Packers/Lions game we'll flip over and watch a play in the Cowboys/Chargers game. By the time that play is over the Packers and Lions will be ready again. If we find out from one of the enhanced channels that the Cardinals are entering the red zone we'll flip over and watch the Cardinals/Giants game. It only gets frustrating when all the games are in commercials. But we don't usually have to wait more than thirty seconds before one of the games comes back. Are we nuts? Yes! And it's a hoot.

The Colts play Sunday night. I'm nervous. Colts and Vikings in the Super Bowl....

A fellow football nut...or just a nut

I'm beside myself with joy today. The NFL season kicks off tonight! I'm not a Patriots fan or a Raiders fan so I'm wearing a Brett Favre jersey today in mass celebration of all things NFL. It's Angela's jersey actually. Women's cut. We're about the same size so it works out nicely. She has to wear scrubs to work so I'm allowed to wear the Favre jersey anytime Monday through Friday.

In one of my fantasy football leagues I'm up against an old friend of mine in Nebraska in week 1. How she managed to get both Terrell Owens and Randy Moss on her team while I'm representin' with Reggie Wayne and Ashley Lelie is a mystery. Hopefully LaDanian Tomlinson will pick up some of my slack. Anyway, I've known Sherri for ten years or more and she's one of those friends that I feel an instant connection with no matter how frequently or infrequently we talk. She's hilarious and just thinking about her makes me giggle.

Sherri and I had a major bonding moment on a trip to Chicago several years ago. Two other people went on the trip with us and we all crammed into one hotel room. I had to sleep in the same bed with our friend Craig. He was one of my best guy friends at the time, but sleeping in the same bed with him just seemed wrong. Abnormal I tell ya. Anyway, the whole purpose of the trip was to go to the Art Institute of Chicago to see the Monet exhibit, but when the time came Sherri and I were the only ones coherent enough to follow through. We had all gone out the night before and Sherri and I headed back to the room around midnight so we would be rested for our busy touristy day, but the other two stayed out until 4 or 5.

Sherri and I couldn't sleep that night. I remember opening my eyes once as we were trying to fall asleep and I looked across that space between the hotel beds and Sherri was lying on her side in the other bed, wide awake and staring back at me. We immediately burst out laughing. Suddenly we were two little old anti-social ladies who had skipped out on the party scene so we could go to the museum and have tea and scones the next day. We were just missing the floral prints and the girdles. No wonder our friends had ditched us. We were tragically unhip. First we couldn't sleep because we were laughing, then I got a stomach ache and had to spend an hour going back and forth between the bed and the bathroom. Then our friends returned but got locked out of the room so we had to get up and let them in and listen to their party-mode commotion. But dang it, Sherri and I still got up a couple of hours later and hopped on The L and went to the Monet exhibit. Well, the actual exhibit was sold out, but we were able to walk around the museum and look at other exhibits and buy Monet trinkets in the gift shop. It was one of those trips where almost nothing went according to plan, but it was one of the greatest weeks ever. I guess it all depends on who you're with.

This is all to say I love Sherri dearly but I hope I kick her butt in fantasy football.

My Granny

I wrote a letter to my Grandma Dorothy last night. She lives in Nebraska, just a stone's throw from where my parents live. She's one of the best cooks in the whole world and I think it was her chicken-noodle-on-top-of-a-mound of mashed-potatoes concoction that was responsible for twenty of the extra pounds I carried around during my teenage years. Well, there was the fried chicken, the roast beef and gravy, the homemade bread, and the cinnamon rolls, sour cream raisin pies, and peanut butter ice cream desserts too. All of those may have contributed something. Or perhaps it was simply my inability to put the dang fork down, I can't be certain. I used to eat a lot.

Anyway, Grandma has written me a letter once a week since the day I left for college at the U of Nebraska in Lincoln. That's a long time. Stacks and stacks of letters. Sometimes she tells me how much rain is in the rain gauge after the storms the night before. Sometimes she tells me about a wayward cow that managed to escape through the barbed wire fence and then set up camp on the dirt road. Sometimes she tells me stories about the things my cousins and their families are doing. Somebody has to keep us up to date on each other and Grandma has done a wonderful job facilitating. I've saved every letter she has ever written me. I'll go back and read them someday. I write back as often as I can, but that ends up being about once every two months. Even so, Grandma keeps her letters coming. It's rare to continually receive something without giving much of anything in return.

I laugh each time I think of some of Grandma's sayings. I'm sure your granny has some good ones too. Like..."Nossir, I don't know him from Adam." "I'd rather sit around and watch the paint peel." "It rained like a cow peeing on a flat rock." And sometimes when she eats something and it "goes down the wrong tube" she finishes with "Oooh! 'Bout puked!" Nothing a Tums or two can't cure though. Ahhh, she makes me laugh.

Labor Day Weekend

It's already Tuesday and football season starts Thursday. So many reasons to be happy this week.

This was the weekend for minor injuries. Angela got a nasty blistery burn on her arm from the lawnmower, I sliced my hand on some freshly pruned tree branches, and then I stubbed my toes on Angela's Keens while we were playing pool. Those clown-like sandals stick out far enough as it is, but I ended up tripping over them as I was walking between the pool table and Angela and I ripped a toenail in half. But I'll survive. Everytime we did something stupid over the weekend that resulted in pain and discomfort I couldn't help but think how completely pampered we are. We spent several hours focusing on hurricane relief too so it wasn't all about us. I'm not going to do any horn tootin' about what we did, but it felt great. There's a lot of power in this relief effort, for both the evacuees and the helpers.

I didn't have to work yesterday, but I still got up at 6:30. Since I get up at 3:30 every day (except Sundays) I've become incapable of sleeping in even when I do have the chance. I always try to be quiet when I get up that early, but the dogs are always so rambunctious it becomes impossible for Angela to continue to sleep. But she doesn't usually mind that much. Yesterday was nice. We drank coffee together (which we never get to do since I'm always gone before she gets up), and we finished reading Angels and Demons. I may have to blog about that book at some point. We loved it.

A lot of the time I'm content to stay home all day and putter, but Angela successfully talked me into going to Warren Sports Complex in Frisco yesterday to play basketball. I'm always fine once I'm out there, but the motivation part is the hang up for me. It's easy just to default to exercising on the treadmill and be done with it. Angela is much more adventurous. Truly my better half I tell ya. She always beats me at golf, tennis and pool, but I usually beat her at darts and basketball. So, yes, winning made yesterday's outing worthwhile. ;) I only won because we played 21 and I could stand at the free throw line and keep shooting until I missed. Angela hustled like crazy during the one-on-one part and I was borderline pathetic, but I still won because I could just stand there after a made field goal and jack one free throw after another. I wish everything I learned in high school still came in this handy.

We stopped at Home Depot on the way home from playing basketball intending to buy some red mulch, but we ended up buying a fountain for the backyard too. Now I'm going to sit outside and listen to the trickle whenever I get stressed.

Chick Happy Hour Surprises and other stuff

Angela and I have quite a bit of free time coming up over the holiday weekend and we're going to use part of the time to do more for hurricane evacuees. We've donated money, but I'm feeling the overwhelming urge to do something physical too. It's such a monstrous task it's hard to know where to start, but I'm sure the evacuees would appreciate it if we would just jump in and start somewhere. Go find a family and take them to dinner. Something. If there are 25,000 evacuees in Dallas it shouldn't be hard to find a handful to help out.

Chick Happy Hour last night was great fun. We saw a bunch of friends we hadn't seen for a long time and we met a lot of great new people. It was a total shock to see a friend's ex-boyfriend there. This girl friend of ours dated him for several months a couple of years ago and she hasn't talked to him since she broke up with him, but he was at this primarily gay function last night with a guy. Hmm. We called to let her know we had spotted him, but she didn't think it was nearly as interesting as we did.

I also ran into a guy from one of our sister stations. Another shocker. He's one of those people you encounter on a daily basis and assume he's straight, but then you see him around gay peeps and then his whole existence starts to make a lot more sense. Anyway, our toaster ovens should be in the mail shortly. Heck, we should be up to a Jenn-Air oven by now.

Angela is off work today and she's playing golf right now. She must have her cell phone in her pocket because she keeps accidentally direct-connecting me every time she swings. This weekend going out for beer and wings, grilling out on the patio a couple of times, and going to a Frisco Roughriders game. First priority though, doing something selfless for hurricane evacuees. We're too blessed to not let some of that spill over.

Have a good weekend!

Interpersonal skills or the lack thereof

It was really cool to see so many people turn out for the hurricane relief lunch yesterday at Tijauna Bar and Grill. It felt great to at least be part of something rather than sit by and wait for someone else to act. Kidd said this morning there was a total of over $275,000 raised yesterday from the on-air donations in all of his markets and the benefit lunch in Dallas. Absolutely amazing. JJ Kincaid will be out at Stonebriar Centre in Frisco today from 2-6pm with another chance to help the Red Cross. So far I think the overall reaction to the tragedy proves that the meaning is not in the act that caused the devastation, but in the benevolence that follows.

I realized something about myself while I was talking to groups of people at lunch yesterday. My social skills are terrible in small groups. At one point I was standing there with Kidd, Al, Nick from the Kiss promotions team, Kellie's best friend Amy, and our boss Patrick, and I could not think of one thing to say that would have been the least bit interesting or would have made any sense at all. My mind was a complete blank. We were all sort of standing there casually with a few other people scattered about so it wasn't like we were all standing there in a perfect circle waiting for someone to speak, but I just felt like a complete loser. Boring and void of personality. It's one thing to talk to Kidd on the air every day, but I'm not in the same building with the rest of the show and I can't see them while they're talking to me, so most of the time they're just voices in my head and I have no problem answering those. Standing next to them in person is another thing entirely. I become verklempt. And it's not just them. Anytime I'm standing in a group of four or more in a casual conversation I'm the quiet one. I don't like that about myself and I'm trying to get better about it. But yesterday I got in the car after lunch and gave myself the "I'm good enough, smart enough, and doggone it people like me" speech and I was better. Then I got home and got some pup love from Sophie, Pierre, and Marlee Bean and I was cured of all self doubt. I can always think of interesting conversations to start with them.

I'll have another chance to test my small group skills tonight. Angela and I are going to our first Chick Happy Hour. I can't tell you how many people have told us how cool it is and that we must check it out, so we're finally going tonight. It's at Round Up and that's one of our usual hangouts so maybe I'll be so comfortable with the surroundings I won't feel the conversation pressure. Maybe a Seven and Seven will warm me up. Then you won't be able to shut me up.