of course, i don’t know peggy sue, but i DO know heather and stephen. and while not married, they are engaged, which is step 17 in tommy nelson’s 21 step guide to getting married : ) anyhow, stephen and i are geniuses and as such, we hatched an elaborate plan (that involved sara faking a birthday) to have a suprise engagement party for him and heather. we invited many of all of our friends over to the nix residence (after all, it was sara’s fake birthday) and had willie’s cater the event. our backup plan (if she had said “no”) was to not let any of her friends in and to shift the focus from tacos to margheritas. luckily we did not have to envoke our emergency scenario protocols as she did accept the ring (which was lovely btw). we had plenty of good friends, good laughs, a champagne toast, and a really touching and amazing mini-speech from heather (which followed an uncharacteristically laconic pronouncement from stephen). the bar has definitely been set for stephen’s address at the rehearsal dinner.
anyway, here is a picture of most of the hosts.
and her is a picture of lillis attempting to choke me to death. that would have certainly cast a pallor over the scene.
here’s the lovely couple. this pic is notable for three reasons. the first and most obvious is that they’re the engaged couple. the second is that it is stephen’s first ever picture with his eyes fully open (after a little pre-pic coaching),and the third is that it is about 11PM at this point, and heather is still awake and energetic despite not having slept AT ALL the night before. i suspect that the light from some distant star was reflecting off of her engagment ring filling her room with far too much light for sleeping.
finally, here’s a “late night” picture of brent getting cozy with his pooch. what a lovely couple, they are.
anyway, we couldn’t possibly, be any happier for stephen and heather. particularly, having seen much of stephen’s growth (along with mine) over the past 2 or 3 years and having had numerous discussions (about the ladies) it is amazing to see him moving forward into marriage. i wish them every possibly happiness. here are the pics from the partay (along with some awesome – or aweseomely bad – videos).
oh, and if you don’t happen to know the story, here is the snowboarding video (scroll down to the bottom of the linked page) that i loaded onto my phone so i could show heather at a fusion event, thereby allowing her to be impressed by how “awesome” stephen is on a snowboard – $20K worth of lessons, well spent!!! i tried to impress lillis with my “taboo” skills and my “wakeboarding” skills, but she was better at taboo, and better behind a boat. i guess i’ll just have to settle for having killer “nun chuck” skills.
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i shook the dust off of my feet in tuscaloosa pretty early on sunday so i could hustle back to atlanta. why? a polo match, that’s why!
we went to some place that was very far from my house to watch susanne play polo (something i had been meaning to do for a while) and to raise money for lighthouse (something that sounded like a good thing to do – they’re nice people doing great work and i’m sure they could use the money). it was my first polo match. i wore a brown dress with white polka dots and a matching wide brimmed hat. however, after being propositioned by jason alexander, i switched back to regular, more masculine clothing. anyway, for anyone who doesn’t know how polo works, it’s a little like youth soccer. everyone is pretty much clumped around the ball, and then someone gets it going and they break away for a goal. the exception is when (as in this picture below) it appears that no one can find the ball; then they’re sorta like a bunch of atlanta road crew workers on horses.
here lillis and i take a break from the action to pose for the papparazzi. they adore us.
here, susanne rides her fiery steed past us in between innings (or whatever they call the time periods in polo – i know it’s not quarters b/c there were 6 or 7 of them).
it was a fun time and i could see where i’ll go back for more polo. you get to bring food with you and sit out on a blanket in the sun. you also get to tell your friends, “no, sorry, i’d love to do that with you, but i’m attending a polo match tomorrow afternoon.” it doesn’t get any more sophisticated than that!!!
aaaaand, here is a picture of me, or more specifically of my beard. this posting will be a lasting testament to the power and masculinity that was my beard. fare thee well, my strong friend, fare thee well.
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we headed in to tuscaloosa with high hopes for the lsu game. actually, that’s a bit of a lie. i just wanted us to play a good game and give them a tough fight, then win out the rest of our season to finish at 9 and 3 and go to the Outback Bowl. i don’t ask for that much out of life (or my $4M a year). jason and holly had a party on friday night where i got to see a couple of the girls i used to coach. it was actually really cool to see them all grown up. one was only 13 when i first coached her and she is married and has a baby. i may actually have gotten old somehow – i’m looking into it. it actually made me reflect back a little bit on what life was like back then and how many amazing (and seemingly random) opportunities i had. i’m so thankful for my time at bama and that the football team actually didn’t suck when i was there. seriously, i feel for the people who are students there now. i mean, we could pencil in 9 wins and spent most weekend talking about what needed to happen for us to land in the national championship game – not that it ever happened when i was there, but for the most part, you could always have that discussion. anyway, the quad was electric before the game. it was amazing to see how much that has changed. when i was in school there were still all the campers on campus but the quad was not a huge deal. now the entire thing is covered with tents and grills and tv’s and rock climbing walls. it’s amazing to see. anyway, brad, jason and i stopped for a team photo before the game.
and here’s some video of what the quad was like prior to the game.
here are jason and holly early on in the evening.
the game was amazing. i have really never heard a stadium that loud before. the entire game we were cheering and clapping and making comments like “G E A U X home LSU”. anyway,
i took these videos, before we ultimately ended up losing the game. if someone had asked me what would have been the worst way to lose that game, i would not have even thought to say “john parker wilson fumlbes the ball 40 yards backwards on a play where he knew they’d be blitzing him”. i might have said, “john parker wilson soils himself and lays down on the turf” but if he had done that instead, we at least would have been able to force overtime. ugh, how disappointing. barring some unforseen sequence of events, that will have been my last game of the year, and i went 0 and 3. i think i’m approximately 3 and 17 since in the last 7 years. i’m now firmly focused on recruiting and have my chicago cubsian “wait til next year” mantra going strong.
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