Eight Feet Deep

 A  fast-moving snow came through our nor­mally snow-deprived area Fri­day and left about a 1/4 inch. Unfor­tu­nately, there was lit­tle left for a pho­to­graph as what was left on the ground was in the dark and by the time I got out of bed the next day the snow was long gone. Such are Gulf Coast snows. At least we got to share our snow with my friends up in the North­east. My friend Sally, in West­ern Mass­a­chu­setts told me she enjoyed the first snow of the year which was thanks to the same potent weather system.

 Oth­er­wise the week­end was one of mostly watch­ing all my foot­ball teams go down in flames save one. The Long­horns squeaked by Nebraska and thus will play in the National Cham­pi­onship against the Crim­son Tide. I have to be almost apolo­getic in say­ing that I root for Texas because, as most of my friends are Repub­li­cans while I am a proud Demo­c­rat, most of my friends and rel­a­tives are also Aggies. Many are such Texas A & M fans that they will root for any team but “TU” or what they call The Uni­ver­sity of Texas (at Austin). That I don’t under­stand. It seems like we are all Tex­ans and we would sup­port a fel­low Texas team fight­ing for the national title. But not so many Aggies.

 My high school fell in quar­ter­fi­nals. I wasn’t sur­prised because New­ton played No. 1 Dainger­field. My col­lege alma mater, Stephen F. Austin was destroyed in the Foot­ball Cham­pi­onship Sub­di­vi­sion play­offs — for­merly NCAA Div. I-A — by No. 1 Mon­tana. Uni­ver­sity of Hous­ton was beaten by East­ern Car­olina for the Con­fer­ence USA cham­pi­onships. Last but cer­tainly least in the NFL, my Tex­ans got whipped by Jack­sonville and slipped to 5–7.

 So yes that one-second nail-biter between the Corn­huskers and the Long­horns was my lit­tle bright light. Well, the Saints won in over­time but I didn’t get to see that because Fox cut com­pletely the Saints’ excit­ing OT fin­ish off for the Cow­boys mis­er­able loss to the Giants. I mean, I like Wade Phillips and all but give me a break.

 Need­less to say it was a dis­ap­point­ing week­end. Not much snow. My favorite teams were mostly left tram­pled in the mud. My feet con­tinue to hurt includ­ing my non-broken toe that feels now like a bro­ken foot. Yet, the world con­tin­ues to turn. One can­not watch cable TV news with­out every­thing being laid down in the con­text of pol­i­tics. With every breath that Obama takes a new poll is released. Will his exhales excite the inde­pen­dent white Chris­t­ian women or will his inhal­ing raise his num­bers with the black male Mus­lim upper class cross dressers? Stay tuned. I’m sure we will find out eventually.