Californialand!

I hope this comes as a shock to people as much as it has been a shock to me - apparently I DO have a life outside of reading books! At the moment, I am blogging from San Diego, California, where Texas has successfully trounced Cal Berkley at the Holiday Bowl. I am exceedingly pleased, as you might imagine. The final score of the game was 21-10. We played pretty well, though there were a few weak points in the game - as is to be expected, really. More on that in a moment!

My trip has been pretty simple - I flew out yesterday, I fly back tomorrow - but it has had some very nice highlights! Last night, I had delicious Mexican food with my APO friends who are also here. And this morning, a family friend, Bill, who lives in San Diego picked me up from my hotel and showed me around the city and fed me breakfast! Delicious pancakes at his house, where I also got to see one of my dog's puppies (Her name is Sangie - I didn't take a picture of her because I was too busy loving on her!)

And then it was off to the stadium! Things were a little bit smaller and better-coordinated than last time I came out for the Rose Bowl two years ago. We didn't have any trouble getting inside the stadium this time - last time we had to get our flag sniffed by dogs and we had to wait outside the stadium for absolutely forever. We opened the flag out in the parking lot to do a sort of practice run for closing it. We only had fifteen (fifteen) field passes for this game, so opening and closing that 500+ pound flag was going to be difficult, and we knew it! 

On the field, we were able to do it, although it was a lot harder with thousands of eyes watching! A big bubble of air came in under the flag and prevented me from gathering up the fabric of the flag very efficiently, and it was pretty hard to recover the bubble of flag that seemed to be collapsing on top of me! But all went well. 

We were almost immediately upstaged by what is probably the only flag in the entire world bigger than ours! A football-field-sized American flag held by 250+ Marines. Hah - we did ours with only fifteen! (Fifteen...) 

Also, paratroopers landed on the field before the game started - SWEET.

Of course, we won the game, but not before several members of our party yelled themselves hoarse!  

Tomorrow morning I fly back to Austin. I wish I could hang around San Diego a little longer, but it's been a nice jaunt out to the west coast! My next jaunt is to the east coast in a few weeks! Off to visit my Gramma for her birthday!

And now I am off to bed... I am exhausted!