Busy Weekend

I'll start this long, unattended blog with a list of diversions that I took part in this weekend: greek food, football, blooper reels, (crazy) people watching, seeing friends from college, a book reading, a book signing, and lots of sleeping in.

This weekend, Ole Miss hosted the largest audience in MS football stadium history. Over 62,000 people attended the Alabama/UM throwdown, and were lucky enough to see the UM quarterback, Jevan Snead, throw a grand total of 11 completed passes out of 30-something. 4 of those were interceptions. (Cue Benny Hill themesong).

With the game, comes The Grove. There were lots of typical grove-sightings--people dressed in clothes that weren't exactly appropriate for the misty, chilly weather, wooden lattice tents with large flower arrangements and red and blue decorations, flat-screen plasma TVs connected to mini-satellites, and cooky Ole Miss decorations (an old-timey red and blue car, with a license plate that said COL REB and an inflatable colonel, just to name a few). Because of the weather, there was also a lot of mud. And people braving that mud in their high heels.

After that game, Thomas and I had tickets to go hear David Sedaris give a talk and read from some of his diary entries and from his new book. Sedaris=hilarious. I wrote an email to a friend about the book-signing experience, so here is a little bit of that so I don't have to repeat myself:

"Hello!

I wanted to tell you about the amazing and hilarious "Evening with David Sedaris" that we had last night--coincidences and all.

First, when we got there, somebody calls my name in the lobby, and it's Jessica Nelson! Her sister lives in Oxford, and they were there together. Then, we go find our seats, and we see Laura Cost and Kate Garand (Thomas taps my shoulder and says, "Hey, those are Millsaps people!") and then, we look to the opposite side of the room and see JP, Katie, and Allison Purves. Crazy. . . .it was really good to see everyone.

I want to tell you the story of getting our books signed. We (Thomas and I) went up there together, and the first thing he said was, "Have you ever set anyone on fire?" To which I replied, mostly because I didn't know what else to say, "I'll have to think about that." Then he starts drawing a picture in my book, and it's a turtle. So I say, "What a nice turtle!" to which he replied "I drew it because I knew you would like turtles, since you're a Sagittarius." Well, I'm not, but I said that was close. Then we sort of chatted about us being in graduate school for this and that, and he asked Thomas if there could be a case for an obese Jesus (something he talked about in his reading) and we were on our way. It was so fun! I wanted to ask him if he knew of this town in France called Brive something, but that didn't really come up.

He read some really funny diary entries, and I want to tell you one of them. His "theme" for this tour was stories about rude behavior, and this was one of those stories he told about that: A woman was working at a Starbucks, and this customer comes up to the cash register, so the woman says, "How can I help you?" to which the customer doesn't really respond. So the cashier starts talking her her supervisor who's right next to her, to which the woman customer irately replies "Hello! Excuse me!" And the cashier says "Yes, I was just talking to my boss" and the woman customer says, "I am your boss!" Haha! There were lots of funny stories---I'll have to tell you some more later."

Well, it's that time again--time to fit a bunch of work into a small amount of time!

HAH