What's Up With That?

Howdy,

Yeap that's my typical greeting and as the Spring semester of grad school kicked off last night I saw a few of those shirts that say "Howdy". It's funny seeing shirts of your university when you're at another university. For some reason not known to me there are a lot of people attending Texas A&M San Antonio believing they are Texas A&M College Station or Galveston. Going so far as to call themselves "Aggies." Sorry to bust the bubbles but they're not the same. Granted, TAMUSA is part of the A&M system it's not the flag ship. In fact, TAMUSA voted themselves the jaguars.....ugh thats not an Aggie. At Aggieland there is a spirit that can never be told....and as I was reminded in a scathing blog by an ex "from the outside looking in you can't understand it and from the inside looking out you can't explain it."

I bleed maroon, I pound on my horn everytime I cross the Brazos heading into Aggieland, and I could pack up everything I own and move to College Station to live the rest of my life. That's part of being an Aggie to me. From the great lifelong friends made there, to the life lessons learned its an experience unlike any other university can offer. No, I didn't learn to smoke pot or love everybody, but I learned to stand for what I believe in. To respect the things I didn't understand, that I'm not alone in the world and we are tied together in more ways than I ever fathomed. That's what going to college should do. Open your eyes to the world around you. However, don't take from my alma mater! TAMUSA develop your own culture and pride. Invent some crazy cool jaguar traditions. The profs are great the attitudes are positive but branch out and find yourself....do not latch on to something that you don't understand. Anyways enough rambling about that.

Life is going pretty good, but I'm itching for spring time. We've been getting a lot of work done at the ranch although it always seems too slow for my speed, but progress is coming along. Some little projects knocked out and some big ones left to do but then again there's always something.

My friends are amazing! I'm pretty blessed with those I do call friend. I'm not out to collect a million facebook friends and I don't call everybody friend just because I want a vast network. The ones I do call friend are the greatest. The ones I call friend are the ones you can call at anytime or share anything with and that makes me a pretty lucky guy.

Single life....yeah getting back into the swing of things. Hmmm must be the old age thing because I'm setting the bar pretty high on what I want. (That wasn't a slam against Jennifer. I wasn't dating anybody beneath me or above me...in fact its kinda scary how similiar the two of us are. It was that I told myself I wouldn't be in another relationship that involved some of those high stress factors like distance and availability. I spent a long time in a relationship that involved working around a one day a week and every other weekend deal and it wasn't fun. Being at functions where I shouldn't have had to attend alone (watching the other couples have fun) or planning around a schedule that's completely chaotic for both parties. Jennifer walked in to my house one night and that completely left my mind. Here was a wonderfuly sarcastic, vibrant, extremely educated woman and I wanted to know more about her. We dated for awhile and things were pretty good, but the stress built up on both sides until it finally took its toll. When that stress built up we didn't talk to each other about it, we dealt with it in our own ways and from both sides neither of us did the right thing in that respect and we went our seperate ways.) I wanted more (in terms of what I wanted from the relationship not who I was in the relationship with) I didn't do that the last time around and convinced myself that I could settle down and overlook some of the things that are important to me( the distance, availability, not talking about those frustrations). Lesson learned....don't get talked into anything you didn't want to do( that little voice was kicking me that dating a girl living in Lubbock, and both of us having a stressful year, would be difficult to maintain). I honestly love that girl and that makes it the damnable misery of it all, but maybe the timing wasn't right and who knows what the future holds. With that note applications are open but the criteria is demanding (you have a pretty hard woman to replace) the interview process lengthy and fun is a necessity!

Y'all have a great day

LB