No. 8 - Bulldawg Illustrated VIII: UGA vs. Idaho State, 11/6/10
Gleaming the Cubicle
It seems like the older I get, the harder it is to participate in activities I enjoyed in my youth (and let me preface this by stating I’m not an old man… just 31 years old). Let’s take three things for example: Georgia football, fly-fishing, and writing.
As a college student, I spent fall semester planning my life around the Dawgs. One of my favorite things to do was write to my friends who had recently graduated about the atmosphere in Athens on a Friday afternoon. I did it out of a love for writing, but also to give the guys living outside of Athens a reason to get excited for Saturday while they labored away in their newly appointed cubicles.
I would ride my bike through campus… meandering past the law library, over the bridge to watch the vendors set up their tents next to the stadium, and, without fail, describe the weather and co-eds in detail.
My buddies would always write back with envy and an obvious excitement that had been nonexistent prior to receiving my email.
I used to fly fish a lot, too. My summers working in Yellowstone left an indelible mark on my outdoor interests. I could spend all day, every day, for the rest of my life trying to convince a trout that my fly is worthy of its attention. Furthermore, I could spend countless hours writing about it.
But now that I’m married, a father to a two-year-old, and doing my best to build a successful career… well, it’s becoming increasingly clear that my life is changing—for the better, but changing nevertheless.
That being said—sometimes my weekends are just plain boring. I’m blessed in that most of the time I manage to find activities that are not only interesting but also fun to write about. But this past weekend was definitely not one of those.
I caught part of the first quarter on television, but the rest of the day was spent helping my parents move. In between driving from the lake to Ball Ground, I listened to the game on the radio, but that was about it.
Like I said, my life is changing. Occasionally I find myself daydreaming about a retirement spent in Vail, Colorado… skiing during the winter and fishing in the summer… all the while writing for a local newspaper. But for now, I’ll try my best to raise a family, watch as many Georgia games as possible, and spend a weekend or two casting a fly on the Chattahoochee.
Our plan was to spend next weekend in Auburn, visiting my wife’s sorority sisters and introducing Annabelle to her mother’s alma mater. But it’s looking like I’ll be spending Saturday at work… trying my hardest to get out of there before kickoff (yet another glaring example of how my life is changing).
I hope we beat Auburn, but most of all, I hope to watch it at home with my family. Win or lose, I’ll take great satisfaction in knowing that my brother-in-law (an Auburn grad) will be wearing my beat-up UGA tie to the game. Rick and I made a bet—one that I’ve lost before—that the loser of last year’s game would have to wear the other school’s tie to this year’s game.
So if you see a young man on CBS with an Auburn hat and a Georgia tie… you’ll know I’m there in spirit—even if I’m working away in my cubicle.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the eighth in a periodic series of online journal entries from a suburban dad who, every weekend, longs to be in Athens—but more often than not ends up watching the game from home. He’s dressed in a red and black bow tie, bourbon in one hand, cigar in the other, seated beside his Auburn-grad wife and their daughter, who’s about to receive her first cheerleader uniform: half UGA, half AU, stitched right up the middle.
