So, this past weekend was our Aggie weekend. Aggie’s are, as Wikipedia says “The school’s students, alumni, and sports teams are known as Aggies.” We figured that we could get to know the people that we are surrounded by, plus it was the first Midnight Yell and football game of the year, so we immersed ourselves.

Friday was a busy day. It started after work with dinner at the General’s.The General is the VP of Student Services (I believe) over at Texas A&M, so he is kind of a big deal, and Teresa’s high up boss, not her immediate boss. It was a dinner for all of Student Services, about 50 people it seemed. It was good, free food and drinks are always good. After dinner, we went with one of Teresa’s coworkers, and her boyfriend, to the Dixie Chicken to kill some time before Midnight Yell. The bar started out kind of empty, but the later it got, the busier it got. The first part of the video is at the Chicken. I like the guy at the end of the first clip with the Roscoe’s shirt on. He has some moves. Around 11:30 p.m. (I believe) we headed on over to Kyle Field for the Midnight Yell. I took a bit of video from both outside the stadium, and inside. It was crazy. College kids all over the place! About 99% of people were wearing maroon or white (school colors). We shuffled into the stadium and they had us fill the student section, one whole side. We all did some yells (you might know them as cheers), and had a surprisingly good time. We got home around 2-3 a.m., it was a ling day.

Saturday started with some sleeping in. After the lazy morning we got ready to head to the mall so we could get the shuttle to the stadium for the first football game of the season. We were meeting a couple of Teresa’s coworkers for some tailgating action before the game. I should note that we did not purchase tickets. Seems that one person at Teresa’s office gets free tickets from the sports department and shares them from time to time. They were really good seats. back to the day, we spent some time outside the stadium with beer and burgers. Just before halftime Teresa and I headed into the stadium. She wanted to see the band, and I like hanging out with her, so I tagged along. The band was great, I have quite a bit of video of them. They did a lot of neat maneuvers on the field that weren’t very visible from our seats. Seats higher up would have had a great view. After halftime we decided to see some of the game, and listen to some of the yells, so we watched the third quarter. After the quarter ended we got back to the tailgating spot for a little longer before heading back to the shuttle for the mall. Oh, Texas won the game, they were playing against New Mexico I believe.

Sunday was not an Aggie day, it was a day of resting and getting ready for Monday (Labor Day) because both of us were working.

Yesterday Teresa and I went to the Division of Student Affairs Annual Summer Social after our work days were over. We weren’t really sure what to expect except what the flyer had on it. It sounded okay, and it would be a good chance for me to meet the rest of her cohort, and actually get out of the house.

So, after I finished up my work day I got in the car and drove to meet Teresa at her office. It’s a nice office with a bunch of room, and way too many chairs in it. After cooling off for a bit we headed on over to the Student Recreation Center where the hoedown was going on. It was a quick event, about 1.5 hours, that included dinner (BBQ for non veggies, potatoes for me), a sing-along (three songs that not many people sang along to), a lesson on how to do the Aggie Chicken dance (it’s just the normal chicken dance everybody knows), trivia (we didn’t know this was happeneing), a dessert competition (Teresa made cookies but we were too late to be in the competition, or they were scared that she would win), and a dollar sale (we kept our dollars in our pockets). Whooh! It was a fun evening, I was glad to get out of the house and meet some people, though it felt like an awkward first-meeting kind of place. We will all meet again I am sure.

Afterwards we went home and just lounged around, the whirlwind evening had us wiped out.

Saturday was a busy day for the two of us. We ran several errands for some semi important things that were needed around the house. We purchased one new three-speed cruiser for Teresa. We ate some sketchy Mexican food, and we danced some serious Contra Dancing.

The errands were only semi important, and I can only remember one of them now. We purchased a new TV last week and needed a cable in order for our eyes to see the best movies that they can. I also had to return something to Best Buy, so it was a two-birds-with-one-stone kind of thing.

The bike purchasing was great. Teresa had gone to a couple bike shops, and many place online, looking for a new bike. She had a cruiser, but it was only a one-speed. She wanted gears. So, she found a bike she liked over at BCS Bikes right near texas A&M’s campus, so we went to look at it and possibly buy it. When we got there the bike she had test rode and liked had been sold! Thankfully this shop has more than one bike, and she saw another that she liked. After a test ride and some serious thinking, she decided that this new bike was the bike for her. It is a nice cruiser, copper and cream, with three gears. Exactly what she was looking for. Now she just needs a basket and some streamers for the handle bars.

After bringing home her new bike we needed to head right back out in order to make it to the Contra Dancing. Though we did leave some extra time for dinner in there. Nobody wants to contra dance on an empty stomach, or 30 minutes after eating. We decided to try a place semi near the contra dancing location, a restaurant by the name of Los Cucos. Sounds like a nice name right Well that is about the end of the niceness. Except for the Funky Face Disguise machine by the entrance, that was pretty awesome.

After our sub-par dinner we headed over to the Unitarian church for some contra dancing. It was pretty awesome. We were nervous at first, wondering what kind of people would be there, and if we would have to excuse ourselves after the first dance. Thankfully everybody there was great, and we stayed for the full three hours.

After the three hours dancing around in a hot Unitarian church, we felt the need for ice cream, so we went on over to Ben & Jerry’s for some cool treats. It was a great Saturday, which was followed by a lazy Sunday. Lounging around in the morning. A late breakfast that perhaps should be called brunch. After a while we were able to rouse ourselves and head out into the world for a couple more errands. This time, of the necessity kind. We first went to Academy Sports again so we could get Teresa a helmet so she can safely ride her bike around. I am very glad she agreed to wear one. I like her head intact. After the helmet-a-thon, we got groceries. After that we decided it would be a good idea to break in Teresa’s new bike and helmet, so we went for our first bike ride together around the neighborhood. During our ride we passed by a cop car on the side of the road with the officer outside of it. He summoned to us and asked if we had seen a man and girl from where we had come from. It seems that this man had kidnapped this girl and was dragging her down the street. Unfortunately we had not seen her. Other than that drama, the ride was great. Teresa loves her new bike, I love riding with her, and I love that she wore her helmet. It was a pretty good Sunday, which was nice since the next day was Teresa’s first day at her new job! We don’t need a stressful weekend before that kind of thing.

Now, take a gander at some photos from the weekend, and a video of Teresa contra dancing.

All of Bryan was evacuated this afternoon due to a chemical fire at a nearby warehouse. Teresa and I are safe, and at a place called Sweet Eugene’s in nearby College Station. We got out before all of Bryan was evacuated thankfully. We heard that traffic outside was crazy.

It even made the front page of cnn.com.

And Twitter went crazy.

Here is a picture of the fire (via theeagle)

And this video of what I see from my office window every once in a while:

Also a couple updates.

1. You can now sort posts by the author of the post. So, lets say you want to see all of Teresa’s posts, just click on her name under the post title. It’s that simple.
2. You can now “Like” a post. Under the main body of each post, above the Tags, you will see the word “Like”. Click that if you like the post, but don’t necessarily want to leave a comment. For those of you familiar with Facebook, you will recognize this feature from there.
3. All the videos now have their own page. No more wading through each post for an exciting video.

So, yesterday after I finished up work, Teresa and I walked over to downtown Bryan. From our door to the Main St. is about a 10-15 minute walk. We were headed to the Bryan Public Library so we could get us some library cards. After some minor paperwork, we are both library card owners! We can check out books, magazines, DVD’s and framed artwork. They had some lovely paintings of sad clowns that we may need to borrow for a possible clown party.

After that we were feeling a bit peckish so we walked around looking at some local restaurants. This town, and area actually, is filthy with Taquerias. We are very excited about some good Mexican food. We think we may need to designate one night where we explore a new Taqueria each week.

We ended up at a place called the River Bridge Bar & Grill. It’s okay, nothing special, and not a lot to eat for those picky vegetarians. They had tasty fried pickles though. After the River Bridge Bar & Grill we walked a little more and ended up at DQ for some tasty ice-cream treats.

On the walk home we came across an odd thing. A lone duck, sitting on a power line. We stopped and watched it for a while before Teresa made it fly off. Check out the video below. And while you are at it, check out a couple other videos I took by have not posted.

Here we are hanging out on the railroad tracks in downtown Bryan.

Here is the duck on a wire.

And here is a bunch of birds, swallows I believe, that were flying around on Tuesday. There were even more of these birds, but I could only capture so many on video.