Ted in a China Shop: New Year's and the Month of January

After the Christmas Festivities, it was right on into the New Year's Holiday. I decided that since my last few New Years' in Godfrey/Alton weren't that cool* I'd go visit some friends from my time in Iceland. No, unfortunately, I was not going to Iceland to see them, but just up to Madison, Wisconsin. My brother was home too at the time, and wanted to go visit our friend Andy who lives right on the way up there, so we drove up together. I dropped him off in the bustling metropolis of Standard, Illinois where he spent the holiday at Bellino's Tap, the neighborhood joint that just happened to be owned by Andy's family. To be honest, despite my fun in Madison, I was a little jealous of that.

The writing of this post is taking me about 2/3 longer than it should. 1/3 is the fact that I keep capitalizing the first letter of words for no reason and I have to go back and fix them, and the other 1/3 is that this stuff happened a long time ago and I am trying to remember details and still retain some sort of wittiness to my writing. Failure so far.

Anyway I got into Madison in time to watch the Notre Dame football team play in their bowl in El Paso. I was glad we won, but we (my family) were all pretty sad that we were playing in El Paso. We had been projected to go to the bowl in Orlando (I don't know the name, and I am too lazy to look it up), and had that been the case I think we would have tried to go down there for that one and maybe spend some time at Disney World as well. (The happiest place on earth and also the site of my 21st birthday celebration a couple years ago) This would have more than made up for my total lack of Notre Dame bowl involvement to date. I still hold a grudge about what I'm about to tell you. I'm not exactly sure who gets the blame on this one.... The ND football team under Charlie Weis and company my freshman year was pretty decent. We were ranked 9th or something at the end of the season and were BCS bound. We ended up in the Sugar Bowl against LSU, and the game was being played at the Superdome in New Orleans. I had some tickets spoken for. I had it all planned. I had a place to stay, and I was going to take the wonderful Amtrak down from St. Louis. I told my dad this plan and that's when he uttered those fateful words. "You're just a freshman and I don't want you going to New Orleans by yourself," I protested but he insisted,

"You're going to have plenty of opportunities to go to bowl games while you're at Notre Dame."

Little did either of us know that our team would proceed to be terrible for the remainder of my 3 years. Seriously, we lost to Navy for the first time in 40-something years. The next opportunity was the Hawaii bowl my senior year at a record of 6-6 or something, and let's be honest, there was no way any Notre Dame student was going to Hawaii to watch a .500 football team headed by Charlie Weis (oh wait, he got fired before then) play. After that little rant I know who the blame goes to. Charlie Weis. He sucks. Both as a football coach and a human being, by the way.

Do I sound bitter?

OK on a much lighter note New Years was fun. It was great to see Jamin and Bre and Steph 'Dodson' Burke. Whiskey River in Madison is Bizzaro Club Fever.

Other things I did in the month of January include: Taking lots of photos of birds, hiking, tying flies for fishing, eating a lot (unfortunate side effects from that one), being cold, splitting some wood and applying for jobs. I ended up being offered a job in Oregon surveying owls, such as the Barred Owl (same species that occasionally shows up and perches over our driveway, shown below) and Spotted Owl. After a long and painful decision-making process I decided that I would turn down that job in hopes of finding something in the field of aquatic ecology, which I plan on pursuing long term. I love owls, but that didn't really seem to fit my profile so much.