Fall in love with Fall

     I have one true indicator that I use to justify that fall is just around the corner. The release of the pumpkin Spice Latté at Starbucks. I'm excited! Not only because of the ridiculous amounts of money I'm going to spend on decadent lattés, (I just became a Gold member- not sure if that's good or bad..) but also for other essential fall elements that come along with the auburn and red leaves twirling in the air as they, well, fall. (That was a very unintentional pun.)

     I can't wait for the not one, but two trips to the pumpkin patch with my eleven-year-old brother, Casen. The first trip, usually the first week in October, we take them home and immediately carve the coolest pumpkin of all the Halloween's in the past. And then the inevitable second, because the first ones have curled inward into an unidentifiable mess, and they smell so bad that our mom makes us throw them out. (This is usually about three days before Halloween. How convenient for Casen!)

Me and Case after his game. Go Titans!

     Speaking of Casen, fall also means that it's time for football and watching my little man tear up the field. Although he's the shortest one on the team, and I swear he is incapable of gaining any fat on his body, he's an awesome QB and as long as he keeps his head down, he can knock the wind out of even the kid twice his size on the opposing team. With him being eleven, and I twenty-two (almost!), I cheer him on with the enthusiasm and nerves as if he were my own son. His games beat any Friday night highschool game, any Saturday at Williams-Brice stadium, and any Panthers Sunday. (Which I attended this past weekend. Disappointing to say the least.)

     I can see it now, Thanksgiving with the family, wrapped in sweaters or flannel shirts with the football games on. Sipping apple cider and sneaking slices of ham when my mom isn't looking before we sit down to eat. Then looking forward to Christmas, and please take note that I said AFTER Thanksgiving, NOT Halloween. While I love Christmas carols on the radio, they old after hearing them for two months straight.

     Anyways, I'd like to give a warm welcome to Fall, and I mean, REALLY warm, because I cringe at the thought of it dropping below seventy degrees.


Brittani Pedersen

C'MON MAN

"C’mon man", is one of the most well-recognized sayings during the Monday Night Football countdown.  During ESPN’s pregame coverage of each weeks highly anticipated Monday Night game, analysts not only prep for the game, but also talk about and dissect the majority of the games that were played the day before.  At the end of their broadcast, they have a funny section of “dumb” plays that players made that week and show them to the national audience.  At the end of each play, Chris Carter, one of the best wide receivers of all time and now current NFL analyst, says his famous two words that puts the icing on the cake for that play.

While this whole lighthearted section was made with the intentions of showing dumb plays by the players, it has now transformed into almost a mockery of the NFL replacement officials. They are currently being used while the original referee committee is on strike in demands for higher salaries and health care benefits.  This whole referee debacle has gotten so bad that this past Monday night the group of referees, who had all the time in the world to review the play, cost the Seattle Seahawks an undeserved loss against the Green Bay Packers.

To be honest with you all, I actually find this pretty amusing.  All of the Twitter accounts such as “The Replacement Ref” and “The 13^th Man” have some pretty funny stuff that bashes the newbie refs.  If I were you I would totally up your followers by one and follow one of these accounts.

Getting back on track, I think that people need to stop blaming these referees about their mishaps.  At the end of the day, you are asking referees that are used to calling high school and small college games to put themselves on the line during the best, most talented and fastest football league in the world.  Sure, the normal refs who have been doing it for a long time will be better, but for the group of replacement refs to come in and still do a reasonably good job handling a game in the NFL is pretty impressive to me.  While all we hear about is how bad the game is called, there has not been much talk about where negotiations stand with the NFL and the referee committee.  Can someone please inform me?

Football to me is the new American pastime.  Don’t let referees ruin the game, even if your team gets screwed. Until we see new negotiations between both sides, we will continue to hear those infamous words, "C’MONNNN MAN!" directed at refs, not players.

Until we speak again,

CJ DeBerg

The Three Best Friends Anyone Could Have

When you first read this title, what comes to mind?  I’m sure most of you would think straight to the movie The Hangover when Allen starts singing that stupid song to Phil and Stew while in the car trying to find Doug, Doug, Dougie Doug Doug, the last member of the wolfpack.  While yes that movie is absolutely hilarious and one of my all time favorites, this short post is going to talk about the benefits of living with two of your closest friends.

Doesn’t it bother you when you or one of your friends don't get along with a roommate?  You constantly hear them complaining about certain things that their roommate does and how they never talk or hang out.  How can you do that to yourself?  Isn’t the point of having a roommate so you have a friend that you can be with on a regular basis so you are not a bum living by yourself?  Luckily for me, the past 3 years I have lived with the same two people, Rob Blaker and Matt Geslin.  We are all the same age and have very similar interests.  Now I can go on and on about all the polite, conventional things that we look for in roommates, but I’m going to cut the crap and get down to the real reasons why each and every one of you need to live with your best friends.

First and foremost, unlike roommates who mind their own business, your best friend's life is part of your life.  You are "in the know” for whatever he does, how much he drank and the girl “he’s only talking to.”  This gives you unlimited amount of ammunition to use on him for future scenarios.  Trust me, you will benefit from this.  With that being said, when living with your best friends, you just don’t care.  You know they won’t take it personally and you better believe that they will come up with their own little resume to use against you as well.  It’s all part of the friendly banter that everyone loves.

What comes next? How clean your roommate is? How late he stays up? WRONG. Its how often he or she wants to go out and party.  Lets face it, it doesn’t look good if you live with a roommate that never goes out, while you are the weekend warrior.  You need a partner who enjoys the festivities of uptown Charlotte just as much as you.  Its as simple as that.  If you don’t agree with me, I suggest you read the blog below, which probably has boring nonsense that no one wants to hear.

Lets face it people, when choosing roommates, you need to be real with yourself.  What are you looking for?  Well, you have most likely just read the answer.  My two roommates have been and will be lifelong friends.  The amount of stories we have racked up over the years could make for a very entertaining novel.  I’m sure I’m not the only one who can say that either.  So, with all that being said, I hope you have enjoyed this post, because as Allen did say, you can’t beat the three best friends that anyone could have.

See you next week,

CJ

A Tool for Good and Evil

                You’re floating down a river in a sinking raft approaching a 976 foot tall waterfall. All you have at your disposal is a roll of duct tape… what do you do?

If you answered “die” then you have absolutely no imagination. That one roll of duct tape provides you with endless possibilities. Heck even if you did answer “die” you could still use it to your advantage. The beauty of this wonderful tool is its versatility. In regards to my earlier question, the tape could be used for just about any escape imaginable. You could craft it into a paddle, create an anchor to stop the raft, or even make a parachute for your daring descent.

While regular adhesive tape was invented in the early 1920s, common duct tape came to be around twenty years later during World War II. Its original purpose was to waterproof ammunition for the U.S. soldiers, but when they figured out how many different ways it could be used, it “stuck” around. Hooray puns!

Duct tape is a tool of opportunity. It can be used for a quick fix around the home, but it is also a powerful weapon in the war against boredom. Some of mankind’s greatest creations have been made out of it. From wallets to prom dresses, it can be used to produce just about anything that the human mind can imagine. New duct tape masterpieces are being thought of everyday that are changing the world as we know it. Soon, most things in our world could be made out of this wonderful substance. Entire cities would be made out of the shiny grey tape, glistening in the sun like some sort of futuristic utopia. Whether or not you think the world is a bright place, it would certainly be brighter if it were covered in duct tape.                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

- Eric Richard                                                                                                                                                                                         

Creature of the Sea

What is the most daring thing you’ve ever done?

     My most daring event happened this summer.  I windsurfed alone, in the Caribbean Sea. Although I had windsurfed regularly the pervious summer on a lake, I had been on a beginner board, and the winds were very mild.  Now, I was in the Virgin Islands, the water was a lot deeper and the winds blew much stronger. From the moment I started to windsurf i feel in love with it, and to go in the Caribbean- well, would be amazing.  And so it was decided.  I marched up to the post-hippie-surfer dude from the rental stand and rented a board and sail.  He took me and his son, Chongo, out into the sea.  He dropped us off miles from shore, pointed me in the direction of the beach and said that if I wasn’t back in two hours, he’d come find me.  (I hadn’t realized I would be out there for more than an hour…)
  

     Earlier, I said I was alone out at sea- and I was, because before I could even get up on the board Chongo, who was maybe 10 years old, sailed away and out of sight within 5 minutes.  So, yes, I was very much alone for the remaining hour and 55 minutes.  Although seeing a 10 year old fly past you with no problem is a bit discouraging, I stood up on the board, bent my knees, grabbed on to the rope and pulled the sail up from the water.  When the sail was raised I placed my hands on the bar as a huge gust of wind filled the sail, throwing me straight into the water.  So I climbed back up.  Once again I pulled up the sail, caught the wind, and found a steady speed, then just as I started to get the hang of it, I was thrown back into the water by the wind.  This happened again, and again, and again maybe a hundred more times.  Finally out of utter frustration I gave up.  Still far from land, I sat on the board in hopes of floating towards shore.

     As I watched my feet dangle in the water I began to make out a greenish, bluish white blob floating up towards my foot, this strange object grew bigger and bigger and I soon realized it was a huge, frightening, mysterious creature of the sea. 

     I am terrified of fish- especially in deep water, and at the time I could have sworn it was as big as my board.  I hopped up on that board faster than I ever thought I could, grabbed the rope and to my surprise, I began to sail.  This time there was no big gust of wind knocking me off and I was actually moving at a decent speed.  Finally I was getting somewhere!  I could begin to see the people swimming near the shore and the rental stand!  Eventually I made it back to shore, just as the post-hippie man was about to head out in search for me.

      This may sound corny and a little cliché but my fear of the greenish, bluish creature of the sea helped me achieve what I had given up on.  Although I didn’t get back to shore right away, and I continued to fall down… and then at one point realized I was headed in the wrong direction- but at least I was moving!  And this time, I wasn’t giving up.  Yes, I was a bit embarrassed by how many times I wiped out, but I couldn’t have been more proud of myself for staying out there and not giving up.  The next day when I woke up I couldn’t move.  My whole body ached.  I felt pain in muscles I never knew I had, but it was a good pain.  The kind you want to feel.  Because every time that day that my muscles ached and screamed- I was reminded that I windsurfed the Caribbean Sea.

-Adair Kennedy

 

Just Dance

               One of the things I love most about my family is how much we like to dance.  No, nobody in our family is very good at dancing, however we dance all the time anyway.  Throughout high school it was perfectly normal to come home to my mom doing “the guns” in the kitchen as she makes afterschool snacks.  I remember after she met my stepdad, Karl, one of the first things she said to me was “Anna you’ll love him he does such a good running man”. Everyone in my family has the same dorky dance moves.  And with the only exception being the father daughter tap dancing class that Lily and Karl took the older members of the family try to limit our dancing to just inside the house.  But this isn’t the case for the younger members of my family, Lily, Jamie, Henry, and Rosie dance everywhere they go.  In the grocery store, on the sidewalk, outside the gas station, sometimes it will be a full minute of freestyle, other times just a quick moonwalk.  They dance everywhere they go and I love it. It’s the video’s I get of them dancing that make me the most homesick.  I love the carefree attitude they have and how they don’t care about anything other then the fact that they just want to dance.

-Anna Kirwan 

Trust and Believe

     I started using Twitter two years ago.  At first I thought it was a bad decision because I knew it would distract me, like Facebook did, but I made an account anyway.  After using Twitter for a while I started to see something, but before I could not really put my finger on it.  My coach, Wes Long, said it was taking me off my game and that’s exactly what it was.  I didn’t believe it until I wasn’t producing like I should.  Once he saw my lack of production, he basically took away my twitter during the season.

  The rule he made up was that I couldn’t tweet or retweet anything before practice or before games.  So if I had practice at six pm I couldn’t tweet till after.  Also once 12am hits, I have to stop tweeting because it’s a new day.  This rule really hurt me because our games were usually at 7:30pm and ended at 10.  I only had 2 hours to tweet and that pissed me off for a while.  I wanted to say something to my coach about it but in the back of my mind I knew this rule would help.  After I started obeying the rule, my stats went way up and the team was much better.  My coach thought of this saying called “T.I.C.” which means Trust, Integrity and Compete.  He was glad I trusted him and the rule.  This brought much respect between my coach and I.  Once the season was over though, I went straight to tweeting everyday constantly.

     Over the summer I tweeted even more until I got back to school.  I knew he was going to give me the rule again but I was wrong.  This year he made the whole team abide by a twitter rule.  No one can tweet between the hours of 9am and 6pm.  If someone tweets there will be consequences, which mean a lot of running.  No one wants to run because he could have us running until we can’t run anymore.  My teammates think this is a dumb rule, but I tell them every time that it worked for me, it will work for you. 

Antonio Stabler