Teh Mostest Awesomest X-mas EVAR!!1!one!

Last Christmas, I gave you my ... wait, that's not what I meant to say.

George Michael aside, last Christmas you might recall that we went on a cruise with the family to the Eastern Caribbean filled with sun, fun, and great food. This year, we took a much more toned-down trip. No ships or buses, just my parents' Toyota Sienna.

My parents came up on Thursday to attend Cherrie's commencement ceremony, where Cherrie was announced as one of the four graduates witha 4.0 grad point average graduating this term from Brevard Community College! After the ceremony, we had dinner at the World Beat Cafe, which is kind of like international dimsum, appropriately sporting international level prices for tiny, but scrumptious portions.

After dinner, we headed up in the minivan back to Orange Lake, where we had originally planned to set up base at for two nights. Unfortunately, due to a slight misinterpretation of the reservation dates, we could actually only stay for one night, which meant we had to get another hotel for Friday night. Cherrie got to visit Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure for the first time on Friday and Saturday, but of particular note is how she never backed down from any ride, not even once, on this trip, no matter how fast or scary it was!

After we finished our day at Islands of Adventure, we headed to the lair of the enemy in Tallahassee, Florida. Having lived in Florida for over 20 years, I figured it was high time that we paid a visit to the capitol of the state. So, decked out in our Gator sweatshirts, we first caught a movie - The Polar Express. Yes, it's an older movie, but I'd never seen it before, and it was also in full IMAX - as such this was the first full-length feature I've seen in IMAX.

After the movie, we had a cajun lunch at Harry's, then we visited the Museum of Florida History, which had a large collection of everything from Florida's Seminole Indian history to the confederate forces during the Civil War to the various generations of warships named Florida. Our last stop in Tallahassee was none other than the campus of the School Out West, FSU itself. Ed and I made sure we got photos of us chomping the "Unconquered" Chief Osceola statue... I'll post the photos up later!

Our next stop was the Panhandle of Florida, another place I'd never been. An interesting factoid about Pensacola and the Panhandle - the area is so far west (past the Suwannee River) that it's actually in a different time zone than the rest of the state! The Panhandle is in the Central time zone, making it the same time zone as, say, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Our trip to Pensacola was fairly uneventful, however. We paid a visit to the National Museum of Naval Aviation, which was only open until noon on the particular day of our visit, which happened to be Christmas Eve. We caught another IMAX film, this one only 45 minutes long but featuring the world famous Blue Angels squadron. We also went on the very abbreviated tour of the museum which was very cool, featuring warplanes from World War I to the FA-18s flown by the current Blue Angels, including those of the enemy, such as the Japanese zeros and the original Russian Migs. A worthwhile stop.

We had lunch at a fairly pricey seafood joint that I don't remember the name of at the moment, but it was tasty, then headed for our last major stop of our roadtrip, new home of Gator Great Reggie Nelson, Jacksonville, FL. You guessed it, Jacksonville is yet another city in Florida that I've never visited. However, we had the misfortune of visiting Jacksonville on Christmas Day, so we weren't really able to do anything at all. We visited the Landing, the famous site of the annual Georgia vs. Florida tailgating party. We also visited a Catholic cathedral, which was in stark contrast to the very energetic sermon being held across the street. After that, we hightailed it down to St. Augustine, where my parents hadn't been since about 1988, at which time they didn't even visit the famous St. George's Street! Still, being Christmas, we weren't able to see much.

Finally, we arrived home to Melbourne, where we unpacked, did some laundry, and finally opened our presents! Our family hasn't had a proper present-opening for many, many years, and since we were having part of Christmas at our home, Cherrie and I decided to get everyone presents this year! We got Mom a shirt, Melinda a knit sweater, Ed a Gator sweatshirt, and Dad a digital photo frame. Cherrie got a bunch of presents from her friends from school, including some luggage, a tennis pendant, and a Gator T-shirt, and I got her a purse that she picked out, while she gave me a Gator license plate frame that I picked out. However, the biggest surprise of all was the surprise gift that Cherrie got me...

Drumroll please!

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I got a Wii for Christmas! Cherrie spent the last two weeks since her classes ended visiting Target, Wal-Mart, Circuit City, Best Buy, and Toys 'R Us scouting for a Wii every day after I left for work, to no avail. Finally, on the last day before our trip, she was able to get a Wii that an employee at Best Buy had held for her, making many, many parents jealous when Cherrie got the last Wii in the store on a day that they weren't even supposed to have any!

So, even though the trip wasn't as exotic as last year, the food on this trip was also not too shabby, and the presents were unbeatable! Merry Christmas Everyone!!!

Mini-Road Trip

As we've done each of the last three years right around this time of year, we took a mini-road trip this past weekend. We headed up to Gainesville to buy some books and Gator Gear and also check out some apartments up there and then to what is becoming our annual vacation spot, Orange Lake Resort.

During the trip, we noticed that the brake light on the Corolla seemed to stay on after we parked the car. It turned out that it wasn't just on when we parked, it was actually on most of the time while we were driving as well! Apparently, the relay that controls the brake light needed to be adjusted, so I got it fixed at Gatto's for a modest tip of $5 after we got back to Melbourne, but for the duration of the trip, I found myself having to prop up my brake with my left foot to keep people from wondering whether or not I really was braking!

Gainesville was fairly uneventful this time, although I discovered that the Business School makes you buy "books" that are really just pieces of cardboard with an "access code" that lets you log in to the online materials for over fifty bucks! What a great business to be running - no inventory or cost of goods sold at all! Orlando was interesting this time, though. Ed and Shawn met up with us at Viet Town Restaurant for dinner, and then we headed to the resort. Ed and Shawn went to pick up Shawn's new (and, IMO, not very attractive) girlfriend Brit, who apparently was a few weeks earlier dating Taran, the current president of the Kung Fu club that Kir-Wei and I started. We found it a little odd that her parents were okay with her spending the night with a guy three to four years older than her at a time share that the guy's friend was using, but hey, to each their own, right?

The next morning, Cherrie and I got up bright and early to do Morning Stretch with Leo, a Korean intern working at Orange Lake. After the stretches, we all headed out back to the Vietnamese Town to have a dim sum at the very popular Ming Bistro. I haven't had actual dim sum like that in a while - with the carts and everything! On finishing lunch, we walked about the town, visiting an anime shop and some Asian gift shops in the area.

We headed back to the condo and watched Earnest Graham and the Buccaneers wax the now coachless Atlanta Falcons (whose head coach, Bobby Petrino, formerly of Louisville, abruptly decided that he liked the college game better and became the head coach of Arkansas last week). The Bucs made franchise history returning their first kickoff return for a touchdown ever in like 21 miles of combined kickoff return yardage! After the game, we finished off the mini-trip by attending our first Welcome Party. Admittedly, it was pretty lame, with good cookies but crappy hot chocolate and no coffee and apple cider, as advertised. Plus, it was pretty cold outside, for Florida anyway. Like 65 degrees or something... Preposterous!

Make That Two In A Row

Although, I have to say, it's much easier to not write about football when nothing football is happening. Still, you should give credit where it's due!

Funny thing happened today. I left my Scion out on the driveway last night, because we were too lazy to swap places in the garage. It rained last night, so there was good news and bad news for me this morning.

First, the good news. The water beaded up very sexily, meaning I won't have to wax for at least another month or so.

Now, the bad news. A small tree frog decided to use my car as shelter, and somehow managed to squeeze himself past my fender into the rail where the hatch closes and lodge himself there overnight. I took him for a spirited ride (I revved pretty high this morning, celebrating the end of my break-in period while simultaneously trying to shake the water off of the car), almost getting veered off the road by a lady driving an F-150, before finally parking at work and finding Kermit in my hatch. With a bit of effort, I managed to squoosh him! Just kidding, I let him out and had him jump into the parking lot, where I hope no one else squooshed him!

Finally, a Non-Football Related Post!

With the college football season all but over, we might finally see some pieces on Grant's Pad that are less football oriented and more... whatever else it is that we (and when I say "we", I really mean "I") write about around here.

Believe it or not, there has been life without football these last few months. For example, we moved into our new house and I got a new car. It's just that, with all the insanity of the football season this year, I haven't really gotten around to writing much about anything else! But that ends today, at least until another good Bucs game comes on!

This year, the family will probably end up spending Christmas Day, or at least the day after Christmas, at our house. As such, Cherrie and I spent some time putting up Christmas lights and a Christmas tree for the first time ever! Putting up Christmas lights on a roof that's higher than 10 feet when you only have a 6 foot ladder is pretty tricky - I had to do a pullup to get myself onto the roof - and, seeing as I haven't worked out in a while, that actually doesn't seem as easy as it should sound, given my incredibly toned physique ::wink wink::! I haven't put up the photos yet, but they look pretty good... check back later in the season - hopefully I remember to do it!

This past weekend marked a number of interesting events in Grant's Life as well. First, it marked the end of my first semester in my Outreach Engineering Management program - I finished the semester with one A and one B+, but I also nabbed a 95 on my last case study in Organizational Behavior... I was tempted to try and shoot for an A, but I decided to rest instead. Secondly, this Sunday marked the first day of my second semester in the OEM program - this semester, I'm taking two courses as well - Applied Probability in Engineering, taught by a Northern European professor (judging from his surname of Romeijn), and Financial and Managerial Accounting, taught by a professor who hails from Ghana. I must say I enjoyed the accounting class a bit more, since the professor was very entertaining. I'm not if it was his references to murder-happy loan sharks or if it was just his very thick Ghana...an accent, but it just seemed funny at the time. Last, but definitely not least, this weekend marked the end of my break-in period on the Scion tC! That's right, I'm on my second thousand miles already! No more keeping under 3000 RPMs!

Tim Tebow Wins the Heisman!

I didn't even get to see it on TV (darn you, ESPN... why aren't you off-the-air??), but I wanted to be one of the first bloggers on the planet to blog about it. You saw it here first! Tim Tebow Becomes First Underclassmen to Win the Heisman Trophy!

I think Stewart Mandel over at SI.com said it best when he noted that, if Tebow had not run for a single yard or touchdown, his passing stats of over 3000 yards and 29 touchdowns and only 6 interceptions are enough to give any team reason to want him to be their QB. Add to the fact that, if Tebow had not thrown for a single yard or touchdown, his rushing stats of over 800 yards for 22 rushing TDs - more than any SEC running back in history, and over 5 yards per carry would have made him a contender for All-Conference backs!

Congratulations, Tim Tebow, and Go Gators!

Stella Awards

Some more humor from the office...

Proof of entitlement mentality

It's time again for the annual "Stella Awards"! For those unfamiliar with these awards, they are named after 81-year-old Stella Liebeck who spilled hot coffee on herself and successfully sued the McDonald's in New Mexico, where she purchased the coffee. You remember, she took the lid off the coffee and put it between her knees while she was driving. Who would ever think one could get burned doing that, right?

That's right; these are awards for the most outlandish lawsuits and verdicts in the U.S.You know, the kinds of cases that make you scratch your head. So keep your head scratcher handy.

Here are the Stella's for the past year:

7TH PLACE:
Kathleen Robertson of Austin, Texas was awarded $80,000 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running inside a furniture store. The store owners were understandably surprised by the verdict, considering the running toddler was her own son.

6TH PLACE:
Carl Truman, 19, of Los Angeles, California won $74,000 plus medical expenses when his neighbor ran over his hand with a Honda Accord. Truman apparently didn't notice there was someone at the wheel of the car when he was trying to steal his neighbor's hubcaps.

Go ahead, grab your head scratcher.

5TH PLACE:
Terrence Dickson of Bristol, Pennsylvania was leaving a house he had just burglarized by way of the garage. Unfortunately for Dickson, the automatic garage door opener malfunctioned and he could not get the garage door to open. Worse, he couldn't re-enter the house because the door connecting the garage to the house locked when Dickson pulled it shut. Forced to sit for eight, count 'em, EIGHT, days on a case of Pepsi and a large bag of dry dog food, he sued the homeowner's insurance company claiming undue mental Anguish.

Amazingly, the jury said the insurance company must pay Dickson $500,000 for his anguish.

We should all have this kind of anguish.

Keep scratching. There are more...

4TH PLACE:
Jerry Williams, of Little Rock , Arkansas, garnered 4th Place in the Stella's when he was awarded $14,500 plus medical expenses after being bitten on the butt by his next door neighbor's beagle - even though the beagle was on a chain in its owner's fenced yard. Williams did not get as much as he asked for because the jury believed the beagle might have been provoked at the time of the butt bite because Williams had climbed over the fence into the yard and repeatedly shot the dog with a pellet gun.

Grrrrr ... Scratch, scratch.

3RD PLACE:
Amber Carson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania because a jury ordered a Philadelphia restaurant to pay her $113,500 after she slipped on a spilled soft drink and broke her tailbone. The reason the soft drink was on the floor: Ms. Carson had thrown it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an argument. What ever happened to people being responsible for their own actions?

Scratch, scratch, scratch. Hang in there; there are only two more Stella"s to go...

2ND PLACE:
Kara Walton, of Claymont, Delaware sued the owner of a night club in a nearby city because she fell from the bathroom window to the floor, knocking out her two front teeth. Even though Ms. Walton was trying to sneak through the ladies room window to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge, the jury said the night club had to pay her $12,000....oh, yeah,
plus dental expenses. Go figure.

1ST PLACE: (May I have a fanfare played on 50 kazoos please)
This year's runaway First Place Stella Award winner was Mrs. Merv Grazinski, of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, who purchased a new 32-foot Winnebago motor home. On her first trip home, from an OU football game, having driven on to the freeway, she set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the driver's seat to go to the back of the Winnebago to make herself a sandwich. Not surprisingly, the motor home left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Also not surprisingly, Mrs. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not putting in the owner's manual that she couldn't actually leave the driver's seat while the cruise control was set. The Oklahoma jury awarded her, are you sitting down, $1,750,000 PLUS a new motor home. Winnebago actually changed their manuals as a result of this suit, just in case Mrs. Grazinski has any relatives who might also buy a motor home.

Are we, as a society, getting more stupid?

BCS Insanity

Just when you thought the National Title picture couldn't get any more screwed up, it does. And, to be honest, I'm actually not all that surprised.

In a season when Stanford can beat USC and Division 1-AA Appalachian State can beat Michigan, it doesn't surprise me that much that 4-7 Pittsburgh, a 28-pt underdog, can beat Number 2 West Virginia 13-9 by having their punter run out the last 3 seconds of the clock by running into their own endzone for an intentional safety. Even less surprising is Number 1 Missouri's loss to number 9 Oklahoma, who rolled Missouri for the second time this season, accounting for both of Missouri's losses. And how about Hawaii? When I went to bed last night, the Warriors were trailing lowly Washington by 21 points. This morning, I found out that gunslinger Colt Brennan and his big-haired linemen came back to win 35-28, apparently holding Washington scoreless for the rest of the game, making Hawaii the only undefeated team in the regular season with a record of 12-0 and likely a BCS bowl.

But what about the National Championship? This season, is it really fair to let the "best teams" play for the crystal ball? Despite all of the upsets, would you really say that Stanford is better than USC, Pittsburgh is better than WVU, and Appalachian State is better than Michigan? Ohio State seems to be a lock, despite not having played any ball for weeks (and having lost their last game to the Zooker at that!). Yet, they backdoored right into the National Championship game. LSU, with their nailbiting win over Tennessee in the SEC championship, might have the go ahead nod over Georgia, the highest ranked team in the SEC, since they won the SEC championship game. Crazy stuff can happen when your conference's highest ranked teams aren't eligible for the championship game. And, to think, if Florida had been able to take care of business at the World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party, that might be us backing into the National Championship Game, where the spread offense that so plagues Ohio State (the Fighting Zookers also use a spread option, similar, but less prolific, than ours!) would likely route the Buckeyes yet again!

I'm not even going to pretend I know who will play against Ohio State on January 7, but I'm pretty certain that, with Missouri QB Chase Daniel's less than stellar game against Oklahoma last night, that our boy Tim Tebow will be the first ever underclassman to win the Heisman! If not, Tebow needs to go and stiffarm some heads.