School being the way that it is, I seldom venture outside of the friendly confines of the house on the weekends for more than a few hours at a time. If I go and visit family or friends on Friday, you can count on the fact that I will be at home the majority of Saturday and Sunday making up for it in studying of some variety. This weekend was different, though. I had my first final at 7:00 pm on Saturday, which required minimal study, so other than a few hours here and there of concentration I truly enjoyed myself.
Friday night was a great time with our good friends Brian and Stephanie, Ryan and Amber, and Dan and Alison. Dan is graduating this week with his Masters in Pastoral Studies (I think) from Baylor, and he and Alison are moving to Atlanta this summer (his hometown). We don't see them very often, but they are friends from our undergraduate days, and so we celebrated with them into the wee hours of Friday night....it was probably hardly past midnight, but that is 'wee hours' for us nowadays.
By way of a brief aside, I found a great tobacco shop in Arlington, which I think I like better than my favorite one in North Dallas. Dan is a cigar smoker, and the rest of us enjoy them too, so I wanted to buy us four really good cigars in honor of the occasion. I was in a bit of a hurry after school, which didn't give me time to go to my shop, so I did a Google search and came across The Cigar Shop. We walked in and I immediately loved it. For those of you who don't frequent cigar stores, there are a few distinctives that make or break the experience. First, the smell. This place was not some cheap pot-smoker-in-disguise shop that smells of stale tobacco and other substances, but it was filled with the aroma of fine cigars and pipes. It's a bitter sweet sensation that is something akin to the existential feeling associated with coffee shops. Already I like the place. Secondly, they were so friendly and helpful. Julie and I have long commented on the fact that tobaccoists and liquor-store owners are quite possibly the nicest people on the planet. Growing up a staunch Baptist I would never know that, but I would put a tobacco shop owner up against most ministers I have met any day. To make a long story only slightly less long, in the course of the ten-minutes that we were in the shop we purchased three fairly nice cigars and were given three for free. One of the apparant owners gave Julie one, which she tried to refuse (don't worry, I scolded her for it), and then he gave me two. Needless to say, I have found my new tobacco-home.
After dinner the four of us guys retired to the back porch to smoke our rather large cigars with an equally nice bottles of rum and southern bourbon....I can't remember what kinds, but they were smooth. Drinking bourbon always brings me back to Walker Percy, who has done a better job than any of capturing the romance of drinking Early Times on a summer's evening...but we didn't have Early Times (on that note, remind me to quote some excerpts from Walker Percy's essay Bourbon in the coming days). We sipped our rum and bourbon, smoked our cigars, and talked literature, philosophy, and theology. We are all on similar paths in life, and so we spent a couple of hours, as we joked, "plotting our wives futures". We even managed to read and translate a little German poetry as it began to storm, which was pretty fitting.
Saturday was devoted to playing football, studying, napping, and taking a very long and hot (not air conditioning) test. I enjoy Dr. Cowan's finals, because they give you the opportunity to really think on and expound upon the novels that have been read that semester. I will greatly miss her presence at the University.
Yesterday was quite a suprise. Julie and I went to the early mass and then to Sunday school for the first time. The rector led the class, which dealt entirely with Anglican history, and so we were fascinated. I have yet to meet an uneducated Episcopal priest, and so generally they insights are profound. We will make that a habit. Later, I watched the Mavs with Debby...but we won't dwell on that, and I was set to go home and study when I received a call from my old friend John Morgan from Sky Ranch. He was my boss, and a groomsman in my wedding, but we had not spoken in almost two years. In short, the leadership team I was apart of in 2003 was going to dinner that night, and I met up with them. We spent the entire evening catching up, eating good food, and wondering why we hadn't all seen each other in so long. It was a definite high point of my weekend.
One more little story before I go. Shaun Menary is one of my friends that I hung out with last night, and he is the co-founder of Randomshirts.com. He took us to their offices in Richardson, and I have to tell you, I have never been to a workplace in my life. When I last saw him the company was just taking off, and they were working out of their apartment in College Station, doing the shipping theirselves, and making some nice cash in the process. Now they are truly an international operation, working with numerous organizations, and apparantly doing REALLY well. They have one of those offices you see in magazines or movies, you know, the ones that are too cool for anyone to actually get any work done in. We were all really proud of them. The greatest, though, he gave us an armful of samples of their shirts and new line of posters. I love Shaun!
For those of you who read all of that, you deserve a prize.
Friday night was a great time with our good friends Brian and Stephanie, Ryan and Amber, and Dan and Alison. Dan is graduating this week with his Masters in Pastoral Studies (I think) from Baylor, and he and Alison are moving to Atlanta this summer (his hometown). We don't see them very often, but they are friends from our undergraduate days, and so we celebrated with them into the wee hours of Friday night....it was probably hardly past midnight, but that is 'wee hours' for us nowadays.
By way of a brief aside, I found a great tobacco shop in Arlington, which I think I like better than my favorite one in North Dallas. Dan is a cigar smoker, and the rest of us enjoy them too, so I wanted to buy us four really good cigars in honor of the occasion. I was in a bit of a hurry after school, which didn't give me time to go to my shop, so I did a Google search and came across The Cigar Shop. We walked in and I immediately loved it. For those of you who don't frequent cigar stores, there are a few distinctives that make or break the experience. First, the smell. This place was not some cheap pot-smoker-in-disguise shop that smells of stale tobacco and other substances, but it was filled with the aroma of fine cigars and pipes. It's a bitter sweet sensation that is something akin to the existential feeling associated with coffee shops. Already I like the place. Secondly, they were so friendly and helpful. Julie and I have long commented on the fact that tobaccoists and liquor-store owners are quite possibly the nicest people on the planet. Growing up a staunch Baptist I would never know that, but I would put a tobacco shop owner up against most ministers I have met any day. To make a long story only slightly less long, in the course of the ten-minutes that we were in the shop we purchased three fairly nice cigars and were given three for free. One of the apparant owners gave Julie one, which she tried to refuse (don't worry, I scolded her for it), and then he gave me two. Needless to say, I have found my new tobacco-home.
After dinner the four of us guys retired to the back porch to smoke our rather large cigars with an equally nice bottles of rum and southern bourbon....I can't remember what kinds, but they were smooth. Drinking bourbon always brings me back to Walker Percy, who has done a better job than any of capturing the romance of drinking Early Times on a summer's evening...but we didn't have Early Times (on that note, remind me to quote some excerpts from Walker Percy's essay Bourbon in the coming days). We sipped our rum and bourbon, smoked our cigars, and talked literature, philosophy, and theology. We are all on similar paths in life, and so we spent a couple of hours, as we joked, "plotting our wives futures". We even managed to read and translate a little German poetry as it began to storm, which was pretty fitting.
Saturday was devoted to playing football, studying, napping, and taking a very long and hot (not air conditioning) test. I enjoy Dr. Cowan's finals, because they give you the opportunity to really think on and expound upon the novels that have been read that semester. I will greatly miss her presence at the University.
Yesterday was quite a suprise. Julie and I went to the early mass and then to Sunday school for the first time. The rector led the class, which dealt entirely with Anglican history, and so we were fascinated. I have yet to meet an uneducated Episcopal priest, and so generally they insights are profound. We will make that a habit. Later, I watched the Mavs with Debby...but we won't dwell on that, and I was set to go home and study when I received a call from my old friend John Morgan from Sky Ranch. He was my boss, and a groomsman in my wedding, but we had not spoken in almost two years. In short, the leadership team I was apart of in 2003 was going to dinner that night, and I met up with them. We spent the entire evening catching up, eating good food, and wondering why we hadn't all seen each other in so long. It was a definite high point of my weekend.
One more little story before I go. Shaun Menary is one of my friends that I hung out with last night, and he is the co-founder of Randomshirts.com. He took us to their offices in Richardson, and I have to tell you, I have never been to a workplace in my life. When I last saw him the company was just taking off, and they were working out of their apartment in College Station, doing the shipping theirselves, and making some nice cash in the process. Now they are truly an international operation, working with numerous organizations, and apparantly doing REALLY well. They have one of those offices you see in magazines or movies, you know, the ones that are too cool for anyone to actually get any work done in. We were all really proud of them. The greatest, though, he gave us an armful of samples of their shirts and new line of posters. I love Shaun!
For those of you who read all of that, you deserve a prize.
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