Day Seven Hundred Eighty Six

I went to Dallas this past weekend! It was my first excursion to the Dallas area since moving to Texas, and while I didn't explore the city itself (at all) it was still lots of fun. The main reason for going to Dallas was to go to the close-by city of Fort Worth to watch UT play TCU in football with my good friend Katelyn (who is a TCU grad). I wasn't expecting it to go well for UT...and it didn't. By the end of the first quarter (the first quarter) we were down 30-0. I remember sitting there in the blazing sun doing the math in my head and realizing we were on trajectory to lose 120-0. That being said, it was almost a relief when we only lost 50-7. Still horrible, but at least we didn't get beat by 120 or get shut out. Unfortunately, I'll take that. And for the record, our marching band was WAY better than TCU's at halftime.

Sitting by a TCU mascot statue on campus - they're the Horned Frogs.

A panoramic of Amon G. Carter stadium.

If you wouldn't mind, just don't look at the scoreboard.

As it so happens, we were in the Dallas area during Texas State Fair season, so the morning following the football game, we went to the fair! The Texas State Fair is just as gigantic as you might imagine, and Big Tex (photo below) is as impressive as he looks. His mouth moves as he talks, and while the movement may not match with the words he's supposedly saying, he's still pretty cool. We ate fair food and looked at fancy cars (but not at livestock, which made me sad, but we didn't want to smell like cows during our 4 our drive back to Austin) and walked around endless fair games and booths with all manner of fried foods. Fried mashed potatoes and gravy? Of course they have that, why would you think otherwise?! Fried chicken skin? Fried butter (yes, just butter)? Fried EVERYTHING at the Texas State Fair. Everything. It's a lot disgusting and a little impressive.

BIG TEX.

Where the Cotton Bowl (college football bowl game) is played.

We got back to Austin and I immediately had to return to real life - grocery shopping and prepping for the class I'm TAing to take their first exam. I got to proctor said exam from 7-9pm last night (yuck), but thankfully had the Seahawks on Monday Night Football to keep me company on mute on my laptop. Thank you Seahawks, you continue to make everything better. And my students are all very happy you won, because it means I'll be in a good mood when I grade their exams.