It was a record day for me personally. I voted for two Democrats and a Republican. While I don’t identify as a Republican, I do tend to agree with them more than the Democrats. I’m to the right of the Republicans on most economic issues, so voting for Democrats is typically out of the question. On the other hand, parties mean less in local elections, especially here in Mississippi were a lot of your older, hardcore conservative voters self-identify as Democrats and won’t vote for Republicans, period. Also, I’ve found that programs I could never stomach on a national level aren’t so bad on a local level.

Back in my hometown of Belmont, my younger brother ran for alderman. In Belmont (population ~2,000), all the alderman are at-large, and they all run as independents by tradition, so there is no primary. Brandon received the second highest number of votes out of the eight that were running. Most of his opponents were twice his age or better. Congratulations, Brandon!

My dad has been an alderman in Belmont for 21 years, but didn’t run for re-election this time. The other aldermen held a reception to honor him and the retiring mayor a few weeks ago. I’ve got some pictures to post when I get a chance.

As it turns out, we didn’t just beat them, we beat them very solidly, 31-13. It could have been worse too. At the end of the game we went to the “victory formation” inside their five yard line. We missed another good opportunity to score when we intercepted the ball on their end of the field. It was just a well-played ballgame all the way around on our part. Ole Miss football teams have a tendency to fall apart in big games like this, but we didn’t. A lot of credit for that has to go to Coach Nutt. He has a lot of big game experience. His Arkansas Razorbacks beat LSU at home, in triple overtime, last season. LSU went on to win the national championship.

Saturday’s game was the first annual “Magnolia Bowl.” Also, we are now ranked No. 25 in the country in both the AP and Coaches polls.

Assuming we beat Mississippi State next Friday, we’ll get a spot in the Cotton Bowl. I don’t see any way around it. On paper, we beat Mississippi State every time. You can never be sure about rivalry games though. We better not overlook them.

The last bowl game we went to was the 2004 Cotton Bowl. It was Eli Manning’s senior season. The Cotton Bowl is a good, quality bowl, and Ole Miss fans should be thrilled. I know I would have been happy with the Music City Bowl at the beginning of the year.

This weekend there was one game with definite national championship implications. That was Oklahoma vs. Texas Tech. Texas Tech came into the game ranked No. 2 in the country, and Oklahoma was supposed to be somewhat of an underdog. The Sooners crushed Texas Tech 65-21.

I’ll spare you the “in-depth” analysis, but my prediction is we’ll see Florida vs. Oklahoma in the national championship game. Texas is ahead of Oklahoma in the BCS rankings right now, but that should change if Oklahoma beats No. 12 Oklahoma State next weekend. Oklahoma State is not a gimme by any means, but I expect Oklahoma to pull out the win. That would put Texas in the Fiesta Bowl, and Texas Tech in the Cotton Bowl.

Yes, that’s right, we’ll be playing Texas Tech, an 11-1 team (after they beat Baylor next weekend) that was one win away from being (beaten by Florida) in the national championship game.

With any luck there will be a lot of controversy over whether it should be Oklahoma or Texas in the national championship game, and we’ll move a little closer to finding a sane method to select a national champion in college football. The BCS is definitely not it.

At the very bottom of this post is a real treat (sarcasm warning!). It’s the only recent picture of myself that I can stand to look at. It’s not good mind you, just tolerable.

Brandon and Keshia

Keshia

Keshia and Peyton

Jaxon and his dad, Jason, my first cousin.

My little cousins: Jaycee, Jaxon, Jaylen, Lila, and Kyla.

Jaxon and his grandmother, my aunt, Kathy.

Luke getting down to the reception music.

Me (Photo credit: Renelda Owen, my aunt)

Toward the end of the third quarter we walked down to where the band was sitting so Cassie could say hi to her former band director. At Belmont the band takes a break during the third quarter, and when they started playing at the beginning of the fourth quarter, it got Luke’s attention very quickly. He loves music, and will “dance” to anything from his toy piano to a car alarm in the parking lot to someone tapping a spoon on the edge of a food container. Toby, one of the drummers and the brother of my best man, let Luke play with his drum. He was very interested, and at one point the band director commented that he was keeping a pretty good beat.

Luke playing Toby's drum.

Luke was wearing his new shoes that aren’t very snug, and they managed to fall under the bleachers not once, but twice. Luckily we were able to retrieve them.

Unfortunately, Belmont lost a close game after some questionable calls from the referees. Never a fun way to lose.

On Saturday, while Cassie went to a baby shower and took the boys shopping with her parents, I took my parents to Tishomingo State Park for a round of disc golf, which was a lot of fun. I think my dad really enjoyed it, so I’ve got someone in Belmont to play with now. I was pretty rusty after not having played for two months.

On Sunday my brother and his family and my grandmothers came to my parents’ house for lunch. It was a good way to end a fun weekend.

Only one of the three gas stations in Belmont had gas most of the weekend. It was going for $3.79; a steal as it turns out. I was topping off our tank every chance I got this weekend. Not only did we have to get back to Oxford, but we’ve got to go back to Belmont Thursday afternoon for my brother’s wedding and associated events.

On the trip home, it seemed that most stations had gone up around 30 cents a gallon. The average was around $3.99.

The big exception was the Pontotoc Wal-Mart, where we usually get our cheap gas on trips to and from Belmont. It was $4.29, up 60 cents from Friday afternoon. The station across the street from it was advertising gas for $3.89, but was out of gas.

Gas at Kroger in Oxford is $3.89, up 26 cents from Friday morning.

It’s being reported that refineries won’t be completely back online for eight to nine days. Most likely gas won’t be going up any more, barring worse news from the oil and gas industry. It’ll be interesting to see how long it takes for gas prices to go back down to their previous levels.

In order to get things started I’ve called a planning meeting tomorrow in Belmont. We’ve tried to notify everyone we can find contact information for, which is approximately half our class. We had 56 people in our graduating class, and there’s a dozen or so more that didn’t quite graduate or moved schools in the year or so before graduation.

From all indications it looks like we’re going to have a pretty good turnout. I’m looking forward to it, because I’ve seen very few of my classmates since graduation.