RiceOwl

I have a couple recent grad friends who work in The Woodlands... Most live near the Waterway/Market Street area... Is it going to be like living in Midtown? No... But are there at least a couple bars you can go to happy hour at and not feel completely out of place, yes.

Glacial River/Runoff

Norway is an awesome, awesome place to visit. Roadtripped last year and did the following: -Flew into BGO from ARN I’m SAS. -Drove from BGO to Voss. Putzed around there for an afternoon. Nice lake to rent kayaks on, some decent restaurants, etc. -Next morning, drove from Voss to the ferry dock in Gudvangen... We then took the ferry from Gudvangen to Flam... Incredible, incredible scenery. -We spent that afternoon/evening in Flam... Did the train up to the top of the mountain (where it meets the train to Bergen and Oslo) and back down. We stayed at a cabin in Flam. There’s a good brewery and a nice hotel with a good dinner buffet there. -The next morning, we drove/ferried to a cabin we rented just outside of Jostedalsbreen National Park between Sogndal and Fjaerland. This was a base camp for hiking, swimming, relaxing for three days. Incredibly remote and beautiful. -From there, we drove to Alesund and spent three nights. The city has a few interesting museums, good short hikes, and very, very cool Art Deco architecture. -We then turned our car in and flew to Oslo from Alesund. I actually really like Oslo, more than Stockholm and some other European cities that people love (like Prague for example). It’s not so overwhelmed with tourists that you get lost in the crowd but there’s some really cool attractions. The Viking Museum, the Ski Museum/Jump, the Opera House, the Norsk Folk Museum, just to name a few... We stayed in an awesome AirBnb in Fagerborg that was walking distance to some great restaurants. Side note: Tjuvholmen is one of the coolest modern “neighborhood” developments I’ve seen, anywhere.

I actually saw this same ship docked at Alesund last summer so this hits close to home /csb Norway is a beautiful, beautiful place to go on vacation and I highly recommend it... That said, not sure what would motivate you to go on a cruise in March... If I were there in March, I’d be in the interior skiing.

I grew up going, but to me, depending on your budget, it’s tough to beat Nantucket. Great restaurants, fishing, golf, etc... All in a classic whaling town that really brings you back in time. The south facing beaches are really nice and if you go from July 15th-September 1st, the water will be ~70 which is very manageable.

Seaside view.

Just got back from four days in Alaska. Two at Alyeska and two with Chugach Powder Guides. Alyeska is a decent ski area but certainly not worth the trip for it alone..: CPG on the other hand.... Had easily the best ski day of my life (and I’ve probably got 1000 days on skis) and another top 10-15 day.

The old, crappy HEB in third ward is/was one of the most ghetto stores I’ve been in... This new store will serve the third ward well but also will serve all of the apartments chock full of nurses, med students, etc that are on the other side of 288.

Parker Braun LG from Georgia Tech transferring. 2x first team ACC. Played some of his HS ball at Hallsville in East Texas.

Punta Mita/Sayulita. I stayed at this property last February and had a great time: https://www.vrbo.com/1242213 Make sure you rent a car though as the taxi cartel will screw you.

Rice has gone from having CDC as AD to Joe Karlgaard who is perhaps the worst AD in Rice history (and that’s saying a lot). Karlgaard has made it miserable to be a Rice student-athlete in revenue sports by failing to invest in coaches, facilities, and perks that are needed to attract and retain talent. Bloomgren is actually a pretty good coach in a vacuum, but I don’t think he’s going to be successful because ground and pound Stanford style football is difficult to do at the G5 level. Some here may remember Wade Townsend, who was a pitcher in the glory years of Rice Baseball. Was drafted in the top ten of the MLB draft TWICE (kind of a ridiculous story.. Google it). Has a screw loose and fled to Mexico so he could play online poker. I think he lives in the Hill country now. Anyhow, he posted this pretty hilarious video on YouTube that summarizes the issues with Rice Football:

I was just posting everything I ate... They also were sold out of some kind of spicy beef sausage so maybe that’s what they’re known for? Anyhow, I probably won’t be back to try it.

At Smoke Sessions right now as it’s a nice day and I was tired of watching football. -Brisket->Meh.. Not as bad as it looked in that photo but nothing noteworthy. Over cooked/dry. -Pulled Pork-> probably the best thing I’ve had here. Their sauce is very North Carolina style so it pairs well. -Turkey-> Not terrible but again, slightly overdone. -Mac and cheese-> Good, not great. -Beans-> pretty good with decent size chunks of brisket. Overall, probably not a bad option if you live Rockwall or Royse City but certainly not destination ‘cue.

Fumble by EWU. Sloppy game thus far. pretty hilarious article about Frisco’s breastraunts: https://grandforksherald.com/sports/football/4551375-mcfeely-breastaurants-again-ready-and-waiting-bison-fans

I’m inclined to believe Both Tacos as the place does get great reviews.

I was at 217 when I graduated college last December and am now at 243. I’m 6’7” so I’m not really “fat” but I want to get of the belly I’ve developed. I’d honestly be happy if I could get into the 225-230 range and maintain. Big dietary changes I’m making are: No fried food, no soda (don’t like diet soda so at meals drink either seltzer, water, lower-sugar juice or occasionally a G2 or the like), and no beer (for the month of January at least). We’ll see how long I can last. I kind of want to try fasting too but I get so bored without being able to eat.

Redeemed 27,000 (15k each way minus the 10% rebate with credit card) AA miles today for an economy redemption on DFW-SEA-ANC-PDX-DFW. Combination of AA and AS flights. It pains me to use mikes on domestic flights (in economy nonetheless) but they asking 970 roundtrip for the same routing. This is for February (going skiing in the Chugach). A quick look at summer time and it seemed that there were hardly any sAAver awards to ANC.

I moved to Frisco 6 months ago and went over to Fort Worth for the Wade Bowen concert on Saturday... Decided to go to Lonesome Dove before. Food was good, not great. I thought the cocktails were spot on though. However, most disturbingly, both my girlfriend and I were puking in the early morning hours of Sunday (and it wasn’t from booze). Not going to hold it against them too, too much since something like that could happened anywhere but I won’t be rushing back... I’d go again though if somebody wanted to go there.

Go Black Bears!

Uhhh... Couple things wrong with this statement: -There are lots of other “southern programs” that have declined... Tennessee anyone? -The 1990 GT Natty was kind of a perfect storm. They were HORRIBLE in the late 70’s and mid 80’s. -Paul Johnson is the winningest (and longest tenured coach) at GT since Bobby Dodd. He won an ACC championship, made two orange bowls, and had lots of other big, top 10 wins. Things slowed a little bit the last few years but he still went 9-4 in 2016 and will likely go 8-5 this year. Definitely a future CFB HOFer.

If you want to make a quick pop this weekend, my strategy would be the following: Buy high quality consumer staple stocks on Thursday afternoon... KO, PG, PEP, etc.. Then sell at the close on Friday. Look at how they did last Friday.. They shot up like rockets because money managers were scared of what Mr. Scott Free Tariff Man was going to do over the weekend. They then traded mildly down on Monday... I expect similar at the end of this week. That said, these stocks are probably decent buy and holds too at this point in the economic cycle. Stay away from the crappy ones like CPB, KHZ, etc though.

Not skiing CO this year. Have an interior BC “Powder Highway” trip in Feb planned (Red and Whitewater, as I skied Revy and KH in 2016) and a Alta/Bird late March trip planned. Tough to go without skiing (grew up skiing 70+ days a year) until February but that’s how the chips are going to fall.

I don’t think most G5 fans deny that UCF plays a weaker schedule than say, Michigan. What most G5 fans have a problem with us that is that there is no “access” or path for a school to achieve the metrics that the committee wants. As I explained in some other thread, it’s not like if UCF said that they were going to increase their football budget to the size of Texas’ they’d be let into a P5 conference. Meanwhile, P5 schools use G5 schools to pad their records (yes, yes I know it’s a two way street with the payouts). Imagine if the P5 schools only played each other. Coaches would be getting fired every two years at 85% of current P5 schools as the fans would complain about “not performing to our standard,” etc...

The commuter school excuse for UH is pretty terrible... They have lots of on campus housing now.. Moreover, over the last ten years, the area has gone from very ghetto to somewhat ghetto. But generally speaking, it’s because most UH fans are front runners and they have lost two straight games.

If there’s one National grocery chain Amazon will put out of business, it’ll be Albertsons/Safeway. KR and WMT have made the necessary digital investments in an attempt to keep up and strong regional brands like HEB, Publix, Wegman’s, etc have differentiating factors.