How to Spend a Long Weekend

 Long weekend holidays are a bit of an oddity for me. Due to school and work, in the past three years of my life, I haven't had a day off from work on an official government holiday. Today is one of those official holidays. I know this because my bank is closed on a day it should be open. Realizing this, I figured it would be a good time to recount my activities this holiday weekend, it might be my last for a while...

Looks like folks are trying to do more than  just occupy Wall Street.

On Friday, I spent several hours in downtown Dallas. A majority of the time was spent setting up and bartending a Texas-Oklahoma University party. I'll get to that in a second. I was also able to hang out at a rally that was taking place at the JFK memorial. I believe it was a part of the "Occupy Wall Street" movement that has recently gotten some media coverage. The demonstration at the JFK memorial looked more like a sit-in chock-full of hippies (modern and old-school) as well as various on-lookers and tourists who were just there to see the memorial. As far as protests and demonstrations go, this one was kind of tame. People had the requisite signs and chants, but they weren't very loud and the police presence was minimal. I stayed for about forty-five minutes waiting to see if a speaker would step up but nothing happened.

These guys were my favorite customers. They drank for the cycle!

 Later that evening and into the next morning, I bartended a Texas-OU party held at the famous Sonny Bryan's Smokehouse. It was insane. By 9:30 p.m., the line in front the bar was ten deep and growing. The DJ was cranking out the hits and both Texas and OU fans were dancing and enjoying themselves. Several times, the rivals would start school chants to taunt each other. There were five fights in the bar, but I'm told that was on par considering the rivalry.

Three TVs is a bit much, but so worth it!

On Saturday, I ran errands and met with one of my students in the afternoon. However, the real fun happened in the evening when I brought my TV over to my friend's place and he and I and his brother system linked three Xbox360s and played Borderlands until the wee hours of the morning. It took us a while to figure out/remember how to system link and setup our gaming profiles. But, once we got it done, the action was nonstop.I haven't done that since college and it was a pleasant throwback to days gone by.

On Sunday, I watched football. Nothing new there. All in all, a good weekend, long or otherwise.