So, yeah. Rita completely avoided us. No wind. No rain. No nuthin'. Which is just fine by me. She does seem to have left us a souvenir, though. A wee little bit of extreme heat. We hit 108 on Sunday. The hottest day of 2005 in Austin. I noticed the little doo-hickey in the menu bar on my computer hit 107 yesterday at about 4:30 or so. It dropped a whole degree to 106 by the time I left the office a bit before 6. I went to the McNeil/Leander football game after work and enjoyed the announcement made at 7:50 or so: they'd been informed that the temperature had, indeed, just then dropped below 100. Ugh. That's just too damn hot. In September! We're still in for another day or two of triple-digit heat. Thanks, Rita. Not so good doing bidness with you. Yes, this bidness is much preferred to that done with the likes of Beaumont and Port Arthur. But, still. The heat! Ack. I'm ready for a break.
The game was pretty good, by the way. Leander is the #1 ranked team in Region 15, Class 5A; McNeil is #7. We imagined that Leander would have a fairly easy time of things even though both teams had 3-0 records in non-regional action going into the game. Not so much. McNeil took the opening kick-off right down the field and scored. And, they seemed to run away with the game. They built up a 28-7 lead mostly because Leander started throwing one interception after another. Not sure if it was poor throwing decisions on the part of the Leander quarterback or great reads on the part of the McNeil defense. At any rate, Leander threw at least 4 interceptions (maybe 5) in the middle part of the game. So they went to their ground game. Which, frankly, seems to be rather nonexistent. In the 4th (after getting down by those 21 points), they started throwing again. They threw a bunch of quick 6- or 7-yard passes that the receiver would then turn into 10- or 15-yard gains. McNeil seemed completely unable to stop the onslaught. Leander scored 3 unanswered touchdowns in the final 8 minutes or so of the fourth quarter sending things into overtime. At which point (10:30 at night by now...on a Monday night!), we decided it was time to high-tail it out of Dodge. We listened to the end of the game on the radio (!) and weren't at all surprised by the final outcome. Leander had all the momentum going their way by that point and the McNeil defense seemed rather tired. However, McNeil put up more of a fight than we expected. Leander got the ball first in overtime and scored a TD fairly quickly. McNeil managed to put something together and sent the game into a second overtime. McNeil went first this time and only managed a field goal. Leander finished things off rather quickly on their possession, scoring a TD on the first or second play. Too bad. We had no stakes in the game but were kinda rooting for McNeil since they were the underdog. Which, as I announced when we sat down, was no doubt a bad thing for McNeil. It almost always happens that we sit on the losing side. Almost always. It's so sad. It just doesn't seem fair for a team to be doomed at the outset by the simple fact that we've decided to go to a game. Poor fellas.
. . . .
And, from yesterday's Campus Watch crime report:
Criminal Mischief, 2 counts / Evading / Resisting Arrest / Attempted Escape from Custody (University Police Building)
A UT student walked through a parking lot located on the east side of the building. The student returned a short time later carrying a rock. The student threw the rock at the left side of a parked patrol vehicle two times, causing the left front window of the vehicle to break. The student fled on foot toward Robert Dedman and entered an awaiting Subaru that was being driven by another UT student. Officers were able to stop the vehicle a short distance later. After being stopped and ordered to exit the vehicle, the student who had thrown the rock at the police vehicle fled on foot again. Once that student was stopped, he resisted arrest by kicking at officers. Before being placed in a patrol vehicle, the student attempted to escape by breaking free from an officer and running a short distance. Occurred on 9-25-05 at 10:15 PM.
This report is awfully puzzling, doncha think? What in the world were those students up to? Why do such a thing? Very very odd.
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