Like Father, Like Son

I've posted pictures twice before (here and here) and I thought I would hold off this game, but I didn't ... because of my father.

Right before the 2nd half starts is my favorite time to watch Nebraska basketball on TV. The reason, and only for a few more years until they move into the new arena, is because mom and dad luckily have some of the best seats in the house. So at half against Colorado, I see my dad just staring at his phone the whole time. Obviously they are veterans of sitting there, so I was about to send him a text to tell him to look up ... until I got a text from him.

Ha. National television captured someone sending me a text. So what was worth passing up his 20 seconds of fame that he gets every month? A picture of Doug Gottlieb's socks. I think dad was impressed by the sleek sharp suit and the crazy socks that accompanied it, which obviously not a lot of people would recognize.

To tell you the truth, I'm surprised they invited Doug back so soon after they ran him out of town for calling Cookie Miller a punk.

Who would have thought my traffic would have spiked because of Ms Nebraska?

Five years ago, in 2005, Christi competed at Ms Nebraska. Since I was there, I only wrote one post with any content whatsoever about it. Little did I know, Google really appreciated it.

Two things for those that don't know: 1) Because of Christi, I know way too much about the pageant world ... much more than any guy should ever know and 2) because of 1), I know that Ms Nebraska never goes very far in the Ms America pageant. Usually we just joke whenever they randomly show her in the background because that's about as much as anyone cares.

Christi calls to remind me to record the program the other night, and I do, then I get a call from her the next morning. Low and behold, Ms Nebraska pulled it off. First time ever in the history of the program that someone from the Cornhusker state takes home the crown. Still, I'm not as excited as she is and really don't think much of it. Then I happen to randomly check my google analytics stats and notice that everyone is starting to search for her because she won.

I always like to see which keywords bring people to my site. Ever since the Nebraska/Texas game, by far the most is "Wear Red. Be Loud. Beat Texas." After hearing about the video that was posted, I put something up on my blog right away and attracted a good amount of people to watch it on my page. Today however, it was usurped by a new search term: "Ms Nebraska."

Like I mentioned before, because of my previous knowledge, I know there isn't that much traction around the Ms Nebraska pageant (except in '05 when Christi participated, of course). However, I was shocked to see that I was so high on the page rankings for my one little post about five years ago. To make it even better, I also got Christi to show up on the images page for the same search.

Obviously, this will probably change dramatically in the next year as more people become aware of the new title holder, but it was just one of those random surprises that hit me on a Monday morning.

Sometimes you just get lucky

When we were searching for a house out here, it seemed that after meeting with our real estate agent and viewing some homes, Christi and I would always go out to eat and just sit down for an hour or two discussing pros/cons and everything in between.

We got luck with our place since it is literally three blocks away from our rental home, so we knew the neighborhood really well. I vividly remember at one of our sit down conversations, at Max Burger to be exact, I was joking with her that we should have some of our friends randomly go knock on our potential neighbor's doors to make sure we're not living next to the only crazy guy on the street.

Obviously we didn't do that, and when you move in, you just hope you got lucky with the people living around you. I think most people our age are hoping there are a few mid-20s couples living a couple houses away so you can easily relate to someone in a new area. Well, at our end of the block, we could easily be the children of almost everyone living around us. Like I said, you want that young, cool, hip couple to hang out with, but it's more or less luck of the draw. We found out that most people have actually lived in their house for at least 10 years with our neighbor, Alan, taking the cake at 43 years. He's a nice 70 year old guy who throws the biggest parties on the block and is there whenever you need him. And this morning, it was sure nice to have him around.

For the past few years, I keep telling Christi that we don't need to buy a snowblower and that I'm our snowblower. I like to think I'm still young and youthful enough to go out and shovel the driveway when we get some heavier snow a few times a year. Today, I wake up around 7 to shovel out the 18+ inches staring at me on our long and extended driveway. Half way through and fully exhausted, Christi came to help for a little bit. After she had to get back inside, I started seeing the finish line and was about 2/3 of the way done.

This is when my neighbor, without asking for anything, starts up his snowblower, drives it down the street and bails us out. Once again, sometimes you just get lucky who you live next to and today it was a nice surprise to help me, and my back, out in a time of need.

After he was done, I told him he might be the best salesperson ever as he might have convinced me to buy one ... for next year, of course.

Thanks Alan, I owe you one.