Saturday afternoon my aunt Vicki and her crew — boyfriend Paul and friend Ralph — rolled into town for the UT-Memphis football game, an affair we had been planning for months. We had a few hours to kill and found ourselves at India Palace, heaping piles of deliciousness onto stark white buffet plates. Why is it that I can never remember to wait and get a big plate from the middle, and instead, always end up using the smallish dessert plates for my noms? Anyway. I cracked the “hey guys, watch how many refills we’ll get” joke a little too loudly, I think, because I ended up only getting two. TWO! At one point my water glass even reached nearly empty. Maybe they were short-staffed, I dunno. Also, the bf was unamused by my “punch the horse painting” joke, probably because I had no way of explaining exactly what the hell that even meant, even when sitting there, staring at said horse painting face to face, but how can someone not laugh at that phrase alone? Just say it and try not to laugh. Or think about masturbation. See? Funny shit.
We killed a couple of additional hours at my house, getting our pre-game on, and then it was a short walk to the Liberty Bowl (yay free parking!), where I was a tad dismayed to watch the stadium fill up with orange. Poor Tigers. Even when the Vols suck, their fans come to watch. The game was pretty brutal to behold. I tried to be an impartial observer; I sure am not going to root for UT and my loyalties don’t exactly lie with the Tigers either, but they are my hometown team and it hurt to see them get beat up the way they did in front of a teeming, taunting orange crowd. Alas. Sports, she is a cruel mistress.
I missed nearly the entire first quarter because I took it upon myself to go in search of beer for the group, since auntie had bought my first round and gotten me into the game. Lord god, the belly of the Liberty Bowl reminds me of both the New York City subway system and also some apocalyptic movie where everyone lives in underground tunnels and buys wares with cash — CASH!!! — from price-gouging kiosks. Oh, and there is only one working ATM in the entire world and it is located exactly halfway around the globe, so have fun getting there and back in a reasonable amount of time. Oh, and the beers are $7 and the Budweiser hawkers will only let you have two at a time, which puts a crimp in your plan to shove several in your purse and share with the group. Oh, and you can’t get a text out to inform your group that you are, in fact, not dead, just running behind on accounta the ATM situation and the bathroom situation (oh how I longed for a Stadium Pal) and the beer situation. IT’S MADNESS UNDER THAT STADIUM. Up top, however, it’s quite nice. I’d never been in there before and I must say I think the Liberty Bowl’s quite fetching, despite its age. Paul kept describing it as “undulating,” and I think that’s about right.
The score hit 50-7 and we decided that there was probably no big come-from-behind U of M win to keep us there past the third quarter, so we vamoosed. We heard the Tigers score a touchdown somewhere between the stadium and my house. My Vol-loving companions were unfazed.
It was great to see dear auntie; I think the last time we saw each other was Christmas of ’08, in the mountains at the Timeshare of Family Near-Breakdown (which she luckily missed by a day or so). That’s just too dang long between visits and I intend to remedy that in the coming year.
Photo up top is a composite made using AutoStitch Panorama for iPhone.
Amen, and amen! To each and every statement! Luv ya girlie!