who doesn't love death valley on a saturday?

i claim that i'm not that big of a clemson football game, but there's nothing like the allure of death valley on a perfectly crisp autumn day. this past saturday, i don't think we could have asked for a more beautiful day to have our last home football game. i woke up at around 11 after a good 9 or so hours of sleep expecting to look out my living room door and see a grey landscape drizzled with puddles and rain droplets, since that seems to be the theme of the weather for clemson football this season. but to my surprise, the sun was shining bright and the yellow and orange leaves of the oak trees had never looked so resilient. i showered and went out to tailgate, and tailgate i did. i think i consumed for mini sandwiches, chicken nuggets, apple slices, and dr. pepper's than i ever have in one sitting. but boy was it worth it. with the warmth of all that food i just engulfed sinking in, my friends and i headed into the game to witness greatness. there's nothing quite like sitting in the student section amongst 80,000 of my closest friends. the game was awesome, CJ Spiller is awesome, and clemson is awesome. it really is the best place in the world.

thanksgiving is my favorite season.

i guess technically thanksgiving is not an actual season like winter, spring, summer, or fall, but thanksgiving is most definitely my favorite season of the year. one of the main reasons i love thanksgiving is because it lies in the real season of fall, which just happens to be my favorite season of them all. anytime that i can get pumpkin cream cheese at einsteins on a bagel and eat said bagel while speeding down a mountain road flanked by orange, yellow, and red-leaved trees is a great time. but anywho, let me give you a run down the rest of my favorite things about thanksgiving (in no particular order):

1. cornbread dressing

2. football

3. family

4. no school

5. tryptophan

6. cool weather

7. autumn leaves

8. pumpkin pie

9. friends

10. more cornbread dressing

yes, i know. most of those are foods. but lets be honest, who doesn't love a huge thanksgiving meal?

i promise i have a good reason.

so the reason i waited till today to write my blog for last week was because i knew something epic was going to happen last night. and boy was i write. since tl hanna didn't have school yesterday, we figured it would be a good time to do a little old fashioned younglife scavenger hunt. and of course, as you probably guessed, it wasn't just any old fashioned scavenger hunt. the plan was to break them up into teams and give them a checklist of things they had to do around the anderson mall (if you haven't been there, don't bother) ranging from having a makeup lady in dillards put eye shadow on a boy to gathering 10 toothpicks from food court free samples. and for a little added flair, 5 of us leaders were disguised and hidden around the mall and were worth extra points. i of course was dressed as a janitor and was carrying around my cleaning caddy in the men's section of belk polishing mirrors and cleaning windows. well, as awesome as our plan was, we ran into a little difficulty. two words: mall cops. well they quickly shut down the scavenget hunt, saying that roaming the mall in groups of 6 or more is considered gang activity. real cool anderson mall. we were also told we couldn't take photographs in the mall due to protecting homeland security. what? that doesn't even make sense. one cop was nice enough to sympathize with us and share that even though he's taking crime scene photography classes at tech, they still wouldn't even let him take pictures in the mall. what a travesty. but nonetheless, the cop call threats and name-taking threats subsided and we cleared out to chickfila, where the love and milkshakes flowed freely. you may think we counted the night as unsuccessful, but you'd be wrong. after going to lunches at the school today and hearing people talk about younglife getting in trouble with the cops and getting kicked out of the mall, i'd take on the mall cop anyday. bring it on paul blart.