Decking the Halls, Part 1: Hokie Dreams

It's that time of year again, and the holiday season means decorations! We got a slightly later start than we'd have liked due to being so busy--I know as a kid that I gave my parents fits pleading to get the tree up earlier and earlier each year, as if somehow that might bring Christmas (and presents) sooner by so doing--but still managed to get the first of our several trees up in line with the family Thanksgiving-weekend tradition.

We started with our "Hokie Tree," a deep maroon tree decorated in orange. Several years ago, Hecht's (and other May's stores) offered a wide variety of funky colors for their Christmas trees. Pink tinsel trees have always been something of a fashionable kitsch, but May's took things to an entirely new level with their lime, lilac, teal, and burgundy lineup. We watched all the local Hecht's for sales (the sticker price of $400+ being more than we could justify), and though our search led us to every mall in northern Virginia, in the end it was my parents who scored the prize at the Kaufmann's in the Charleston Town Center mall. Yes, the normally-priced-$525, seven-and-a-half-foot, pre-lit tree could be had (floor model only) for the Boxing Day bargain of $150.

Our friend Meg Nugent got us a good start on orange ornaments with a selection of "old-world" shapes, and I already had quite a few Virginia Tech ornaments as well. Several years' worth of picking over the post-Christmas deals at Michael's, Target, and every mall department store we could tolerate brought in a bevy of several more orange decorations, and an All Souls' Day (that's November 2) find at Costco added orange LED lights to replace the energy-sucking incandescents on the prelit tree. The orange garland was actually the hardest to track down; eventually, eBay located the stuff as an import from the British Isles and a whopping $7 per 5' strand (ironically, the garland is actually made in the USA).

Putting up artificial trees has gotten significantly easier since the days when as a child I proudly erected my little four foot tree and decorated it with no less than eight strands of lights (I tried to buy a new set to add each year in the Boxing Day closeouts). No more do you have to match the branch colors to the base and assemble, jigsaw-style, the tree from the bottom up. Trees now come in sections with hinged, drop-down branches, and rather than an evening spent looking for that last yellow-tipped branch hastily stowed during take-downs the year before, the tree itself goes up in ten minutes or less.

Still, at seven and a half feet, the Hokie tree is still enough of a beast that it really takes two, and Beth (in her coordinating pink PJs) lent quite a helping hand. Decorating the tree did take several hours as we fit the different orange, VT, and our special ornaments (mostly pet-themed) on and around the many branches.

In-between seasons, the tree stows in a plastic tote (below), another innovating in holiday decorating technology which, for a display model tree which came with no box, is a necessity. But wow, that's one heavy, bulky tote to drag up the stairs each year, inevitably drawing the joke from one of us that there's a body or two stashed inside.

One tree down, several more to go... last year saw us "only" putting up two: the Hokie tree in the living room and my old green tree in the dining room clad in bird-themed ornaments. I've got a beautiful white tree I picked up years ago when I lived alone which we want to finally put up again, it having stayed in storage since 2005 or so.

'Tis the season, eh? Now, if we only have the time and energy to finish our decorations before January...

Virginia Tech Breaks the ACC BCS Bowl Curse

 The ACC hadn't been able to win a BCS football game since one I personally attended back at the end of the 1999 season in early January of 2000: the national championship game at the Sugar Bowl.  Unfortunately, for that one, I happened to be cheering for the Big East...

My alma mater Hokies have made it to the BCS (and its immediate predecessors in the "Bowl Coalition" and "Bowl Alliance") bowls several times, starting with the magical 1995 season and its perfect ending in the 28-10 win over highly-favored Texas.  But from then on out, it was a loss to Nebraska (Orange), to Florida State for the national title (Sugar), a heart-breaker to undefeated Auburn (Sugar), and a depressing loss to Kansas (Orange).  I'll only pause a moment to grumble bitterly about the Fiesta we should have played in ('00-'01), when 11-1, #5 VT got snubbed so we could see #6 Oregon State whallop the lame domers of Notre Dame, 41-3.

But enough history.  The facts are that neither the ACC nor Virginia Tech had been particularly good in the "big game" stage of the BCS.  And having sent seven defensive starters to the NFL along with pretty much the entire receiving corps and backfield gone as well, things didn't exactly look great this year, either--just getting to the Orange Bowl was something of a miracle for Tech in '08.

Until now.  The Hokies just won the ACC's first BCS bowl in nine years, defeating the Big East's Cincinnatti Bearcats 20-7 in a game Tech pretty much dominated outside of the very first possession.

The first day of 2009 did start off on the right foot, I guess!

Some fans (myself included, somewhat) will grouse that it was "just" Cincy--heck, probably most of the rest of college football will say that.  But the truth is that the Bearcats had won 11 games, and the Hokies were an incredibly young team with much to overcome just to reach the Orange Bowl.  Personally, a win is a win; you have to start somewhere!  (Fans last year grumbled about Kansas until we lost that game; they wanted a piece of someone "better.")  The fact of the matter, too, is that the BCS will pair the ACC and the Big East against each other every single year until we as the ACC prove we deserve better--and this is that first step.

Congratulations, Hokies!

A Very Hokie Home Office

The renovations at Chateau Papillon still have quite a ways to go; we've yet to replace the baseboards in the basement (and, in fact, still need to put down a narrow strip of cork flooring to finish the floor), and the library has been painted but little else as yet--no floor-to-ceiling shelves, no bamboo floor, no light fixtures.  But there is one room almost completely finished: my home office.

As you can see in the photo above, there's little doubt where I went to college.  I chose to paint the office walls in Home Depot's Collegiate Collection "VT Maroon" for an authentic look (more on that in the earlier blog entry, "Mothers, Don't Let Your Daughters Grow Up to Be Princesses"), and Linens 'N Things' going-out-of-business sale offered up these two orange curtains.  That VT football field rug came from Kohl's, I believe, via my parents.  The VT football endtable is a gift from my aunt Marian, like the Tiffany lamp.

Of course, my two diplomas were among the first things to be hung on the wall.  I'd really like to add another or two (I do need to finish my M.A. in English; a M.S. in Computer Science or a M.F.A. in Creative Writing would be nice, too)--but I'd have to move things around a bit to make space!

This disturbing Salad Fingers wall plaque (crafted by my sister and her husband, and hanging in my office only because Beth wouldn't have it out "in public" near the front door where I'd wanted to put it) holds several pieces of Virginia Tech "flair," including bowl game ticket stubs for two Sugar Bowls (including the national championship game for '99-'00), a Gator Bowl, and various Hokie-themed bead strands collected in New Orleans.

My office is a bit of a "Where's Waldo" exercise in picking out all the Hokie-themed memorabilia.  This shot of the side wall shows a Tiffany VT lamp my aunt gave me a few years ago, along with my custom-made VT shoes (from the now-defunct Customatix), a Hokie bird beanie baby, a photo of Hokies Matt, John, and Zina from the '06 UNC game, and--if you look really closely--the "Dr. Who" Hokie scarf Beth crocheted for me several years ago (yes, it's approximately thirteen feet of orange and maroon warmth).  As the library isn't finished yet, I've got many of my birding references as well as some of my signed and vintage hardbacks and favorite paperbacks set up in the office bookshelves for now.

Aunt Marian has given me several VT football-themed plates as well; I don't yet have a place set aside to hang them, though once the library is set up, I may put them atop my office bookcases.

Of course, my office renovations aren't quite complete yet; I still have to finish nailing up the baseboards and put in a strip of shoe moulding as well.  But for now, my office is certainly one of the more-complete rooms at Chateau Papillon.

A Trip to Lincoln for Some Football

For those of you who haven't visited my sadly out-of-date home page, let me fill you in on a small fact: I am a huge college football fan. My wife's reaction when I turned on the first game of the season a few weeks back was telling: "Great, football season already?" She knew I'd be glued to the drama of game after game for the next several months.

This past weekend, I traveled to Lincoln, Nebraska, to watch my Virginia Tech Hokies take on the Nebraska Cornhuskers. This was a game I'd looked forward to ever since it made the schedule, a quality out of conference contest at one of the toughest venues in college football. Even busy with our house hunt and trying to save money left and right, I knew this was a game I had to attend; how often do you get to see your team play Nebraska in Lincoln if you're not from the Big 12?

True, Nebraska may lack the luster of its championship years of the past, but we're still taking about a team that rarely loses at home to out-of-conference foes--prior to playing Tech, Nebraska had only lost at home at night four times ever, to the likes of USC and top-10 Washington and Texas teams. Championship contenders or not, Nebraska plays hard at home, and few (myself included) expected a Tech win--I was simply hoping for a good game.

Let me stop for a moment and point out that the Nebraska fans are by far and away the classiest group of people I've ever encountered. Perhaps my trips to Morgantown, WV, home of the flaming couch-burners, and the countless beers and f-bombs tossed my way by their fans (as well as moonings and curse-laden tirades by their fans on the road in Blacksburg!) has colored my expectations for football fans. But nonetheless, all day long we had Nebraska fans thanking us for coming to the game, mentioning how impressed they were by the number of Tech fans who'd made the trip, wishing us well and expressing the hopes for a good game, etc. During the contest, we didn't have drunk Nebraska students screaming obscenities at us or the refs. And afterwards, we were congratulated by many an unhappy fan in red and black. Heck, when I arrived at my hotel after the game, a Nebraska fan asked me what I thought of their hospitality, asked if I'd been mistreated at all, etc., to which I was honestly able to say: "No, you guys are the best fans I've ever met, and I really hope we can return the favor when you come to see us next year in the 'burg."

I won't go into detail about the game, but needless to say, it was exciting and fun to watch, particularly since Tech came out on the winning end when the final whistle sounded. I may have been bleary-eyed when headed to the airport the next morning in Omaha (where I received an op-up to first class due to the plane being so full--didn't even have to spend an upgrade certificate!), but in the end, it was a great trip and well worth the time.

If you're a fan of college football and have a chance to travel to Lincoln, I really encourage you to avail yourself of the opportunity. You won't regret it, regardless of the outcome of the game.