Matt Keith Designs

this past weekend i was introduced to my first taste of appalachian football fever. i didn’t get to come up and visit magan during the football season last year because i was working at a church in windsor, nc, but this fall i’m free on the weekends, which means i get to travel up to boone as often as i want. as all of you may know (unless you’ve been living under a rock) that appalachian won the division I-AA national championship in football last year. as a result, everyone in boone lives for appalachian football. i had only experienced small football games from high school and even smaller ones at chowan, so this whole weekend was a brand new thing to me.

it started on friday afternoon when magan and i went to the bookstore to stock up on some appalachian apparel. i got me a long sleeve nationship championship shirt and a national championship hat. magan also picked up a national championship shirt. that night, there was a lip sync contest,bon fire, pep ralley, and fireworks. it was incredibly cold outside, but it was very fun. it was funny laughing at people making fools of themselves during lip sync. it reminded me of that time i rapped “i’ve got the power” in an american idol thing at chowan and won 3rd place.

the next morning was the parade. definitely better than most parades i’ve ever seen in person, almost as good as santa claus being pulled by a john deere tractor in the fuquay christmas parade. then there was tailgating. now i’ve only tailgated once or twice in my 22 years and both both of those times were with dr. frazier at chowan football games. i guess you could count the years of camping out at nascar races, but football is a different story. anyways, we went to the campus crusade tailgate and hung out there for a few hours, eating food and hanging out with friends.

once we were full, we made our way into the staduim to wait for the game to start. seats filled up fast. i never heard an official count, but people guessed there would be about 30,000 people there, and i don’t doubt that one bit. we stood the whole time and there was no room to move. appalachian laid it on elon and it was 31-10 by the end of the first half. magan and i decided that we had had enough by halftime and just headed back to the apartment to chill for the rest of the evening. i think the final score was like 45-21, appalachian the winners.

all in all, it was a great weekend. i can’t wait to head back up to boone for another game. i’ll be headed to chowan in two weeks for my homecoming. it should be a whole lot of fun hanging out and seeing old friends. magan and i will be traveling up to the boro as well as jenni and craig. we’ll probably do some tailgating of our own and see if we can’t cheer the hawks (they’ll always be the braves to me) to victory.

matt

friday was my 22nd birthday. wow. 22. i can’t belive i’m that old (but still young at heart and will be for a looong time). my family celebrated by going out to the one and only ron’s barn. they have catered events at caswell during the summer and they have the best bar-b-q that i’ve ever had. well they have a resturaunt in sanford and coats and we decided to go to the one in coats to celebrate for my birthday. we ate like gluttons, but i don’t care because the food was heavenly. we came back to the house and i opened some presents. i got a starbucks gift card, itunes gift card, two shirts, and some floormats for my jeep. after that we watched “the island” and called it a night.

last night, i got together with some old friends in raleigh. it was me, dave, steph, todd, and clay. we went out to outback and got some good prime rib steak. afterwards we went and hung out at dave’s new apartment. we had plenty of laughs and it was good to see all of them.

today we celebrated with the rest of my family down in sanford. my grandpa’s birthday is next weekend so we had a big family get together to celebrate. we had some good ol’ fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and of course my favorite, caramel cake.

but that’s not all. i’m stretching out my birthday celebrations as long as possible because i get to celebrate with my magan this coming weekend in boone. she had a retreat this weekend and wasn’t able to come down, so i can’t wait to see her on thursday. i get to go to crusade on thursday night and then friday we are going to go hiking at linville falls. my family is riding up to boone on friday so that my sister can visit lees-mcree college in banner elk. all in all, it is going to be an awesome weekend and i can’t wait.

matt