Now looking back into the past six months one of the things that has been going on that has taken up a lot of my time is football season. I guess it's fair to say that I'm a huge college football fan. I definitely try to make it to as many games as possible. Of course I go to a lot of Kansas State's home games but I try to travel and see some great road games as well, featuring other college football powers. This year I was able to make it to five different road games. The first one was the Michigan State @ NotreDame game. This has been a rivalry for many years and the Notre Dame campus is full of history. I went with my buddy John Moyer, his brother Jesse Moyer and his brother-in-law. The game itself was great, Notre Dame ended up winning a close one.
The best part of this trip though was walking around their campus and seeing the Golden Dome, the Grotto, and Touchdown Jesus. Also our front row seats weren't bad!
The next game that I went to was the Kansas State @ Miami game. This trip was a blast, not only did KSU win a nail biter but I was with great people and Miami is one of my favorite cities to visit. On the trip was Whitney & I, Antoine & Laura, and Cody & Jen. We definitely did things right in Miami, we got a cabana at Fountainebleau on the Friday before the game and then some of Antoine's friends had a huge tailgate for us on Saturday. We stayed at Loews Miami Beach Hotel and I definitely recommend that place if you are making a trip there. It is a five star resort that is in a great location and the staff is incredible. (www.loewshotels.com/Miami-Beach-Hotel)
The following week Whitney and I flew up to Milwaukee to meet up with a couple old roommates of mine, Elliot Enright and Joe Ranum. We went out with them in Milwaukee on Friday night and then the next morning we all packed up and drove to Madison for the Nebraska @ Wisconsin football game. Elliot's parents were kind enough to have us over for lunch and drinks and then right after that we went downtown Madison to tailgate for the game.
As you know, Nebraska got killed in this game but nonetheless the atmosphere was amazing. One of my favorite parts of the game was right before the fourth quarter they played the song "Jump Around" and the entire stadium as jumping...you could literally feel the place shaking. And it was Nebraska's first Big 10 game so the game was definitely hyped up. We went out on the town afterwards and had a great time. It's always good to see Elliot and Joe...GREAT guys!!
The next game on my college football extravaganza ended up being a real doozy. It was LSU @ Alabama. This game was a huge matchup, #1 vs. #2 in the country. And of course, this was the weekend of "Gameday Crashers". First I need to fill you in on what Gameday Crashers is. About five years ago Adam Gall and myself decided to pack up and go to a FSU @ Miami game. Well this trip was complete chaos but we had a blast and saw a great game. At that point in time we said that we are going to start a tradition of going to a big road game every year, get more friends involved and then we slapped the name Gameday Crashers to it. Well we have continued the tradition and this year we had five guys go the game in Alabama. Because of a majority vote we ended up driving to Alabama. However on the way we made a pit stop in Nashville and partied there on Thursday night. It was a great time and it was cool to see all of the live bands they have playing there. On Friday we finished our trek to Tuscaloosa. I'm not going to give all of the details of this story but I will just say that it got pretty wild. We did see a great game though and the atmosphere was electric, as you know this ended up being the national championship matchup. We also got to see the Gameday crew and a 2,000 lb. bowl of gumbo.
On the way home though things got interesting. We had a long drive home on that Sunday and by the time we had made it to Missouri it was getting pretty late. At about midnight a couple of deer came out onto the interstate and in our lane. We were speeding a little, the cruise was set at 79 mph. Well long story short we ended up swerving to miss the deer and rolled my Envoy three times and landed at the bottom of a 30 foot ditch. There was three of us in my vehicle and I can honestly say that we are all three lucky to be alive right now. I have attached a couple pictures of my car from that night, although it's kind of hard to see because it was dark.
It is a blessing though that we walked away with minor injuries and were able to be back to work later that week. Especially considering that NONE of us had our seat belts on. That is a lesson to learn here, make sure to always wear your seat belt and never swerve to miss a deer. I was actually thrown from the front passenger seat to the back of the Envoy and that probably wouldn't have happened if my seat belt was on.
The last road game that I went to was the Cotton bowl to see KSU play Arkansas. Although the Cats lost it was still a great time. I had a bunch of friends from work that went to the game and we had a blast. Cowboys Stadium is unreal, put that on your bucket list of things to see!! They said that the jumbotron alone cost more than the old Cowboys Stadium.
Now rewinding just a tad from the Cotton Bowl, I did have to get a new car after the wreck on November 6th. So I was doing some car shopping there for a few weeks and I ended up getting a Lexus GX470. I definitely love it so far and I glad I chose it over the others I was looking at! And it's nice to finally have four wheel drive, especially since I'm driving to Topeka from Lawrence for work now. I have also pretty much completely finished up the house now. The office and spare bedroom are complete, I will have pictures posted soon.
Other than the events listed above I've just been grinding it out at work and try to lay the groundwork for a great 2012. In fact our biggest work event of the year takes place every January and this year we went to Hollywood. It is an event where we recognize all of our top financial advisors that we work with for the great years that they had in 2011. We also have some really good speakers at the event. This year included Jim Stovall (author of The Ultimate Gift), the Disney Institute, Dan Allison, Bill Atcheson, our top 12 advisors from last year and last but certainly not least, Jay Leno. I actually got to briefly meet Jay after the show and get a picture with him so that was pretty cool. I have never been a big Leno fan prior to this event but after seeing him live I have a new respect for him. He spoke for an hour and literally had the crowd laughing the whole time, no breaks and many of his jokes were regarding current events so you know it wasn't a canned presentation that he had given a hundred times. Pretty impressive. Hollywood itself was really cool, I had never been to California at all so I really enjoyed the trip and seeing Los Angeles.
The other thing that I would like to share before wrapping this up is a book I just finished. If you are anywhere from the age 18 to 40 then I strongly suggest you read this book. It is called "Millionaire By Thirty: The Quickest Path To Early Financial Independence" by Doug Andrew and his two sons Emron and Aaron. Don't be fooled by the title, even if you are already past thirty or close to it, you can definitely still benefit from some of the investing and budgeting strategies that they share in the book. As a brief summary, this book does a good job of breaking down all of the financial pitfalls that burden the common person that is either in college, just out of college looking to buy their first home, or even someone who is further along than that and is just looking for accelerated ways to grow their net worth and investable assets in a tax advantageous way. To find the book just look it up on Amazon, it's cheap and well worth your time!! (http://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Thirty-Quickest-Financial-Independence/dp/0446501840)
Until next time remember this from Boris Pasternak, "Man is born to live and not to prepare to live".
