>I’ve made a lot of changes in my life since August: I left my job, apartment, city, you know…stuff like that, but perhaps the BIGGEST change in my life is this: I now watch football. College, professional, highschool, whatever.

Highscool football? Yes. My sister teaches art at New Albany High School in MS and this year, we (I mean they), are undefeated! Go Bulldogs! (That’s me eating a pickle at one of their games). College football? An invaluable member of my family played for Alabama and so we roll with the Crimson Tide, except for when my sister, her husband and their 2 children attend every single Mississippi State game they can. Maybe I carefully avoided football during my own college days at Ole Miss because I didn’t want to be the lone rebel in attendance during family holidays…ok, no that wasn’t it at all, but it does make me laugh every time my young nieces shreik in horror when they are reminded that I went to that “other school” in Mississippi.

Professional football? Yep. The problem began a couple of years ago when Eli Manning took the NY Giants to the superbowl, I mean, I was living in NYC and I graduated the same year as Eli from Ole Miss so how could I NOT get a little involved?…and then, well, the next year I visited New Orleans and fell in love and that same year, the SAINTS went to the superbowl and WON! For the first time ever! Bless You Boys! It’s amazing to see how much love there is for the Saints down here and its impossible to not get swept up in it. IMPOSSIBLE.

OK. Enough making excuses. Football is awesome when you live in New Orleans and the whole ENTIRE town is racked with nerves and pride and prayers and rituals that the SAINTS WIN…and it sure don’t hurt nobody when you can watch the game with a bucket of chicken AND a bucket of pickles! There’s no turning back now! Now excuse me, I gotta stand up and get crunk.

Thanks to Nick Horman of Horman’s Best for the awesome bucket of spicy pickles he sent for my birthday!!!!!