Notes, A:

Saw a cool thing on the way to classes yesterday.

I was on loop 820 in an early morning rain when the sky turned into a brilliant white color. Lightning struck a powerline on a tall steel transformer about 100-200 yards away from me. Closest I've ever been to a lightning strike. Coolest thing I've seen in a while.

There was no loud boom, but that might have been a sensory overload -- it was too bright to hear.

Anyway, it was part of a damaging day out here. The power was out at TCC by the time I got there. After spending half an hour in a darkened room with my statistics classmates, school was called off.

It was a wierd half-hour -- the lack of light forces a certain kind of intimacy on the situation. Usually the only people you see in that light are people you've slept in the same room with.

Faces of football:
ESPN has an interesting bit up on college football: "The face of the program." They're naming whatever player, coach, mascot, or whatever "you" most closely associate with every major college team in the country.

Texas Tech's is the Masked Rider. It's the dude who gallops onto the field, leading the football team, at the start of each game. (UTEP's was the Sun Bowl.)

Every Tech fan loves the masked rider, but I'm calling this a whiff -- anyone who's heard of Texas Tech football has heard about coach Mike Leach, his offense, his strange ways.