So, Emaw tagged me with this silly little Twilight Zone meme.

Recall and relate a time when you experienced a “paranormal event”
Explain it rationally if you can
Inflict this meme on 5 other people

Here’s the deal. Paranormal stuff doesn’t happen to me. I live a relatively simple life. It’s a great life, but a simple one. Wake up. Have breakfast. Pray with Alli. Go to work. Do marketing stuff. Sit in traffic. Eat. Watch TV. Sleep. Repeat. I love my life. I’m in a great marriage with a great woman. I have a good, stable job. I have an awesome family and a strong church.

Normal stuff happens to me, so instead of a “paranormal” event, I present to you a pair of normal events. I’ll try and make them interesting and hopefully, they’ll give you some insight into this Shane character that you are so enamored by on the Internets.

The Laugh Track

I was fortunate enough to enter college with my best friends in tow. I didn’t relate very well to my high school classmates. All my closest friends all came from different high schools. They were the clowns I had gone to church with since I was 6 years old and who I had played volleyball with since 7th grade. Most of those fools even read and comment on this blog. It doesn’t suck to have lifelong friends like that.

I loved college. Mike and I had a blast living together my freshman year. Every night we would know exactly when to go to sleep by the giant fart that Mike would blast right before bed. Our schedule looked a lot like this:

Occasionally, there would be a small change in the schedule, but for the most part, that was how I spent the first 2 years of college while living in the dorms. It was a blast.

One weeknight, a bunch of us on our floor had procrastinated on several projects that we had due and so all of us committed to staying up all night and getting our work done. I laughed harder that night than I ever have in my life. I don’t remember the project. I doubt I did well on it. Likely because of the Laugh Track we created that night.

For 2 hours that night, probably around 3 in the morning, we recorded several different laughs into our friend Dan’s computer. And we played them back. Over. And over. And over. I’m certain that part of the reason it was so funny was the hour, and you really had to be there to see why it was so funny, but it was trust me.

(See, I told you my stories were pretty boring.)

“I have a 10″

Very rarely, either Alli or myself has to go out of town for one reason or another. Every summer since she’s been coaching dance, she goes to camp at Emporia State with all her girls for a few days. At least once during those times, I’ll go hang out with my boys and play poker all night long. Low stakes cash games are a lot of fun with a small amount of people around the table set out Jason’s deck with 105.1 Jack FM playing on the outside speakers.

One night last summer, Jason, Jeff, Darin and I started playing around 9 p.m. It started slowly as we mostly just talked and played casually. As the night went on, we began to see a trend. Tens were hitting the board like crazy. I’m not exaggerating when I say that at least one ten was a part of the community cards 60% of the night. I don’t remember who started it, but we got more and more vocal during each time around the table. We began sharing the types of hands that we had. Then, we started completely telling the truth, particularly if we had a ten in our hand.

We were being so honest with our cards that we were even showing our tens after the hand was over. Over time, we stopped showing hands, but were still telling the types of cards we had. “Honest poker” we called it. It turns out that when you get good cards and are dealt tens all night long, you can win at honest poker without bluffing or anything. I managed to walk away the winner that night and I was more honest than the others.

I suppose it pays to be honest at cards sometimes.

So my penance has been paid. The Twilight Zone meme dies with me.

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For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a Kansas Jayhawks basketball fan. I remember when I was 12 in 1988 and they won the National Title. I remember going to the Final Four in New Orleans to watch them in 1993 when Chris Webber called the timeout in the title game that sealed the game for North Carolina.

I’ve experienced the pains of losing to Bucknell and others, but I’ll forever be a Jayhawk, even if I went to Graceland.

Last night, I got to do something that I’ve always wanted to as a fan, but never had experienced - I got to see a game at Allen Field House, the hallowed, historic hall where the Jayhawks call home. My buddy Josh procured some General Admission tickets so we took the trek out to Lawrence with Brett and Mike D for an evening in the best college basketball venue in America.

We got there a little late (driving to Lawrence from JoCo when all of you work makes it hard to get there on time), but the game had barely started. We came in through the KU Hall of Fame, which is really cool. They have the old Midcourt up there, which is pretty neat.

The game was against Washburn, so it was bound to be a blowout, but the real exciting thing was that we got to see the return of Brandon Rush to action. Rush, who hurt his knee in the off-season, returned from surgery much more quickly than expected. I imagine that they wanted to give him a test against a lesser opponent just to see how he did. I think he ended up with 7 points, 0 turnovers, and a block.

It was a fun evening and KU ended up winning by more than 30. The halftime show was all of these frisbee dogs and it was pretty funny. One of them had a red-white-and-blue cape, which was hilarious. They also kept showing scores from the Oregon-Arizona football game, which had BCS implications for the undefeated Jayhawks. When they flashed up that Oregon was losing, the place went nuts.

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I’m a huge Kansas Jayhawk basketball fan. I’ve never been much of a KU football fan because, frankly, they’ve been pretty terrible for a long time. In the past couple of years, Coach Mark Mangino has managed to win some pretty big rivalry games, but overall his team has underperformed, making it to only 2 bowl games (the Mazda Tangerine and Fort Worth bowls - yikes) since he took over in 2002.

KU has started the 2007 season 6-0 and is ranked #15 in both the Associated Press and Coaches polls. They are, however, ranked #13 in the BCS rankings which could mean big dollar signs for the school that has languished near the bottom of the Big 12 football rankings ever since it went from 8 to 12 teams.

This weekend, Kansas goes out to Colorado to attempt to break a streak of 5 straight losses in Boulder. The Buffaloes are a team that is the only blemish on an otherwise pretty good season for the Sooners. Colorado lost by 27 last week to Kansas State, who we all know got beat by KU two weeks ago at home.

It is looking up for the Jayhawks, but this game at Colorado is exactly the type of game that Mangino’s teams have lost in the past. I’m cautiously optimistic, but I imagine that it will take a game like this and then beating Missouri at Arrowhead Stadium on Thanksgiving weekend for most people to actually believe that KU Football is for real.

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