What happens at the tailgate...

First, I have to brag: my insanely talented friend Douglas Matthews has agreed to play at my wedding ceremony.

He and his wife Melissa have been two of the best friends a girl could have. Along with a few others, they were my rock at an especially low point in my life.

I was so nervous asking him, because, well, he plays piano for a living - what a pain, right? Invited to a wedding and now you gotta work? But he was terribly gracious about it.

I have a hard time asking people for things, even people who, rationally, I know love the heck out of me and want to help me. But there's this stupid part of me that's so afraid to ask. It's stupid. I think I said that already. Moving on...

Tile update: I cut the tile too small and we didn't get it fixed before our guests came. Turned out we had less than expected, so it went smoothly anyway.

The tailgate was a success. Kyle got up around 6 a.m. and headed out to campus. The tailgate was set up, and manned, from 7 a.m. until roughly 1 a.m. that evening/next morning. Crazy, I know. But it's Kyle's thing and it was before I showed up - I'm just an observer/assistant/beer bitch.

Yes, beer bitch. Half of my "job" is to be kinda nasty about who's sticking their hand in our coolers. It's not fun, but if you don't make it known that somebody's paying attention, there are plenty of jackasses who are ready to suck you dry. Food, too - but I left that up to our cook.

A ton of people showed up, including many I hadn't seen in months. It really was fun. And we had a most important element at the tailgate: hot women. And strangely enough, that's part of my "job" as well - taking photos of everybody, including the hot chicks.

A sample:

Okay, I'm kidding. That's just a cute chick and her pretty mommy.

More like this:

Luckily, as we age, so goes the tailgate. It's a lot more "chill" this year, and I had plenty of people come up to me to agree and that it was a good thing.

I had to run off some little girls, but not before they got their fill of our beer and BBQ. You'd be surprised how much a skinny little thang can eat when someone else cooked it and it's free. :)

An exhausting weekend, but great fun.

Oh yeah - the Gators won. Forgot about that...