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Well… To say the least it has been an incredibly awesome and totally entertaining day. I really can’t believe it. I have enough good stories to last me the rest of the semester just from today. Let’s recap shall we?

So, I flew out of Boston this morning to visit my cousin Scott in Waco, TX. He goes to Baylor, and his sister Kate was also coming down from Kirkland, WA at the same time. We’re all pretty tight, so I was really looking forward to it. The flight was fairly uneventful. I caught up on some school reading and such. Plus, they actually had Dr. Pepper on the plane. Cool!

I fly into Dallas and my cousin calls me while I’m walking outside. He was driving to pick Kate and I up in his friend’s car, and he had gotten in a wreck. Nobody got hurt, but the cars were in rough shape (driveable, but rough.) It turns out that the other driver was from Africa and didn’t speak much English at all. He was driving towards the toll booth in 8 lanes of one-way traffic when he suddenly decided that he didn’t want to be going in this direction, so he pulls a huge U-Turn into oncoming traffic! My cousin tried to swerve out of the way, but ended up clipping his rear, and took off most of the left-front part of the car. The police came and quickly realized that the other driver was pretty much in another world and told my cousin that they’d get everything worked out.

Luckily, the car is still driveable, so he picks me up and we’re off to pick up Kate from another terminal. As soon as we accelerate past 20 MPH, we quickly realize that we’re going to need to do something about the loose paneling which the wind has now turned into a giant razor wing extension off the side of the vehicle. We pick up Kate, pull over at a gas station, and a little bit of bending and a duffel bag strap later, we have our clever solution to the problem. (The bag strap was Kate’s idea, and a darn good one.)

We were so happy with our clever solution that we failed to realize one small problem. In the process of fixing our loose panel problem, we had cleverly locked ourselves OUT of the car. Sweet. Luckily, we had a key fob that ONLY unlocked the trunk of the car, so with a little bit of contortion and some squeezing of hands through seats, Scott was able to climb back into the car through the trunk and unlock the doors. Score 2 for us!

So, after all of this excitement, we drive down to Waco, visit the cool old house where Scott lives, and get shown around Baylor. We ate dinner at an awesome TexMex place called Ninfa’s, and I had some really great fajitas. (You were right Brian, it IS better here!) Then, we were off to the Baylor pep rally to watch them burn a giant Texas Tech symbol atop a huge pile of wood.

After the bonfire, we were all pretty tired, so we headed back to Scott’s house for some sleep. We thought the excitement of the day couldn’t possibly be topped. Boy were we wrong. I walk into the bathroom, and while I’m trying to find the light switch, I notice that someone before me forgot to flush the toilet. I flip on the lights and … wait a minute … is that a RAT? No, wait … that’s a SQUIRREL! There’s a SQUIRREL in the toilet! And … HOLY COW IT’S STILL ALIVE. I calmly proceeded to tell Scott that there was an animal in his toilet. He didn’t believe me until he went and then sure enough, there it is. Soon his housemates came down to see what the commotion was and we’ve got a regular old party. Once again having to rely on our clever instincts, we quickly assemble a plan. My cousin Kate, who is already considerably freaked out, will stay in the hall and hold the dog so he doesn’t try to eat the squirrel. Now let’s see, squirrels carry diseases right? And a toilet squirrel? Well, that must be worse… yeah. Let’s get some thick winter gloves for bite protection, and then some rubber gloves over that. Then, the squirrel was grabbed, tossed in a trash can, quickly covered with a shoebox lid, and thrown outside. As if that wasn’t enough, by that time the squirrel had mostly drowned, so one of Scott’s housemates got his pistol with ratshot and did the poor creature a favor. We still have no idea how a squirrel ended up in the toilet. It boggles the mind.

This has got to be one of the craziest days of my life. I’ve got video of the whole incident. Just golden. I wonder what will happen tomorrow? As they say, “Only in Texas…”