My grandfather loved Shakespeare. Grandad was convinced that psychology, a discipline he actually taught at the college level, was unnecessary; Shakespeare had already figured it all out. The conflicts between children and parents, the battle of id and ego, the reviled among us speaking the most eloquent truths, the dangers of pride (and women), tragedy, comedy, nonsense, elation, depression, dysfunction, redemption...it's all in there.

We used to sit around his kitchen table and talk Shakespeare. The other topic was always football. Grandad, who went by "Bulldog" once upon a time, was a nasty and undersized guard in the 1920s, later a disciplinarian, but innovative, coach who won lots of high school football games he had no business winning. He then returned to his alma mater and becoming a gentleman professor and dean of men.

Enchiladas y Mas used to be a Mexican joint; that's when it was in the tiny brick building at Dean Keeton and I-35, adjacent to the Roadway Inn, which was one of the places folks stayed for college football weekends back when folks stayed in motels and could easily afford tickets for a family of six during parent's weekend. Had it been a few blocks to the east, Enchiladas y Mas would have been a dive instead of a joint. Now that it sits on Anderson Lane, it's a restaurant. This newfound status thankfully hasn't changed the food quality. EyM serves up great classic Tex-Mex, the kind that food critics snobbishly disdain because it contains no organic goat cheese or pumpkin seeds. Pure comfort food made by a family that shuts the whole place down for a week every summer so that they can vacation together. This irritates me because I never put their vacation on my schedule and always bring the family to a closed restaurant once each June. Then I remember why: a) I live in Austin and b) don't eat at Applebee's.

The blood rushed straight to my head; it came with a searing pain moving from both of my ears in a sprint colliding in the center of my skull. I think a ghost hit me with a frying pan. That's the moment I blacked out. For a brief second, all I saw was a bright pink floral pattern in a sea of black. I lost my balance, standing on my bleacher seat in the upper deck, only about a fourteen-inch width of pressed aluminum separated me from a concrete-induced concussion. I faltered, tottered, recovered; hands on my knees, pushing myself upright, the fog lifted, the pain subsided and I could see again clearly in the October Texas sun.

"I dreamed I felt the presence of God last night."

"You probably were in the presence of God."

"No, it was just a dream; it wasn't real life."

"Dreams are real life. They belong to you."

The voice says East Texas. The vocabulary says Vanderbilt. No wonder I fell in love. She ordered a Bass Ale on our first date. She suggested we buy Longhorn season tickets together. She loved Truman, the Brittany rescued from the Town Lake Animal Shelter. Her friends threw an engagement party for us at Dart Bowl. She bought me a Martin guitar as a wedding gift. She was far angrier at Mack Brown for the 2002 Oklahoma game than even I was, seething over post-game margaritas at the Blue Goose on Greenville.

Deer do not eat Burford Holly. Or at least they don't enjoy it, Burford Holly being sharp, overly chewy, bitter, poorly paired with red wine and generally deer-resistant. Every piece of landscaping advice I have sought in my career as a homeowner lists Burford Holly in the deer-resistant column. The deer in my neighborhood are poor readers. Or smartasses, one. They have chewed through a few hundred bucks worth of plants over the last few years, which they digest and then deposit back on my front lawn in an effort to screw up touch football games and my ability to retrieve the paper in bare feet. They sleep just outside my front door, sometimes four or five at a time. When I start out the front, they all look mildly surprised to see me, then irritated, like insolent teenagers awakened too soon on a Saturday morning. "What?" they seem to ask. Like any good parent, I begin the lecture.

Climbing hills taxes a man. I'm speaking physically, not metaphorically. The aptly-named Mountainclimb Drive bisecting my neighborhood provides such a test. I need about six minutes to get up it at a decent pace. By "decent" I mean fast enough to think well of myself at the top, but not so fast I suffer cardiac arrest. One Saturday this summer, Mae the Boxer and I passed a man on our ascent. It was about 85 on the way to 117 in Austin that day. In his mid-fifties, this man wore khaki pants, a long sleeve dress shirt and a tie. The yarmulke gave him away; he was going to Temple. I'm guessing his destination had to be the conservative congregation, Agudas Achim. That meant he had another two miles to go and a couple more major hills to climb in the Texas heat. That's commitment. Faithfulness.

The Duke sweatshirt went missing years ago. The last tangible proof that I went to grad school there, other than the diploma I guess, it was classic old school style with the white cut-out block letters in all caps sewn onto the dark blue front. I don't know if they make them like that anymore. One night about a decade ago, the shirt attracted some attention at the Tavern (you're never too far from 12^th and Lamar). A bunch of us were shooting pool when a girl took notice of me, or the shirt anyway.

"That's so cool, did you go to Duke?"

I was interrupted by my friend Trey Campbell, who was always quicker than me.