Every Easter, my family has a tradition of going camping.  When I say my family, I don’t mean my mom and sister.  I mean every member of the extended family who is alive and capable of camping.

These days it’s actually been taken down a generation for population reasons, but when I was a kid it was camping with family members all the way up to my great grandmother.  I guess normal people would call that a family reunion.

Living in Virginia as I now do, I don’t get to go to Easter as often as I used to so I guess my unconscious mind wants to go.  It was one of these Easter campouts that was the setting for one of the strangest dreams I’ve had in some time.

My immediate family were camping in a cabin in my dream.  The front of the cabin faced a large open area where the rest of the family was camping, while the back opened onto a rather busy highway.  It seemed normal as strange dream things often do.

We looked out the window towards the highway and saw two baby zebras sitting on the side closest to us.  We were immediately concerned about their well-being with the crazy highway in front of them.  Wondering where the parents might be, we looked up and saw two adult zebras across the way.

Then there was commotion.  Across the highway, a little bit down from the zebras, was an elephant charging across the highway.  He headbutted a Jeep, and cars careened all over the place.  As we watched it all unfold we were in awe at the destruction the elephant had caused.

But then the elephant kept running — straight to our cabin.  He headbutted the window and it cracked.  We breathed a sigh of relief; we were safe.  But then creaking and cracking… the tree above the cabin was falling.  Panicked, I grabbed my wife and ran out of the cabin.

The cabin collapsed and I turned back realizing that I did not try to save my sister, niece, stepfather or mom.  I went back to the rubble and crawled in and asked, “Is anyone in here?”

My mom replied, “I am.  But Kenny’s [stepfather] going to come get me.  Don’t worry about it.”

Then there were fireworks and a band.  My cousin Mandy was the lead singer and shouted “Happy New Year!”  My wife looked at her watch and sure enough it was midnight.  I don’t know how Easter ended up being New Year’s Eve.

My family was all ok and then my friend Dave showed up because he had heard about the cabin catastrophe and wanted to fix the toilet for us.  He installed a Ford motor in the toilet tank and then showed us how clean of an engine it was and how wonderfully our toilet would run.  For some reason, the motor itself was yellow.

We went back outside to the festivities and I woke up.

Note to Self #1: never go camping when there are elephants around.

Note to Self #2: Contact Dave for toilet problems.

So up here in Northern Virginia, we don’t have Sonic.  I wish we did, but we don’t.  The entire population of Northern Virginia is worse off for it, littered with mindless zombies who think a burger is defined by McDonald’s (I’m looking at you, Rob).

(Apparenly this greatly offends both Rob and Northern Virginians… for the record I was referring to fast food hamburgers, which I do not consider five guys to strictly be as there is no drive thru).

Northern Virginians don’t know the joy of foot-long coneys, or cherry limeades, or tator tots.  Tator tots are the absolute pinnacle of potato creations, by the way.  Don’t let anyone tell you any differently.

Whenever my wife and I travel to Texas (or anywhere south of Northern Virginia), we always find a Sonic.  Some trips are not only accentuated by such visits, but defined by them.  I don’t remember much else about our Outer Banks trip except unswimmable typhoons and Sonic (now with Seagulls!).

One of Sonic’s grander creations is the Toaster.  You’d think it wouldn’t be that special, but there’s something about a burger on Texas Toast that really makes it all the sweeter.

I’m going to go out on a limb and venture a guess that it’s the butter that makes it better.  Butter, like cheese, tends to make just about everything better.

Recently, I got the bright idea of creating Toasters at home.  How hard could it be?  You make a grilled cheese sans cheese, grill some burgers and you’re good to go, right?

Absolutely right!  We made some last night and they were exquisite.  To add to the Sonic vibe, we even fried some tator tots and melted some colby jack on top of them.

I know what you’re thinking, “Come on, Lykaon, you can’t full me.  It’s just a burger on bread instead of a bun.  It’s the same thing.”

But it is not the same thing.  It is something far more heavenly.  I am only sad that I can’t have these creations more often, prepared for me lovingly by some Sonic worker on roller skates.  Well, I guess the kitchen staff doesn’t wear roller skates, but I like to imagine that they do.

So, if you want to spice up your burgers, do something nice for yourself.  Make some Texas Toast and use that instead of a bun.  I promise your burger’s taste will increase manyfold.

So I made it to 30 years old.  It doesn’t seem that long ago that 30 seemed extremely old.  Heck, I was a teenager by the time my mom turned 30.

To usher in the next 30 years, I’ve changed the theme on my blog.  Most of you probably read through an RSS feed and would never know had I not told you, so here’s your notice.

I was looking for a new theme, and I came across this one.  It immediately struck me as the perfect choice.  The old blog had a custom logo at the top with a menacing wolf in the background.

The name ‘Lykaon’ is from greek mythology and helped to form the root for all things wolf, including lycanthropy.

But now that I’m 30, I feel like the menacing wolf is no more.  And a peaceful wolf seems particularly poignant at this point in life.

EDIT: My wife thought that it sounded like I was ready to die with that last paragraph and reminded me that 30 is not so old.  To clarify, I just meant that I feel like I’ve grown up to a point where I don’t have to take things so seriously.

The theme took a lot of customization, but Huge Ackman and his Oscar extravaganza gave me just the excuse to toy around with some code.

I’m still not pleased with the way comments work (you can leave one by clicking the little icon near the title), but that’s something for another day.

I also moved hosting companies to untie Lykaon’s Lair from Strahotski.com.

Strahotski has been doing pretty well for itself and should it become self-sustaining with ad revenue, I think things will be simpler to have the sites separated.

Here’s hoping my next 30 years are as fortuitous as my first 30 years.

So there’s this thing going around facebook where people put down 25 things about themselves and then tag others to do it.  I tried to to resist, as I usually do.

But I found myself thoroughly entertained reading the 25 things of other people, so I decided I should contribute.  I put it in facebook, but I thought I’d post it here on my blog as well.

I’m going to add a bonus one here: Dave put it on his blog, so I feel slightly less silly for participating in this meme.

1. I hate all odd numbers except for the number 5. If I adjust the thermostat or volume, I will always move in twos, and will only stop on a multiple of 5 begrudgingly.

2. I was adopted by my father when I was 3. My birth name was Joshua Paul Lindsey. Barnett is so much better.

3. Two of the greatest men I have ever known are Mr. Ogletree and Mr. Pinkerton, my high school chemistry and calculus teachers, respectively. I frequently check facebook to see if they have joined so that I can friend them.

4. I miss Sarah Palin; not because I wish she had become VP, but because I found her to be endlessly fascinating.

5. I’m glad Joe Biden is VP. He is by far one of the funniest (both intentionally and unintentionally) politicians I have ever seen.

6. I have spent many hours lamenting the treatment of homosexual couples in this country. Any two adults should be able to marry without stipulation. I believe any other solution goes against the very foundations of Freedom.

7. I tend towards being fiscally conservative, but socially liberal. It’s not a good combination when it comes to choosing candidates.

8. I spend an inordinate amount of time playing World of Warcraft. I play female avatars exclusively.

9. I was a ninja turtle freak as a child. I think I still am; my heart flutters when I come across anything remotely ninja turtle.

10. I have become increasingly OCD with age. Sometimes I get so fixated on something that I cannot function normally until I have taken care of it, and it’s usually something completely inconsequential.

11. I love my two cats more than I love most people. I don’t feel bad about that.

12. Though I am overweight, I won’t consider myself obese until I can no longer clasp my hands around my belly. I hope that never happens.

13. There are some people I didn’t know I missed until I rediscovered them on facebook.

14. There are a handful of people in life who I feel I treated unfairly. Sometimes I look those people up and try to work up the courage to apologize. I never have.

15. When I went to my high school reunion in 2007, I was deeply disappointed that nothing had changed. The people who ignored me in high school still ignored me; and I them. I’m not sure who’s fault that is.

16. I hate memes like this, but I so enjoyed reading 25 things about other people that I felt I was obligated to contribute.

17. When my faith and science come into conflict, I am more apt to side with science. Sometimes I worry about how that affects my eternal salvation.

18. I constantly plan for every eventuality. I don’t drive home from work without having thought about how I would handle every situation I can think of; including not being able to switch lanes or being cut off.

19. My Myers-Briggs personality type is INTJ. I am exceptionally proud of that particular classification.

20. Of the seven deadly sins, I am most guilty of Pride. I feign humility far more than I would like to admit.

21. I watch the new 90210. It’s one of my favorite new shows of the season.

22. I took some tests to determine how I felt towards certain minority groups. I was proud to find that I was neutral on african americans and asians compared to caucasian people. I was surprised to learn that I slightly preferred homosexual people to straight people. I’m not sure what that means.

23. I am still holding out hope that Firefly will have a Star Trek style comeback and become a long term mainstay of Science Fiction.

24. I love conventions. I have been to 2 Blizzcons and 2 Star Trek conventions in the last 3 years.

25. I honestly believe Garth Brooks to be in the top 5 of most significant musical entertainers in American history.

I don’t blog about it often, but I enjoy myself some good football.

Growing up, my Mom always watched the Dallas Cowboys and I never really got into it. Yelling at a television was just weird, and I didn’t really understand the rules well enough to care who won or lost.

But then I attended Texas A&M University and my whole perspective on the sport changed. Texas A&M is not a place where you can easily ignore the football team. It is Texas, afterall, where football is almost a religion.

For anyone who’s a fan of college football like myself, this first week of the year marks the week of bowl games leading up to the BCS National Championship game.

I brought in the bowl season watching the Aggies lose to Penn State (how do you beat someone who was around when football was invented?).

I then watched Oklahoma embarass themselves against an under-rated West Virginia team.

What’s up next? Kansas versus Virginia Tech.

Notice a pattern? All three games include a Big 12 team, the conference in which A&M is a part.

A couple of years ago, the University of Texas played for the National Championship against #1 ranked USC. I invited a couple of friends over (literally) and my Aggie friend was rooting for USC the entire way.

Afterall, her time at Texas A&M had taught her that UT was bad. They are the arch-rival of the Texas Aggies, and we should always want them to lose - always.

But I disagree with her, and this arrives at my point — Concentric Loyalty.

I have a levels of loyalty which let me easily determine who my favorite team is for any given game. It’s moderately complex, but perfectly navigable. With over 120+ teams to sift through, it’s absolutely imperative that one have such a system.

The way I see it, any team close to Texas A&M should always win unless they’re playing Texas A&M. Why you ask?

Let’s take the scenario where Texas A&M loses to Team A. I then root for Team A in any match-ups. If Team A wins, then that means they’re a good team and it’s not so bad that Texas A&M lost to them.

In the reverse, let’s say Texas A&M wins against Team A. I still root for Team A to win, because if Team A wins, then A&M must have beaten a pretty good team. See how that works?

Basically, I follow this simple concentric set of rules:

• Texas A&M
• Texas teams
• Big 12 South
• Big 12
• Any team that has played anyone in the Big 12 that A&M has played

It gets complicated there at the end. It’s not always obvious which team is the one to root for in a given match-up, and it requires some real Kevin Bacon style work to figure it out sometimes. It’s not always direct. Perhaps Team A beat Team B who beat Team C who played A&M.

Likewise, there are inevitable match-ups that conflict with my concentric rings of loyalty. What do I do when Texas Tech plays UT? They’re both Texas teams and they’re both in the Big 12 South!

In such cases, the tie-breaker usually depends on the season. More often than not, I’ll root for the underdog in the match-up when I need to decide between two teams that live in the same ring of loyalty.

And then there are strange exceptions. One of those exceptions is Virginia Tech. Because I now live in Virginia, and Virginia Tech shares so much in common with Texas A&M, I tend to root for them in any match-up that doesn’t directly affect the Aggies.

That makes the next match-up between Kansas and VA Tech quite interesting.

So there you have it. A strange look into the concentric loyalty that is my college football fandom. Just one more thing for you to read that you don’t care about brought to you by Lykaon.com.