It's time for my yearly conference trip, this time to the great (?) state of Minnesota - Minneapolis to be precise. Other than the Mall of America, is there anything to do in Minneapolis? Any advice y'all could give would be appreciated! Y'all have really helped in the past with Portland, OR and with Charleston, SC, so I'm hoping for some good suggestions: restaurants, bars, breweries, etc. anything like that. Thank you and we are...

It may be a little early for this post, but I'll post it again later if necessary. I am coming up for Blue-White weekend! I haven't been back to State College since December 2007 and haven't been to a game since Northwestern 2006, so I'm really excited about this (hence, the early post). It's the first look at BO'B and the new staff and offense and there's no way Penn State can lose!

My friends and I are planning to tailgate hop throughout the morning and early afternoon (and possibly after the game), and I'd love to meet as many BSD people as possible. Post your tailgate location here if you want it to be known or email me at the email address in my profile. I'm sure I'll also be at the Cafe no later 4 on that Friday!

WE ARE....

I'll be honest. I haven't even looked at the monster thread on the front page. I was in classes or meetings from 11 am to 8 pm and spent 6 hours on my feet and walked about 10 blocks in high-heeled boots. My feet hurt. My calves still hurt from my Monday workout. Yeah, I'm bitching. But mainly, I wanted a new open thread without having to read almost 1000 comments and I have to type 75 words. So there it is. Let's have a real good time.

We have received our first update from Anuj Upadhyay, Overall Donor and Alumni Relations Chairperson for THON. So far, Black Shoe Diaries Members have contributed $630 to THON. Our goal for BSD is $4090 ($10 for every Joe Paterno victory). If you’ve already donated to THON, those donations can still count. Just email your receipt to donor.alumni.relations@THON.org and specify that the donations are for BSD and in memory of Joe Paterno. You can still select which organization you would like your donation to be credited to as well.

If you have not donated to THON, please use their website to donate if you can or find instructions for sending a payment via mail. Thank you all for helping out with this effort!

P.S. Please rec this to get it to the top of the fanposts list! I'll keep posting updates under this thread.

Maybe this has been rehashed too much, but there is a New York Times article with several board members talking about firing Spanier and Paterno. Also, Paul Davies has retracted some of his original statements about Paterno.

The BOT interview link is: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/19/sports/football/penn-state-trustees-recall-decision-to-fire-paterno.html?pagewanted=all?src=tp

and the column link is: http://blogs.phillymag.com/the_philly_post/2012/01/18/changed-mind-joe-paterno/


And even with the full links, this still wasn't long enough for a fanpost. But nobody reads the fanshots! I also may be ahead of the Success with Hyperlinking for tomorrow.

It's Black Shoe Diaries - Late Night edition. I have been in a conference since 8 am (had to get up at 6), then went to a tailgate and football game that WASN'T the OMG Game of the Century/Week! I have been without football almost all day, but didn't miss the explosion over "That Which Must Not Be Named" (hint, I don't want to go there tonight). So let's try to have some fun and forget our troubles!

We're over 1000 comments on the Open Thread #4. I'm surprised we haven't broken the internet yet. Penn State won! All is right with the world! Wisky lost! Suck it Bielema (or however you spell it)! We are #1 in the B1G right now. All is right with the world! I still have a lot of words to cover before I hit 75. So I'll just say:

WE ARE PENN STATE!! WE ARE PENN STATE!!!

Dear John,

I don't know who you are, but I just wanted to tell you or your family members thank you for selling your personally inscribed copy of "Paterno By the Book." Maybe you have a lot of things that read, "To John - I'm proud of you. Keep up the good work. - Joe Paterno," so it's not that big of a loss. Personally, I would cherish something like that. My only regret is that now I don't feel like I can ever ask Joe for an autograph of the book, because then he would know that you, John, did not care enough about him to keep the book. So thanks again. Best $4.12 I ever spent.

Paige2psu

Edited PS, I bought this off of Amazon.com. The vendor was Heroic Image.

Since I'm not a moderator, I can't open a thread without typing 75 words first. Come join me on the new open thread, though. I'm not calling it After Dark cause the last After Dark thread got linked to a real sketchy website. You don't even wanna know. So I still need 20 words.

WE ARE PENN STATE!! WE ARE PENN STATE!! WE ARE PENN STATE!! WE ARE PENN STATE!! WE ARE PENN STATE!! Good.

Reading about jrock4 thinking it's bad to pick your own team to win made me think about how most of us probably have our own superstitions. One of mine is to never DVR a game. Some friends of mine believe that if we win the first game of the year, you have to wear the exact same outfit to every game after that. You can only change it up if we lose. I wore shorts and a 2007 Outback Bowl t-shirt. I'm going to be very cold come December, I hope. I know we're all talking about the game tomorrow, because my stomach is already in knots. So, here we go!

I don't know how many of you may be out there watching the Texas A&M game vs SMU, but I'm watching it and thought a thread might be fun. This IS BSD, we don't have to talk about the football game. But just in case you wanted to...

Did you know that Texas A&M is looking to leave the Big 12, which would cause the conference to completely implode? Did you know that Craig James allegedly killed 5 hookers while at SMU? Texas A&M is favored by 15 points with an over/under of 55.

It's been a long day of pretty good football (except Auburn, my second team, who almost crapped the bed against Utah State). The Evening thread is pretty long, so I thought I throw this party and see who wanted to show up. Any night owls or west coasters out there? It's pretty difficult to fill this up with 75 words sometimes. Am I there yet? No, I still have to post eight more words. That should do it. We are...

I'm posting this on the fanposts, because let's face it, no one reads the fanshots. But I just saw this on twitter and I think I have the jump on you all! LOL! I don't know how to do the formatting, but Derek Moye posted this:

@sgreezy21 is Stephfon Green.

So insiders,  let us know the scoop!