Brian MacLeod’s One Steining Moment: Homecoming 2013

Over the next five days, in the spirit of the uber-cheesy music montage that concludes CBS’s annual coverage of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, each of your Fill The Steins contributors will be sharing their “One Shining Moment” from Homecoming 2013.  This could be anything from running into an old college buddy at the football tailgate, to a particularly memorable interaction (positive or negative) with the fine folks at UMaine Public Safety, to an especially delicious batch of zingers at the Pat’s Pizza postgame party.  Basically, it’s a way for the members of the team here at Fill The Steins to reflect on Homecoming 2013 with a personal memory that they’ll carry with them forever.  Feel free to share your own “One Shining Moment” from Homecoming 2013 in the comments section below.  In the meantime, our Sports & Leisure Contributor, Brian MacLeod, gets things kicked off:

The 2013 edition of University of Maine Homecoming was an unusual one for yours truly, due primarily to the fact that I wasn’t there.  After living with arthritis in my hips from the age of 10, I made the decision this summer to undergo total hip replacements on both sides.  The first of the two surgeries took place on October 11, making it impossible for me to travel to Orono after just one week of rehab.  So, for the first time in ten years, I was absent.

However, my “One Shining Moment” from Homecoming 2013 is that I really wasn’t.  No, I’m not just talking about the life-size cardboard likeness that occupied my normal spot in our tailgate.  I’m talking about my virtual presence.  With our website’s re-launch back in August and the high concentration of Twitter users in Fill The Steins Nation, our FTS presence was not only at our #BlurredSteins tailgate last weekend, but on social media as well.  Even though I may not have been in Lot C (at least not in three dimensions), I was able to interact with my fellow Fill The Steins contributors as well as those of you who read our website, follow us on Twitter, and stopped by our tailgate. 

My physical absence from this year’s Homecoming festivities made me really appreciate everything you, our readers and followers, have done to build Fill The Steins into something tangible in just over two short months.  Without this entity to tie us together, I would’ve been lost, bored, and irritated all weekend, knowing that I was missing out on one of my favorite events of the year.  But through our interactions on Twitter and our live feed on the website, I WAS able to be there, and I’m grateful to each and every one of you for that.

As Fill The Steins continues to grow and as I continue to rehab from surgery #1 while prepping for surgery #2, I can’t help but already be excited about Homecoming 2014.  Fill The Steins is sure to be bigger and better than it is today, and I’ll be sure to be there, in the flesh (and titanium), to personally thank each and every one of you for your support and for keeping me present, via social media, at Homecoming 2013.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

About "Fill The Steins": A multimedia platform devoted to providing an informative, entertaining forum that celebrates "the college of our hearts always" and its graduates' contributions to academics, athletics, and popular culture, as created by alumni and students, for alumni and students. FTS is not affiliated with the University of Maine or UMaine System and does not represent the views or opinions of the university in any way, shape, or form.
Copyright © Fill The Steins

This blog has been archived

This blog has been archived and is no longer being updated.