Throughout the week leading up to the Culligan Holiday Bowl, Texas sophomore safety Nathan Vasher will be keeping a diary about his bowl experience. Check back on December 26 for his last new entry.

It's great to be in San Diego and getting ready for the Holiday Bowl. Everything has gone pretty smoothly so far.

	Safety Nathan Vasher led the Longhorns in 2001 with seven interceptions and set the UT single-season record of 554 punt return yards.

I had a chance to spend some time with my family before heading out here. I caught my flight from Dallas after dinner Saturday night and checked into the hotel at around 11:30 p.m. I pretty much just got settled the first night because we had to be up at 6:30 this morning. When we got up we had a pretty good continental breakfast at the hotel, had position meetings and watched some film on Washington before practice. We had a good practice today. It felt great to get back on the field after a couple of days off.

This afternoon we went to Sea World and it's the second year in a row we got to go. It's a lot of fun to see all the different types of fish because we definitely don't have anything like that in Texarkana where I'm from. A lot of people only get to see those sorts of fish on television, and to see it in person was a lot of fun. It's also a chance for the guys to get out of the hotel and spend some time together off the field and that's what makes trips like this so much fun. We are really a close team and any chance we have to do things together we enjoy every minute of it.

After Sea World most of the guys came back to the hotel to relax. I know some of us will be going to the players' lounge later where there's a lot of different games for us to play. There's some video games, a mini-basketball hoop, an air hockey table and some other cool stuff.

I'm going to try to make it to bed early tonight because we've got an early practice tomorrow. Plus, I'm planning on doing a little Christmas shopping in the afternoon before we go to the Zoo. I'd really like to find some stuff for my mother and brothers and there's some great places to shop in San Diego.

The thing that has been different for me this year is that I don't have the anxiety leading up to the game that I had last year at this time. It was my first bowl game last year and I wasn't sure how things would be. But this year I feel a whole lot more comfortable being able to balance practice, free time and the bowl functions we go to while staying focused on Friday's game.

After seeing the Washington guys at Sea World today I can tell it's going to be a great matchup and even though I'm having a great time, I can't wait until game day.

For more on the Longhorns, check out www.mackbrown-texasfootball.com!