316: Christmas Cookie

Another snowed-in kind of day (with the exception of a walk to the grocery store) meant the perfect day to have our Christmas Cookie scented candle lit.

315: Snowy Day

The weatherpeople were actually right for once and we got about 5 inches of snow here today. Eddie had work most of the day so I ventured out on my own in the middle of the afternoon to walk around campus. I was surprised at how few students were out playing but did find evidence that they had been there in the form of a row of snow angels.

314: Talent Show Time!

Tonight Eddie and I headed to Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic School for their Spaghetti Dinner/Talent Show. Grace made the talent show this year on piano and her sister Katie sang with two of her friends. It was a fun little event and Grace played very well!

(For those curious readers wondering why I'm posting so late....I had the pleasure of hanging out with the KKPsi Brothers from the Mu Nu Chapter (CNU) as they did their formal interviews and met to extend bids of membership. It's been really fun to watch them grow and to learn. I am thankful that they let me hang around as it really makes me remember why I became a brother.)

313: Never too old...

Tonight while in Dick's Sporting Goods we found a bin of bouncy balls that claim that they could be bounced up to 75 feet high. If you put a label on a bouncy ball that says that and place them in a store with really high ceilings you are just ASKING for people to bounce them! This photo was taken right after the Dick's employee asked us (and by us I mean Kathleen) to stop bouncing them so high. I love not acting my age!

312: That by their might and by their right, It waves forever

Tonight I went across the street to the Ferguson Center for the Arts Music & Theater Hall for the "Polished Brass" concert which featured performances by brass players from the Army TRADOC Band and CNU's School of Music. It was a great concert and reminded me how much I appreciate being able to take part in so many neat events right here where I live and work on campus.



You might remember Tuba Tim from a few different Photos of the Day. He is taking a new post in Germany next week so this was his last performance with the TRADOC band. It was also the last performance of one of the euphonium players. As a special "farewell" the two of them played the piccolo solo part on their instruments with the rest of the group playing too. It was awesome.

And because I love fun facts and I know some of you readers out there do too, I give you:

Trivia About the Stars and Stripes Forever March (courtesy of my friend wikipedia):

**In show business, particularly theater and the circus, this piece is called the Disaster March. It is traditional code signaling a life-threatening emergency. This helps theater personnel to handle events and organize the audience's exit without panic. Circus bands never play it under any other circumstances. One example of its use was at the Hartford Circus Fire in July 1944.

**In his autobiography, Marching Along, Sousa writes that he composed the march on Christmas Day 1896. He had just learned of the recent death of David Blakely, then manager of the Sousa Band. Sousa was on a ferry in Europe at the time, and he composed the march in his head. He committed the notes to paper on arrival in America. Although he would conduct performances of it at virtually every concert until his death, only one recording, made in 1909, is known to survive today.

**The student band Strindens Promenade Orchester in Trondheim, Norway, has the world record in "speed playing" of Stars and Stripes (absolutely all notes must be played). The band calls their speedy rendering of the march Stars and Stribes, and performs the march at all Saturday parties at the Trondheim Student Society. Set during the fall term of 1999, the record time is 50.9 seconds (nominal time is 3 minutes 50 seconds). For this, the band is noted in the Norwegian edition of the Guinness Book of Records.

311: Audrey

Thanks to the DMV not sending me my decals yet again I was unable to head to Chesapeake to see Katie for her mom's jewelry party (could have had two in a row!). But on the bright side I was able to go with Eddie to hang out with the daughters of our friends/coworkers while they had meetings. Eddie just today was talking about how he wanted to watch Mulan and that was, in fact, the movie the Ella (subject of the first photo in this blog!) wanted to watch. While we watched the movie we had some popcorn. Little Audrey was so cute in her PJs with the bowl of popcorn.

310: Jewelry

Tonight a friend from work hosted a jewelry party and I brought my camera knowing I could snap some of Trici's necklaces.

309: Winter WAKA

Today was the first day of games for Winter WAKA Kickball. I snapped this of Katie "Holmes" in the outfield making a nice catch for the out while blowing a bubble!

308: Duke vs. Clemson

Tonight my poor Clemson Tiger fan husband had to watch the Clemson vs. Duke men's basketball game with a Duke fan family! While the Blue Devils didn't play all that well, they did end up winning by 13 points! Go Duke!

307: Fight, Fight, Fight for C-N-U

Tonight a group of us Student Affairs folks went to the Lady Captains' basketball game. They are currently undefeated and jumped from No. 21 to No. 13 in the USA Today/ESPN poll, and from No. 20 to No. 15 in the rankings of d3hoops.com this week. We had a lot of fun and even got a personal visit from Captain Chris. Baby Luke (a frequent subject of the blog) was fascinated by his plastic face.

306: Effie Chases A Monkey

Tonight I had the pleasure of attending the tuba recital of my friend Tim. You may remember his black and white portrait or his recent wedding reception photo of him holding the baby. The recital was really great and it was nice to hear really good, live music.

305: Happy Trails To You

Eddie and I got a four-pound bag of Trail Mix from Costco over the weekend and have already made a pretty good dent in it. Because I like "fun facts" here is some info about trail mix, courtesy of Wikipedia:

-In New Zealand and Australia, trail mix is known as scroggin. The name scroggin is an acronym, taken from the first letter of eight ingredients: sultana grapes, chocolate, raisins, orange peel, ginger, glucose (sugar), improvisation or imagination (i.e., the chef is supposed to add a favorite ingredient), and nuts.
-The word gorp, an alternative name for trail mix, may stand for "good old raisins and peanuts","granola, oats, raisins, and peanuts", or "gobs of raw protein". These are probably backronyms or folk etymology. The Oxford English Dictionary cites a 1913 reference to the verb gorp, meaning "to eat greedily".
-Trail mix is known as studenterhavre ("student's oats") in Denmark, studentenhaver in the Netherlands and Belgium and Studentenfutter ("student's food") in Germany.

304: Sea Songs

Some of you loyal readers may remember Pam and Jim (from the office, but not THE Office) that got married last summer. I took photos for them on their wonderful wedding day and used one for Photo of the Day #126. Jim is a musician and a talented conductor. I got to watch him conduct part of a rehearsal of a local community band tonight. I wish I had my "real" camera because he would make a great subject. Instead I had to deal with my pocket digital, bad lighting and inability to use flash. I used Photoshop to change the texture of the finished product so it's more of a painting look.

303: Kid Stuff

Tim, Amanda, and Hannah came for a quick visit this evening. It's amazing how much Hannah grows even in the two weeks it is between visits. I snapped a few shots of her in the apartment but I enjoyed this one of Eddie walking with her down our hallway when they were leaving.

Tonight on Cake Boss (show on TLC) they made a 40th Anniversary cake for Sesame Street. They had all of the monsters and some of the cast on, which was really fun. I went online to watch some Sesame Street clips and ended up watching them for a while and wanted to share some with all of you Sesame Street fans who read here.

Bert and Ernie Fishing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUusX1Js6R0&feature=channel

This is why I love Bert so much:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ls2vNfQxyc&feature=channel

Lots of Celebrities, including Conan!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ccAf0A1EAs

Martians:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_trSIBCgF0

Madrigal ABCs (totally remember this!):

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=SesameStreet#p/u/112/jDDFh7Un3Ps

And last but not least, one of my all-time favorites: Jelly Man Kelly:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjNteHSCCSg

302: Golden Globes

For me the Golden Globes haven't been the same since West Wing went off the air (or really since West Wing's fourth season) because I haven't loved a show like I loved West Wing. Still, I enjoy seeing the stars and all that so I generally watch them. My friend Jimmy from JMU knows more about movies, TV, etc. than anyone I know I think and he put out his predictions for this year's Golden Globes in his blog. I have been enjoying watching the awards ceremony while reading his commentary and predictions for each category. (For the record, he's pretty dead on!)

I haven't been feling well this weekend so I wasn't too inspired to get up to get a picture so I snapped one of my view of my laptop (with Jimmy's blog up) and the Golden Globes.

301: Good & Plenty

I am one of a small percentage of Americans that really loves Good & Plenty the candy. I got some today and was very pleased at how fresh they were. Curious, I went out online to see what I could learn about this tasty candy that I could share along with my photo.

Fun Facts about Good & Plenty, courtesty of Wikipedia:

-Good & Plenty was first produced by the Quaker City Confectionery Company in 1893 and is the oldest branded candy in the United States.

-The pink candies are colored with a red dye called K-Carmine that is produced from the bodies of the female Cochineal beetle. However, the current packaging lists the red dye as "Artificial Color (K-Carmine and Red 40)".

-They are mentioned in an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond entitled when Ray mentions that his brother Robert separates them by colour, calling the white ones " the good ", because they are, and the pink ones " the plenty ", because there are more of them.

300: Ra Jazz Band

Tonight Eddie and I headed over to the Multicultural Student Association Jazz Night event on campus. We both enjoyed ourselves and the music of the Ra Jazz Band and probably would have stayed longer if we hadn't been at the end of a long week. (The music goes until 1am, which is waaaaaay past our bedtime!) Kudos to the MSA students for putting together a nice event.

Sidenote: I can't believe today is my 300th photo of the day. Time really does fly!

299: Slam Dunk

A bunch of us headed up to Williamsburg for the JMU vs. William and Mary men's basketball game. Though the Dukes did not pull out a victory we still had a great time! Duuuuuuuuuuuuuukes!

298: Darts

Tonight we headed out to meet up with many of the members of our kickball team to play some darts. It was nice to catch up with them and the dart playing itself was fun too. I snapped this with my pocket digital of an empty dartboard holder that had the metal score divider that had falled off of the other board propped up on it. I thought it was kind of an interesting composition.

297: Super Double Coupons

This week has been fun for Eddie as it was our local grocery store's Super Double Coupon week. This means that any coupon with a face value of up to $1.99 can be doubled. This, along with the store's sales, can make for some great values and even some free things! Eddie is really awesome at scoping out the sales, comparing with our coupons and saving us lots of money. It's a lot of fun for him and I (and our bank account) are thankful that he enjoys it so much. Today was the last day of Super Double Coupon Week so I snapped a shot of our coupon box that Eddie has had for years.

For those of you interested in finding good deals with coupons, there are also a lot of useful websites out there. One of my favorites is: www.moneysavingmom.com. I like her blog because she breaks down deals by store. She lists what is on sale and the low prices you can get with different coupons (both from the newspaper but also printable ones from online). You can really save a lot of money if you take a little bit of time to prepare.

296: Hello, New McMurran

Earlier in the week I featured a photo of the old McMurran building being torn down. Tonight my photo is from the dedication of the new McMurran building on campus. The ribbon-cutting ceremony ended with a short fireworks display which serves as my photo of the day today.

295: Ice Skating

Kevin had mentioned that he had been wanting to go ice skating so we checked out the rink at the Virginia Air and Space Museum. We got discounted tickets thanks to our Busch Gardens season passes and enjoyed quite a long time skating. There weren't too many people there so we felt like we practically had the rink to ourselves. Kevin was nice enough to do his hockey stops over and over again so I could try to get a good photo of the day.

294: Parker Grace

I headed down to Chesapeake today to watch the Duke game (they played poorly today...boo!) with Katie. Her niece, Parker, was there for the day so I got to hang out with her too. She's a hilarious little girl with quite a personality. After the game was over Parker wanted to play the piano so we took turns playing and "doing ballet". Aunt Katie made quite a good ballerina! Here is a shot of Parker playing the piano:

293: Admirals Hockey

Tonight Eddie, Kevin, Matt, Sarah and I headed to Norfolk for an Admirals hockey game. The Admirals played poorly tonight but we did end up getting to see a decent fight, which was a crows (and personal!) favorite. :-)

I took this with my illegal camera...hahaha!

292: So Long, McMurran

At the start of this week CNU's campus had two buildings next to the student union....now there are none. It was really bizarre to watch them tear down the buildings, especially since there were still a few desks, bookshelves, and bulletin boards still in the classrooms. (You can kind of see this in the photo.) I snapped this with my little pocket digital after I had lunch.

291: To Have and To Hold

I had the pleasure of attending the wedding of a friend this afternoon at Fort Monroe. I was there as a guest but also as an assistant to two photographers. I learned a lot today and am now even more motivated to better myself at my craft (and to maybe buy a new camera/lens/etc.). I didn't take a lot of photos at the ceremony but snapped away at the reception. I was way amused by this photo of Tim (the groom) with one of the young guests. It's not a flattering picture of Tim but pretty much sums him up (goofy)....plus the look on the baby's face is hilarious.

290: Wootsie!

I went with Eddie to watch hockey tonight at Trici and Kathleen's house. I brought my camera so that I could use Wootsie, Trici's cat, as the subject of my photo today. She's a funny little cat that wasn't too keen on cooperating with photos but I actually managed to get a few nice shots. (Trici wasn't there so I hope she doesn't mind I'm exploiting her furchild!)

289: Broadway

I'm not feeling particularly inspired to make an artsy shot today so here's a photo of our Broadway wall in our guest/music/photography room in our apartment. It's been fun to watch our wall grow as we have seen more shows, especially once we figured out the magic of stalking the stage door after performances. Eddie updated the wall this weekend with our signed Ragtime mini poster.

Note for those with keen eyes: There are also some non-Broadway things up there....posters from the one man act with Richard Schiff (amazing!), the Sound of Music Showing in P'Town my parents and I went to and the show poster from the Music Man production mom and I played in the pit for a while back.

288: Mark, A Yen, A Buck or a Pound, That Clinking Clanking Clunking Sound...

I did a very small amount of productive work around the apartment today. I think this is mostly because I was moping on the couch, mourning the end of what has been a delightfully wonderful (and long!) break. I did, however, get all of my foreign coins in one place. They are my subject for the day:

287: Game Night

Tonight Eddie and I headed from Moyock over to Virginia Beach to hang out with some friends at Sarah and Matt's house for Game Night. We, as always, laughed a lot and had a great time. I snapped this of Sarah and her "fur baby" Ohana during a round of Catch Phrase. It's pretty much tradition that Sarah makes funny faces in photos. Good times.

285 & 286: Happy New Year!

First of all, a big Hurrah!! to Sarah (kickball friend) and Kevin (brother in law) for starting their own Project365 blogs today as a start to the New Year. I look forward to following them and their photos. I hope they find as much joy in it as I have.

285: Bodega

For New Years Eve we headed into Georgetown to eat at a delicious Spanish tapas restaurant called Bodega . It was an incredibly tasty dinner with good company. I snapped this on the way out. I think it would be an interesting oil painting....I like the colors and the pattern in the wallpaper.

286: Christmas Isn't Over Yet

Eddie and I are down at my parents' house for the night to spend a little more time with them since we didn't get to do much of it prior to Christmas. They still have their Christmas lights up.