Home Sweet Home

After three months of almost non-stop travel, for both business and pleasure, it's good to be home for awhile. My office may not be fancy, but it works for me, and it's good to be back!

ETA: Interesting...I blogged this from my iPhone, and it kept one of the paragraphs of the email, but not the other. Maybe if I can get mobile blogging figured out well, I can post more often!

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

That's right, it's Mardi Gras! We've been parading in BR for a few weeks now, though I haven't been to any of them yet - I'm saving my time & energy for the big ones this weekend! But look what I discovered on campus Monday morning on the way to my office:







Beads in trees! There are a few trees like this right near the Design building, and the beads have been cut and hung nicely, so I like to think it's some type of installation art. Whatever it is, it makes me happy and even more excited for this weekend! =)

A Quick Story

So, most of y'all, my dear readers, are bloggers, and most are also avid picture takers. You know how much room pictures take up, and how important it is to backup, and thus how wonderful external hard drives are. Well, I was near a Circuit City yesterday and thought, "Ooh, they are going out of business, I wonder if they have good deals on HDs..." I walked in and couldn't find them right away, so I found the one person actually working there and the following conversation ensued:

Me: Where are your external hard drives?
Employee: Oh, they are over here. *points, as I start to walk that way* Do you know what you are looking for? There are...*starts to explain*
Me: No, I'm just looking to see if there are any good deals.
Employee: *walks over to HDs* Well, there are two basic kinds...
Me: *cuts him off, smiling* Yeah, I know.
Employee: See, there are smaller, more portable ones...
Me: *cuts him off again* Or the bigger ones you can plug in. I know. I have three at home.
Employee: *realizes I might not actually be a dumb girl* Oh, ok.
Me: Thank you. =)

It sounds a lot ruder in writing, haha, it really wasn't, I promise! He just kept trying to explain hard drives to me, and I kept trying to politely insinuate that I had a clue, and he just didn't quite get it. "I just want to look for cheap storage, sir, because I'm a technology addict!" It was kind of surprising that he was so helpful, because he really was the only employee in the store (that I could see) and so I'm sure he spends all day answering questions...so props to the nameless Circuit City employees who are helpful even though they know they'll be out of a job soon. Just please don't bother me too much when I'm trying to bargain shop. ;) Oh, and on that note, drives were only 20% off, making them still more expensive than just waiting for a sale at Staples, which happens about every other week. So I didn't buy any, but maybe I'll check back in a few weeks to see if the prices go down any more. I was with a friend who's a new grad student, and I think she was surprised when I said I didn't want to buy one that was less than 500 gigs. Um, yeah, I already have 750 gigs at home, and about 500 gigs of that full. So, yeah...

And so this is not a picture-free post, I present me testing the range on my new toy, a remote for my camera:



We were doing a knitting photoshoot on campus (yep we got some strange looks) and wanted to take a group picture at the end. There were very few places to set the camera - this is the first one we tried (it was on a trash can about 30 feet away, haha), and it worked pretty well. The next one was awesome, and a tribute to the Gorillapod...hopefully A will send me the pictures of that soon and then I'll share. =)

Football season!

I love college football! And this is a great town for it. Almost everywhere you go, there are count-downs, as we wait to see if the Tigers can pull off another season like the last one. This is my favorite, because it's close to campus so I see it often:



They've been counting down for most of the summer, lol, and we're finally into single-digit days! Yay!!! =)

It's a...

...beautiful day!



Look how blue the sky is:



Seriously. I didn't do any color correction. It really is that gorgeous today.



The flowers are even glowing:





I think the weather is celebrating the fact that finals are over. ;)

Tree Lighting!

Today was the annual lighting of the LSU Christmas Tree:

Before:


Snacks:


Army of Chocolate Santas:


And the Snowmen to back them up:


Bet you've never seen Purple & Gold Christmas decorations:


Nutcracker Preview:

(Sorry she's blurry!)

Lens Envy:


Memorial Tower:


Chancellor O'Keefe, about to push the button:


After!:


Closeup:


Bokeh!:


Now back to work!

(I figured that since I finally gave in and got Flickr Pro, I'd give them a try for hosting blog photos, especially since Picasa/Blogger's been a bit wonky lately. Any thoughts?)

(ETA: I had to widen the field of the posts to fit the pictures at this size, but I don't know how to widen the background image - I'm CSS-impaired, despite my attempts to learn - so please bear with me until Christmas break when I can learn CSS and fix it! Gracias!)