GO PANTHERS!

When people ask me where I work and I say, "Georgia State" they generally reply, "Where? Never heard of it." That's a strange statement considering we have 30,000 students and are one of the leading research institutions in the US, and in fact even made a Michael Crichton book! I've always believed no one knew about Georgia State because we had no football team. It seems the higher powers thought this too, so last year they announced we would have our first ever GSU Football Team Fall 2010. Of course along with the football team we also gained the first ever GSU MARCHING BAND!

GSU plays in the Georgia Dome - talk about a spoiled football team! This was our view of the marching band in their pre-game show.

The MegaTron shows some better pictures of their formations. How cool is that?


And that?


And that? (PS. That is our GSU emblem)


My very good friend Robert Ambrose, director of GSU bands and fellow Peachtree City Resident, conducting the band during Pre-Game.


The trumpet professor and I went to say hi to the band. Greg is taking these pictures from the opposite side of the field. I am in the stairwell in the blue shirt, and if you can zoom up on this picture you will see that I am staring DIRECTLY at Greg, trying to call him on the phone, and sending him brainwaves to pick up his phone. He never got those brainwaves. He did, however, get some good pictures of my rear-end.



Robert invited us to sit on the sidelines with his wife Sarah and daughter Isabelle. We got kicked out after about 10 minutes.

Oh yeah, there were football players there too.

Um...a football picture. I had to ask Greg numerous times, "Are we rooting for the guys in the blue shirts or the white shirts?" And even when I knew the answer, I kept forgetting to watch the game.

This is what I came for -- the half-time show. The theme was "Welcome to the Jungle" and I love that their pit was a rock band instead of those lame marimbas/bells/xylophones I used to play. Check out the flag twirlers and straight lines! We managed to get great seats for half-time by sweet-talking a security guard.

This is my oboe student Bridget, who is the first female drum major ever in the history of Georgia State. I am so proud of her! Way to represent the oboes!

The American Flag in the background was brought out during the national anthem in rememberance of the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

One of the most amusing aspects of the game was the fact that nobody knows the fight song. Apparently it used to sound like a bad waltz, so they paid the big bucks and had a professional fight song writer to write a new one for GSU. Check out this link on youtube for a good laugh.

I had to google the final results since we left after half-time. 23-14, Panthers lost, Lambuth won (who in the heck is Lambuth anyway!). That's a shame, since we totally creamed the opposing team in the first football game of the season.

Best line ever today from the MegaTron: Continuing the tradition...

The tradition of a week? Awesome!

Check out how great they look!

DragonCon Parade 2010

On Labor Day, Greg, Elizabeth, Jacob, Aloysia and I headed to downtown Atlanta for the DragonCon parade. Elizabeth, Jacob and Aloysia are our new live-ins every 3 weeks because quite conveniently our house in Atlanta is halfway between Kentucky, where Elizabeth works, and New Orleans, where Jacob goes to law school.

DragonCon is a sci-fi convention, and we were really hoping to see something like this...

Instead we saw this...
Sorry for the small picture, but what you are looking at is an empty Peachtree St. Turns out, the parade happened on Saturday and we missed it!

To make ourselves feel better, we snuck into the exhibition and saw lots of medieval swords (featured in this picture), corsets, dragons, and ceramic fairies, not to mention a bunch of superhero's walking around.

I wore my "Flash Gordon" shirt to fit in.

Lara vs. Food in New Orleans

I really had nothing to do my last week of summer vacation. So when I found out my good friend Elizabeth was driving through Atlanta on her way from Kentucky to New Orleans, I invited myself along. Luckily, she agreed! She is originally from Louisianna and has family in New Orleans, and was helping her husband move out there to begin law school at Loyola.

I was told by Elizabeth's family that floods in New Orleans are very normal. I didn't really believe them, so of course New Orleans had to prove them right. This is the street in front of Elizabeth brother's (Orum's) house. We were basically flooded in until late afternoon.

Elizabeth and her family have a different concept of touring a town. I tend to go to tourist attractions and eat McDonald's along the way. The Youngs, however, focus on finding the best places to eat in the town. Our theme this trip was "Man vs. Food" restaurants in New Orleans.
This is the famous restaurant "Mother's"
Where we had this amazing Famous Ferdi sandwich. The ham is marinated in brown sugar, and the pork is marinated in ROOT BEER. It was seriously amazing!



This is a New Orleans sampler from the famous "Gumbo Shop" restaurant in the French Quarter: red beans and rice, jumbalaya, and shrimp etouffe.

Deanie's is another famous restaurant featured on "Man vs Food"

Where they served the most delicious barbecued shrimp. I learned that "barbecue" means "soaked in massive amounts of butter."

Don't think we had nice quiet meals at these restaurants. Orum, his wife, and three kids, plus 1-year-old Aloysia, were with us the entire time and chaos followed us wherever we went.

A famous muffaletta sandwich from Frank's in the French Quarter, featured on the Food Network


We also toured around the French Quarter to appease me. This is the city's oldest Blacksmith Shop, which has now been turned into a bar. They preserve the old-fashioned'ness by drinking by candlelight in the evenings.

Another very famous place in the French Quarter: Preservation Hall. The Preservation Hall Jazz Band is very famous, but we were too cheap to go inside so we listened for free through the cracks in the window.

The French Quarter

Jackson Square

If you've been to New Orleans, you've probably been to "Cafe du Monde", home of the famous beignets.

Mmmm...beignets. Powdered-sugar and fried goodness, much better than a donut in my opinion!

Two hip oboe professors hittin' Bourbon Street...

Proof I really was there!

Driving through 9th ward: These are some of the new houses being built in place of the Hurricane Katrina damaged homes. They were pretty funky.

Demolished house.

And another one.

I fell in love with the city, and with cajun food. And next time Elizabeth says, "Be prepared, you're going to eat more food than you ever have in your life" I will know that she's being serious!