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!

Spelunking

The last weekend in July we met up with the Higginbothams for our once-every-four-year spelunking adventure. Crystal and Janessa joined us for this year's trip, and I have to say it was even more enjoyable than the last time, mostly because the water was only knee-deep rather than chest-high.

P.S. This post is not for those who are offended by multiple pictures of bums!

The Before Picture. Notice how nice and clean we are. And how strong we are.

Inside the cave. I love how the camera flash truly illuminates everything while our view of the cave was seen only through headlamps and flash lights. This was an incredible set of stalagtites.

Greg and Alan missed the chest-high water this year, so they took a crawling detour into a part of the cave that kept getting smaller and smaller, and the water kept getting higher and higher. Look at the joy on Greg's face!

Our best sides. Who has the dirtiest bum?



It's interesting to me that whenever I try and do a cool pose, everyone else ends up looking cool but I look like a big nerd. Why is that?




A bad decision - sitting down in the mud while waiting for Greg to crawl down his tiny cave.



One of the best things about caving is exploring all the side branches. This was a little cavern we found, and we all crammed in there like a bunch of clowns.

Alan and Crystal on the other side of the small cavern.

I know I'm looking very delicate and dainty here, but the truth is I was actually falling at the moment Jenean snapped this picture. Look at my Handsome Prince coming to my rescue!

Jenean about to slide down a mud hill.

At the bottom!

Excellent work, Jenean!

And the after picture. Still just as strong, but a little dirtier.

New York, New York!

Greg and I were able to spend a 3-day weekend in New York. I don't really recommend going in July unless you like baking at 96 degrees in the city. Still, we got some City Passes (which were totally worth the money) and had a great time.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art


I met Johnny Depp...the wax figure. It was still pretty cool.

And I got to conduct with Leonard Bernstein.

And I can almost touch the elbow of this very famous basketball player whose name I do not know.

Top of Rockefeller Plaza - New York at midnight

Pondering the night life in Times Square from Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum

We didn't even have to pay to see this show on the street!

The Statue of Liberty, of course.

We rented bikes and rode them along the Hudson River, and then over into Central Park. I won't mention how we were so tired by the time we got to Central Park that we only biked for about 5 minutes before leaving.

My Guided Tour backstage pass for the Lincoln Center Tour. And yes, my hair does look terrible, but what do you expect when you're sweating like a pig all day?

The Avery Fisher Hall where the NY Philharmonic plays.

In the far distance you can see the marquis for "Chicago", the musical we saw on Saturday night. A little raunchy, a little scandalous, and definitely immoral, but I loved it! Greg's official opinion was a "shrug".

My great aunt Lorrie lives in Brooklyn, and luckily she let us stay with her. Thank you for being a wonderful host, Aunt Lorrie!

I love how creative the New Yorkers are. A playground on top of my house...why didn't I think of that?

The Brooklyn Bridge, just a short walk from my aunt's condo.