Project 365: Day 365

Hard to believe this is it!! What a year. I'm really glad I took so many photos (at least when I had a camera to take them...) I managed to preserve a lot of memories and good times, mixed in with a bunch of average life and some snapshots of random things in my environment.
There was sometimes a mentality of "oh! I'll save that for later, I already got my photo for today." I never quite managed to shake that, though I did try, after a few times the earlier photo wasn't as good, or as clear as I'd hoped it would be. I've learned to carry my camera with me at all time (Be Prepared, as I learned in Girl Scouts), which has been great. I've managed to get a lot of impromptu things, and capture snapshots that wouldn't exist otherwise.
I also hope I've entertained you this year-and-some with my photos. I never claimed to be a professional or artistic photographer, and thanks for enduring my blurry, shaky, poorly composed, or outright boring work.  I think I did get a bit better with photos this year, though the improvement could have been greater.
As for the future, I think I'll keep blogging when and if I feel like it. Don't go away, keep me in your blog feeds or whatever, but I'm not going to promise another year's worth of posts!

The large pit right next to the NES study room, complete with very noisy machines, lots of dirt, and hot humid sweltering air. Perfect environment for trying to get papers written!

Project 365: Day 350

AJ and I joined the National Aquarium. Fun!

Project 365: Day 349

Apologies for the blurriness. Hope the amusement makes up for it! We had a very American 4th-- eating a lot of foreign food, shopping, and watching some fireworks from the football stadium.

Project 365: Day 349

We went to AVAM, which was awesome.

Can you find my boyfriend?

And me next to what I consider to be a model of the egg of creation.

Project 365: Day 346

Gilman looks so pretty now!

Project 365: Day 345

How long does a list of rules in a bathroom need to be? I would posit a whole lot shorter than these; unless you're there for the long-haul, who's going to read them all?

Project 365: Day 344

Watching the Orioles lose to the Marlins.

Project 365: Day 341

Summer cleaning. :-D

Project 365: Day 340

Workday lunch remnants.

Project 365: Day 339

Our first haul of CSA produce! It was largely greens (spinach, beet greens, kale, chard, lettuce, red lettuce, some other kind of lettuce) and beets and onions. For my first CSA recipe, see my cooking blog!

Project 365: Day 338

I'm going to cheat. Today's photos sucked. So I'm putting up one from tomorrow. Apologies.

Upholstery cleaning: the way to make used furniture rather more palatable!

Project 365: Day 224

Woo! Finished a summer application. Hurray.

Project 365: Day 121

This is the sort of staged after photo for my departmental dinner party, as well as the last post I will tag as summer, since classes started the next day.

Project 365: Day 120

Ah, the life of a grad student. Great. So many books, and the year hasn't even started.

Also, how do you know you live in a not-so great neighborhood? When you go to the grocery store and park in pits, specially designed for each wheel:

Project 365: Day 117

Evalyn threw a big welcome BBQ for all the new people. The cake wasn't quite what she imagined (it's the two houses, with the names of the new residents, if you can't quite tell). It was also a hell of a lot bigger-- it was a full sheet! I neglected to put anything int he photo for scale, but it took up more than the floor space of a shopping cart. The party itself was great-- lots of good food, new people, good conversations. A good way to get to know people here, which is still hard. It's tough thinking I've been here a month now but still don't really know anyone yet. Hopefully that will start to change now that classes are almost underway.

Project 365: Day 116

Orientation!

As per usual, it was hours long and I did not feel at all more oriented after than I had before. But still, there was a limited amount of schwag gained, and many many brochures and pamphlets.

Project 365: Day 114

He's such a charmer!

Project 365: Day 112

Of course, having just moved to Maryland, Marcus decided I needed to learn to eat crabs the Maryland way. Whole, in the shell, covered in Old Bay (ubiquitious and not that good, sorry), with all the parts of food I don't like to think about intact. I think the crabs won; they certainly took me out. It was fun seeing people, and it had to be done-- but I think other people can pick the crabmeat out for me and fry it into crabcakes or put it into soup.

Project 365: Day 111

This sand-recreation of the Last Supper is the best part of the Jesus tableau of sand-sculptures in Ocean City, MD. Ocean City is a trashy beach town like every other trashy beach town: Myrtle Beach, Atlantic City, Cancun, etc. But, this one features a preaching sand-sculptor who must make these every day on the beach. He also does Christ on the Cross and Jerusalem and the Resurrection!

The whole tableau:

And, of course, you can buy the whole thing to watch in your very own home on the 97-minute DVD featuring uplifting praise music!

Project 365: Day 108

AJ and I sojourned to Washington, D.C. today to visit some Smithsonians. It was AJ's first time to our nation's capital; hence the requisite dorky photo from the Mall.

My favorite part was visiting Kermit (Greenfrog!) in the Museum of American History. <3

We also spent a lot of time at the Air and Space Museum, where we got to see awesome stuff like the (not real) moon lander. Also awesome, and sadly not photographed: getting to see Ned and Steve for dinner.