Project 365: Day 43

Digging back into the time machine, here’s a photo from the Oklahoma City Memorial with one of two “Gates of Time” displayed reflecting off the pool.

Project 365: Day 42

One sight I didn’t get around to show the veggies was the statue of Einstein in front of the Academy of Science.  It’s actually quite a large statue, and if you squint, you can see his famous formulae written on that sheet of paper in his hands.

Project 365: Day 41

Piggy wants a giant kiss!

Project 365: Day 40

Darn it…free isn’t what it use to be.  On the other hand, these Silk cartons have the coolest extendable straw ever found on a packaged drink.

Project 365: Day 39

Sunset along the shore of National Harbor.

Project 365: Day 38

DK and I hit up the Newseum this past Saturday, and it’s a pretty awesome place to learn about how media and news has evolved over time.  In fact, there’s so much stuff that I was beginning to understand why they let you use the tickets for two consecutive days.  On this wall, they display the front pages of various newspapers around the US and the world after the 9-11 attacks.  They also put together a 15 minute video that recalled the events and interviews with the local news reporters on that day, and it was quite chilling to relive the events.

Project 365: Days 27-37

I know this is cheating, but I figure I catch up on my picture postings in one shot.  Here’re some miscellaneous photos from JP’s wedding last weekend.

Project 365: Day 26

I recently completed my first season through Tecmo Bowl, and I managed to make it into the playoffs as a wildcard.  I figure if I can make it in, anything could happen.

With some good defensive play, ball control offense, and some last minute drives, I crawled my way through to the championship!

And if there was any proof that defense wins championships, just check out the stats :P

Project 365: Day 25

While people couldn’t get really close to the front of the White House, I was a bit surprised how close you can get to the back of it.  You’re only separated by the back lawn.

Project 365: Day 24

When TC and I went kayaking this past weekend, we ran into groups of people racing in the DC Dragon Boat Festival.  I didn’t realize how hardcore these people were with their racing!

Project 365: Day 23

These adorable ducklings (I think they’re ducklings :P) were enjoying their stay at the water fountain courtesy of the Kennedy Center.

Project 365: Day 22

TC managed to snag some free tickets to the National Symphony Orchestra, so we went tonight to see the performance.  Our seats ended up being pretty close up to the stage.  The performances tonight included some Copland (Suite for Billy the Kid), Barber’s Adagio for Strings, and Elgar’s Variation on an Original Theme, which was something that I recognized playing before once they got started (the opening song also was featured in the Matrix Soundtrack).  There was also a contemporary opera piece written by the conductor John Adams called “The Wound-Dresser" that incorporates a poem by Walt Whitman.  After hearing the concert, I had a slight urge to pick my viola up again, but it would probably take a while to get myself back up to speed…

Project 365: Day 21

One of the greatest football games of all time, Tecmo Super Bowl, was recently re-released as Tecmo Bowl Throwback.  The game designers managed to keep the same old Tecmo Bowl feel to the game while touching up the graphics, but they created this cool feature where you can “transition” the game back into 16-bit mode seamlessly if you really want the old school feel.  This was my first practice run as I beat up on New England.

Project 365: Day 20

Dexter was a thirsty puppy during the camping trip.

Project 365: Day 19

Here we have Tent City at Catoctin Mountain Park.  Originally, TC’s tent was off the squared off “tent area”, but the park ranger who passed by frowned upon it, so we had to stuff all the tents into the square, but we managed to do so.

Project 365: Day 18

TC and I went up to take a look at the Washington National Cathedral, and there was a bunch of festivities going on outside of the Cathedral.  Most notably was this Ukrainian dance troupe who wowed the crowd with their graceful and dynamic moves.

And I know this might be cheating, but I had to post this picture as well :)

Project 365: Day 17

TC and I went to the Kennedy Center to see a performance of The Marriage of Figaro.  I’ve played music from The Marriage of Figaro many times, but this is the first time that I’ve been to the opera and seen the actual performance, and the opera itself was quite comical yet enjoyable.

Project 365: Day 16

I saw this Cadillac with its really small wheels and interesting sign mounted to it's back windshield (back of it says “Just Klownin”).  I was waiting for it to bounce up and down on its front wheels, but it never happened.

Project 365: Day 15

With the rain deciding to hide out for the day and the temperatures falling, I hit the court today with LG, who I had met from last Friday.  We had played on Sunday, and it was a slugfest….in that we both moved like slugs since it was like 85+ degrees and the humidity was high.  And the sweat trail behind me completed the full slug effect.  Today was a much cooler and more comfortable day.

Project 365: Day 14

The flavor of the day (or month?) was “Connection”.  Here we have my hands, responsible for many connections with people over the years, whether its typing the words of this blog, a pat to the back or shoulder, clicking the mouse to shoot the zombies, clapping with approval, pointing out the obvious (and not so obvious), a thumbs up for approval, dialing a phone call, shaking a hand, playing the notes with a piano or viola, or clenching a hug for comfort.

Project 365: Day 13

This picture was taken (I think) sometime in 2008 during a visit to KiraTomato at San Diego.  We went to the Wild Animal Park which had a pretty nifty safari-like setup where they drove visitors through an open area where their African animals could roam.  I forget which animal paw this came from, but it was one of the better photos I took that day.

Project 365: Day 12

This photo was taken on March 5, 2010 at the Reflection Pool at DC.  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the water was all drained away to keep the foundation from cracking, but it was still strange to see all the water gone.  Poor ducks don’t have anywhere to swim in March :(

Project 365: Day 11

I’ve heard various accounts from people about how well the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser works when it comes to cleaning things, so I decided to give it a try and see what all the hoopla is all about.  The big test for me was to see whether the eraser would work well in getting rid of the soap scum that lined my bathroom tub.  Up to this point, I haven’t found an easy and effective way to clean the scum off, and I will say that the eraser worked its magic and scrubbed all the scum away with a bit of water and elbow grease.  The best analogy I can make is that the magic eraser works like those white soft erasers for pencils.  It wears away like a eraser, but it leaves whatever surface you’re rubbing on virtually spotless.  It works a heck of a lot better and easier than any cleaner that I’ve tried to get rid of soap scum, so I’ll definitely stock up on these later down the road.

Project 365: Day 10

Sort of an interesting day on the court today.  After work, I felt the urge to hit some tennis balls, so I went out to the courts at my apartment complex and started to hit a couple of serves around.  A random guy comes up to the fence surrounding the court and asks whether I’d like to hit around with him sometime next week.  I said sure, and he handed me his card and told him to call sometime next week after he gets his racquets strung.  I go back to hitting serves for a few more minutes, and a group of people started approaching the court, and I figured well, they probably have some set playing time, so I’ll probably have to head off, but they were kind and let me stay around and hit with them for a while.  The good part is that they all lived at my apartment complex and usually just sent emails out whenever they wanted to play.  So they now have my email address, and hopefully I’ll be able to play a bit more often :)

Project 365: Day 9

And here’s the finished product!

Project 365: Day 8

This picture is coming a bit late to the party, partially because there hasn’t been anything really anything interesting pictorially that went on the past two days.  This is the pesto chicken recipe that I’ve gradually gotten good at preparing.  Although the recipe says you can cook the chicken right after you splash on the pesto marinate, I’ve found that if you let the chicken sit in the fridge with the marinate for a day or so, you get a much juicier chicken.

Project 365: Day 7

Today I had my semi-annual checkup at the dentist for cleaning, and everything looked good.  My dentist seems to have the most enthusiastic and cheerful dental assistances working for him, which is probably good since most people seem to be fearful of  dentist visits.  The assistant recommended that I get an electric toothbrush since she said it would help clean my gumline better.  I have this OralB one, but I had stopped using it because I thought it was a bit too harsh on my teeth, but I think I was pushing too hard with it when I was using it for the first few months, so I’m going to give it a try again.  I’ve had practically every type of procedure done with my mouth and teeth, and I intend to keep my teeth for as long as I can.

Project 365: Day 6

These sets of pictures were taken on June 19th, 2009 when I was out at a work conference in San Diego.  After the conference was over, KiraTomato and I took the day to visit Sea World since I’ve never been there before.  One of the stops of during the day was to a sea lion live show which was quite entertaining and made a bunch of pop culture references.  Here’s my tepid attempt at poking fun of David Caruso’s one-liners to start every CSI: Miami show.

Project 365: Day 5

This photo was taken back in September 6, 2009 when Honeydew and I were attending a wedding for a friend of hers down at Myrtle Beach.  The wedding was to take place at Brookgreen Gardens, and we got some tickets from her friend to explore the gardens that day prior to the wedding.  We noticed this little lizard perched on top of the flower minding its own business and unafraid of us snapping photos of it.  I don’t recall the wasp flying by, but it made for a good picture.

Project 365: Day 4

TC took me out with her friends today to a National’s game against the Dodgers.  This was the first time I’ve attended a professional sporting event of any kind, and I was quite surprised that even the nosebleed seats gave us a good view of the field and sense of the action.  Now I’m not the biggest fan of baseball, but the game turned out to be pretty exciting to watch.  During the game, Adam Dunn was up to bat, and I mentioned something to TC about how Dunn was made fun of by a Columbus sports radio station I listen to at work via podcast.  Dunn must have heard me talking smack, and just when I was about to finish my comment, he belts a home run to right field.  He must have still been angry at my comments later in the game as he hit another home run his next up at bat to lead the Nats to a 5-1 win behind some solid pitching. 

Project 365: Day 3

There’re few foods in life that are as versatile and good as pizza.  You can get all your food groups in pizza, you can have pizza for any meal of the day, and even cold pizza is pretty good.  I had prepped some dough to make some pizza for the hungry Veggies that were flying in late last weekend.  Honeydew brought some delicious crab cakes for everyone from Timbuktu’s on her way down here for everyone, so I’ve been using the dough to  make pizza all this week for lunch and dinner.  I’ll probably tinker with the dough recipe a bit because I think it needs a bit more flavor.

Project 365: Day 2

When TheDragOnfruitS came to visit two weekends ago, he gave me these two presents made by his oldest sister and mom, who are running an arts and crafts company in Iceland.

Project 365: Day 1

I’m sort of late to the Project 365 train, but I figure that getting started is better than nothing, so here goes!

Since I didn’t make any lunch yesterday, I went out to Subway to pick up my foot-long Italian BMT on honey oat for lunch.  Outside of Subway during the spring and summer over lunch hours is an outdoor cat who I personally named Garfield.  He (I’m assuming he’s a he) is quite friendly and approachable for petting.  I have no idea where he goes the rest of the day, but he seems to be doing well for himself the past two years greeting hungry Subway patrons.

Snow

Here’s the current view outside my balcony at 12:15 AM

This snow is suppose to continue until 10 PM on Saturday…

Update: Photo at 8:33 AM

Update at 10:20 AM

Update: Snow stopped at around 5 PM, so I started to dig the Kungmobile out.