A Year (Almost) in Review, Part 2

Welcome to part 2 of the reviews from heck. This part was originally going to be about my trip to Orlando and the job interview and all that jazz.. but then I sat down to plan out all the parts of this series and it dawned on me that so much more than that happened.

First, a rather painful experience occurred. In early September I had the joy of being in a bicycle accident. It was literally a head-on-head collision with another biker, around a blind corner. After it happened I thought I was doing pretty good aside from a busted lip and bloody nose, but after walking around for a little while I realized that something was not right. A woman saw me cleaning my war wounds in the bathroom and noticed that I was not with it at all and called the paramedics. I got a ride to the hospital in a shiny ambulance and got to be strapped to a backboard for the next two hours as they checked me out. I ended up with a wicked concussion for the night and a really tender/sore neck and shoulder for the next couple of months, but now I'm doing just fine. I figured I'd be okay when it happened, I was far more concerned about the condition of my laptop and phone than myself when the paramedics were checking me out.

The pictures that go with this story have a funny story of their own. I had spent my morning in the lap, as usual, and it just so happened that Erin, Tim and I had taken some fun pictures before I headed off to class. They started out normal enough. Us posing with a red wagon, Erin and Brian (the world's best lab partner) playing around, Erin attacking me with a hammer, etc. etc. Just so happens that about an hour after the picture of Erin "attacking" me was taken, I got in the accident. The next pictures to appear on Tim's camera were of me, bloody, beaten and bruised. The series after that were of course Erin laughing and smiling at jokes later in the evening. As much as I'd like to blame the beating on Erin, I have to admit that it was in fact a bicycle accident and she was a very good friend during the whole thing, even catching a ride from one of her professors to be with me at the hospital.

So it just dawned on me that this is kind of out of order. I talked about Halloween last post and now I'm talking about my accident in September and my trip to Orlando in early October. That's right folks, this traveling fool was in Orlando for a full week back around October 17th. I was attending the Grace Hopper Conference, a conference for women in computing. I received a full scholarship to the event, including airfare, hotel, transportation and food, so all in all, fantastic trip. The conference was held at the Disney World Conference resort, just down the street from the board walk. I ran into friends from North Carolina and Google there and spent most of my trip catching up and networking. It was a fantastic trip, more so in that I got to head down to Melbourne and visit Nanny and Papaw for a long weekend.

I don't have many pictures (none, actually) from the conference itself, but I do have pictures from Bridge Day (they took us to Disney for a behind the scenes technical tour) and from the Disney Boardwalk. They have a Lego store at the walk and I was way too into that.. I had to stop myself from buying absurd amounts of Legos several times. They also had a Disney store that had a giant Stitch over the entrance way that would spit water randomly at people passing in front of the shop. The Pooh store completely grabbed my attention a couple of times, as did the toy store with the build your Mr. Potato Head wall. I was good, though, and only bought one thing my whole trip there and that was a lollipop for Caitlin. Oh, and a pressed penny cause Caitlin collects them.

Alright.. I was going to extend this post to talk about my school work last semester (which was insanely awesome but stressful) and my wisdom teeth/Thanksgiving break, but I'm thinking Part 2 is already too long. I have a lot of pictures that I want to share with you all but it's really hard to cram them all in with relevant text without just making the entire post about random pictures. If you're curious about my pictures (or Tommy's for that matter), check out my online photo albums at http://picasaweb.google.com/tar3820. I like to think that they're pretty well organized. Tommy is listed as one of my Favorites and you can get to his albums through mine. Feel free to download any pictures that you want, there's a link on the right hand menu.

Some people have been forwarding my emails to various other family members, which is fine. If you know someone that wants to know when I send out updates, just shoot me an email with their email address and I'll add them to the list.

Love, Peace and Wildlife on Campus,
Tar