Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Thanks RQ!!

As each month gets closer to the end, I find myself drawn to the Rumor Queen's website for whatever tidbit of info I can gather re referrals. This month I found such a treasure for blowing off steam when frustrated with the pace of the IA process. Virtual Bubble Wrap!! Copy, paste and pop!!!

http://www.therightfoot.net/mystuff/whatever/swf/bubblewrap.swf

Monday, August 20, 2007

It's 9AM. We can be in Blacksburg by 3 . . .

Friday night Chez McKenzie is our pizza and a movie night. We watched (along with how many million other folks?) High School Musical 2 and enjoyed our Homegrown Pizza pizza, and went to bed knowing that we'd be sleeping in Saturday morning!

Phil woke up at some point, not sure when cause I was still sleeping! Then Alex crawled into the bed with me at around 8:30. Around 9 Phil came up to see if we were up and moving (which we weren't, really).

Phil mentioned that the Hokies were having a free to the public scrimmage game starting around 3:30. Hmm. Don't really have any plans for today. It has been the summer of road trips. Summer's not officially over yet. Let's do it!

We were on the road at 11:15 (Phil wanted to mow the lawn and we had to wrangle a neighbor into letting the dogs out for us) and rolling into the commuter parking lot on campus at 3.

We visited my old dorm, even went up to my old room. Wandered through a remodeled Owens (dining hall), reminisced about the annual first snowfall snowball fight between the upper quad and the prairie dorms, passed loads of families delivering their newly minted Hokies to campus and wandered over to a much larger Lane Stadium.





The scrimmage was actually the best Hokie football game for Alex to watch because he has this annoying habit of cheering for the other team. Since the Hokies were playing the Hokies in this scrimmage . . .



After the game we went through Squires' Student Center, did some t-shirt shopping in town and then went to Mike's for dinner. On our way back to the car we went through the upper Quad and saw Phil's old dorm, went over to Turner Street and saw the parking lot that is sitting where my old senior year house sat, and showed Alex the Quick mart where we'd go purchase beverages for Thursday night's "Cheers and Beers" (and Noire, my old dog, would sit outside waiting for me). We drove past Stonegate and Terrace View, other former abodes, and fueled up at Starbucks for the drive home.

And we were home before midnight!

Monday, August 13, 2007

Sixth Grade-Yikes!!


WOW! Can't believe that we're starting 6th grade! Today was Alex' first day at Exploris Middle School. It's a charter school with a very grassroots feel and an emphsis on global education and awareness. It is in the heart of downtown Raleigh, just a few blocks from the state capitol. He's been chomping at the bit since Janurary when he found out that he had been accepted. Enrollment was based on a lottery system with a little over 250 students vying for 54 spots.

I took the camera when I went to pick him up this afternoon, but didn't have the heart to start snapping pics a la kindergarten parent. I did take a picture of the giant acorn(Raleigh is the oak city; I think it's because we have a lot of oak trees?) in Moore Square, which is where the school is located.