Things to Come

About a week ago, we went to Husband's white coat ceremony for medical school, where they take the Hippocratic Oath and get their coats (symbolic of the medical profession)...

And this week, we attended convocation for the school I work at (where the president gives out awards to faculty/staff, tells us about the budget and projects the school is working on, etc.)...

And while both of those events were interesting and informative, that's a lot of sitting still and listening quietly. So we need to do something a little more... fun? Here's a clue:

Stay tuned to see if you guessed right about what we're going to do!

Happy Birthday to the Library!

Our library just opened a year ago, so today we had a big celebration! Patrons could follow the "Trivia Trail" with green feet on the floor to take them to stations with balloons as markers, and each station had a photo of an event we had in the past year, and information about that area of the library.

The staff all wore little buttons to commemorate the day, and I grabbed a couple for Piper and Damson:

We put up banners at the service desks so everyone would know what we were celebrating.

And of course, we had a pot luck lunch, with a beautiful cake!

Since we are a joint-use library, we abbreviate ourselves as JUL,
pronounced "jewel." Thus the "crown JUL."

Cosplay & DCI

Piper and I visited my friend Beth so we could start making my Margaery Tyrell dress for New York Comic Con!

Piper and Damson supervise Beth's sewing

What a great pattern!

The pieces are cut for the top

I stopped taking photos so I could help Beth, so the next one is
the mostly-finished product! We have some tweaks to make,
but I had to leave to get home to start the next part of the trip...

Blue Devils drum corps at the Charlotte NC show!
They're currently first place for the season. Their show is "Fellini-esque."

Hanging out by the pool...

...which is on the roof of the hotel and has this awesome view straight up.

And this awesome view straight out.

Ahh, pool day.

Another neat building from the pool on the roof.

Glimpsing the mountains on our drive from Charlotte to Salem.

Piper enjoys the encore performance by my personal favorite corps, Carolina Crown.

It was quite a week of learning for Piper! Sewing techniques, drum corps lingo, how to drive in a giant triangle all the way around the state of Virginia (and into North Carolina)...

Olive Bread, Churro Bites, Make It So

It was a crafty weekend for me and Piper! We made olive bread and churro bites for dinner at a friend's house, then cross-stitched a gift for my boss!

Churro bites = diced angel food cake rolled in cinnamon & sugar!

Mmm, warm olive bread!

For the boss... er, captain.

Subspace Purse

If I'm going to be Ramona Flowers for Halloween, I'm going to need a subspace purse! Instead of spending over $100 to buy one, I decided to make one! Piper helped!

Gather your supplies!

Showing off the finished product

Nice and roomy... if Scott Pilgrim can fit in there, Piper certainly can!

Welding Goggles

Since I'm going to be Ramona Flowers for Halloween, I need to start piecing things together now to spread out the costs and give me time to find weird things like welding goggles. Well, I have those locked down, at least!

Piper thinks they'll look better once my hair is blue.

Central Library

Piper accompanied me to a meeting at the Central public library in Virginia Beach. This was my library growing up, and since I work in a joint-use library now (part community college library, part city public library) I sort of work with them.

They recently installed something we refer to as an AMH (Automated Materials Handling system)... basically, it automatically checks in books when you drop them in the book drop, and it sorts them based on where they're supposed to go next (shelf, another branch, holds shelf, etc.) We have one at our joint-use library (since our building was just finished last year, we were guinea pigs to make sure it worked the way they wanted before they put them at other public branches). But at Central, the conveyor belt goes under the floor at the front door and you can watch your items if you drop them in the box outside and run around to the door to watch!

We have bigger, exciting adventures coming up soon, but I'd rather keep them a surprise for now! (Oh, the suspense...)