Postcard Arrival: Reutlingen, Germany

Roughly translated this means: Celebrate the moments, the most beautiful moments arise unexpectedly. This postcard came from Germany and traveled 4,529 miles in 15 days!

Digital Dilemma

I've been storing all my pictures on my external hard drive that I've had for several years. I've been good about keeping all my pictures in order by year and grouping them in sub folders by event. Then the other day I went to back up my pictures from the Notre Dame game and got an error. WTF?!

It had occurred to me that this could happen but I was really prepared for it and now I'm kind of at a loss.

Luckily my friend at work is a computer guru and was able to back up my photos from 2006-2012. The 2013 folder was corrupt and unable to be accessed, which in this case is kind of the best outcome.

So now I'm trying to figure out all the pictures I could have possibly taken this year. Luckily I'm always kind of hesitant to delete the pictures off my SD card once they are backed up so I do have most of everything I've done this year saved. Luckily I have the blog to go back and figure out what I've done and try to figure out which pictures may have been lost.

The thing with such easy access to digital photography images is that we take crap tons of pictures and can just easily delete the bad ones later, so we tend to have an over abundance of pictures. Back in the day of film we were more diligent with our 24 pictures on the roll, knowing we had to carefully select which images we wanted to capture. Sometimes I myself even get too caught up in wanting to take great pictures to have to look back on that I forget to actually enjoy the subject matter.

So what to do now. Obviously I'm going to need to get another external hard drive because it wasn't only pictures that was on it. I used it to back up tax documents and my music along with many other things. I didn't double back up lately because I had too much faith in the electronic box storing all my things.

I had mentioned before that I wanted to start making scrapbooks by year using a photo website, which I will now definitely make a priority. But I also need to actually start printing off my pictures. I have tons of pictures in boxes from middle school and high school, then they all just drop off because digital cameras came about and there was no need to have the prints in order to share and see them.

I'm a little bummed, but glad I didn't lose all of them, now I will be extra careful of my pictures and make sure I have them in more than one place.

Wicked Chicago

Day 2 of the busy weekend is done and in the books. A.drama, mom and I headed up north to the big city today for Broadway in Chicago to see Wicked at the Oriental Theater.

Luckily this was a bus trip through work and we got to let someone else do the driving this time around. Our buses left about 9am and we reached Chicago about 11, and our play was at 2 so we had a little bit of time on our own for lunch and window shopping.

We were dropped off near the theater which is near Macy's, so we strolled on over. It's Christmas time in the city already. Mom had heard on the news that they had just lit the big Christmas tree at Macy's so we decided to go on a tree hunt. The outside of Macy's was all decked out in all it's holiday glory, with all the windows decorated with their moving window displays.

Head up to the 9th floor and you'll get a lovely view of the Walnut room (which I didn't know existed) and you'll see the big ol' Christmas tree (which I also did not know existed) I had to take a panoramic picture to get the whole thing in one shot! I just can't come to terms with the fact that it is now November and Christmas is just a short month and a half away.

Then we headed over to Panera for some yummy soup and a sandwich and then made a pit stop at one of the Chicago souvenir shops for a postcard run. We found some great Chicago ones to send out for Postcrossing around the globe.

Then it was time to hear the untold story of the witches of Oz.

The musical was great! It's on the second one I've seen, both have been at the Oriental theater. I noticed they had a play coming later in November called "Rudolph" based on the movie. 

It's been a busy weekend and I'm pooped. I still have some fun things up my sleeve for later this month, but the next fun thing comes on Wednesday! You'll have to stay tuned to find out what it is! 

Bucket List: Notre Dame Football Game- check!

A HUGE bucket list item checked off the list today! See a Notre Dame home football game... check! Even better that dad was there too! I had been checking the weather forecast all week and wouldn't you know it, cold and 50% chance of showers... we'll get to that.

After our lovely drive over to South Bend, with a few sprinkles and showers on the way, we made it to the home of The Fighting Irish! The skies were mostly cloudy with blue peeking through here and there. We arrived in plenty of time so we were able to walk around campus. Seriously, I have never seen a more beautiful campus before, lots of trees and older buildings. The building you see above is the golden dome which is home to the admissions and administrative offices.

Here's a look from the inside.

And we had to take a walk to see the lake... beautiful!

and to the grotto.

But this is where our story turns soggy. After we went to check out the grotto we made our way to the bookstore, I needed to stock up on some ND gear. Once we got there holy moly, nevermind, I'll shop online. Then as we stepped outside the heavens opened up and rain came pouring down, oh and the wind picked up out of nowhere. Boom. Soaked.

But don't fear! We came prepared! Well, as well as you can be prepared with a Dollar Store emergency poncho. So we poncho'd up and waited out the rain under the cover of safety and semi-warmth. But soon the rain turned to drizzle, then to a fine mist, then it was safe to venture out to our seats.

Oh hey there NBC, they were set up shop right in front of us, luckily their little tent folded down at game start, but popped back up again at halftime and blocked some of our view of the marching band.

Then something happend, you might even call it a miracle, but the clouds gave way and blue skies poked through just as the Marching Band was taking the field for their pregame performance. They began with America the Beautiful, then began the Star Spangled Banner.

As soon as the last line of the Star Spangled Banner hit, the roar of six Navy Blue Angels jets came in from above. This is seriously one of the coolest things I have experienced in some time. It was just that awesome.

It's a full house!

Those fellas in the blue pants are the pilots that did the fly over

Notre Dame touch down! Time for push ups!

The Navy mascot, he's a goat

Here's the band at halftime, you can see the Irish Guard and the NBC tent in our way

It may have been cold, it may have been rainy, but it was still totally an amazing experience to be at Notre Dame on game day. I would gladly go again. I will say some days it's better to be a home in your comfy warm clothes and watch the game at home. But nothing will ever beat the experience of sitting on a little piece of wood bleacher soaked from the rain, with a soaked butt watching from row 7, seat 10, section 23 for my first Notre Dame game. There aren't even words capable of describing the feeling. Glad you could be there dad, sorry Navy lost, it was close. ;) 

Notre Dame - 38
Navy - 34

Go Irish!

Happy Halloween!

Happy National Cat Day

Today is National Cat Day. I was unaware there was a National holiday for Cats, but in honor of said holiday. Here are some pictures of my adorable cat. (please note I have 1 cat with many photos, not multiple cats, I am NOT a crazy cat lady...yet)

Here's Oliver! 

Postcard Arrival: Bangkok, Thailand

This postcard came from Bangkok, Thailand; 8684 miles in 15 days. I have on my profile that I like motorcycles and Harleys. This person said that he couldn't find a motorcycle postcard so he drew me a picture of him riding his motorbike :) Postcrossing is so much fun! I think gma and gpa are enjoying it just as much as I am!

Meramec Caverns

NiBo had a rare Saturday off, so of course we had to plan an adventure! We decided to go check out Meramec Caverns in Missouri. I've seen the signs a million times (since there are like a million) on my way to St. Louis. As always it was a wonderful sibling adventure road trip.

The most important discovery on this road trip was the fact that Cadbury eggs exist outside of Easter! The Cadbury Screme egg made it's appearance after a gas station pit stop for an Energy drink. They taste just like their Easter counterpart but have a spooky green center instead of the Easter yellow. It amazes me that I did not know these existed.

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. It was a beautiful fall day and the road lined with pretty fall colored trees on the drive towards the entrance were beautiful! It's pretty amazing to think about how this placed looked before people discovered it and added concrete walkways and handrails and what it looked like when Jesse used it as a hideout. I don't imagine the neon sign was up then, kind of defeats the purpose of a hideout I suppose.

The lighting makes everything look so different though it's pretty even without the color lights shining.

The American Flag light was a gift from a past MO governor after he visited.

Our standard, we were here pics.

See! Wasn't it a picturesque Fall day?

Hope you had a lovely fall weekend and got to get out and enjoy the outdoors. Next weekend is a busy one here at North of 10th, Navy at Notre Dame on Saturday, and Wicked in Chicago Sunday! I'm going to be one pooped pup!