Guess the Closeup Contest: If you can guess what this is a picture of, you'll get a free outbound link on my blog page(s). It'll be over on the left side and show up on all of the pages in my site (pending no layout changes, of course):

Anti-Gravity Irish Dancers: Also seen at the St. Patrick's Day Parade in Alexandria today were these Irish Dancers testing their new anti-gravity parade float. As you can see, it was working perfectly:

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Today we went to the Alexandria St. Patrick's Day Parade (yes, I KNOW it's early for that, but they had one anyway.) I saw this little drummer boy in one of the marching bands:

I'll post more pics later - I'm still going through them all - the curse of having a digital camera - information overload - you can take pictures of EVERYTHING, but eventually you have to sort through them all.

The only good thing about being sent on travel is that you can sometimes get a really sweet rental car, like this one that had 3 miles on it when I got it:

Well, isn't that special. It's 11:24PM on the East Coast (10:24 where I am). I had to take a little business trip, so of course the largest snowfall of the year arrives on the day I'm flying out. I tried getting to the airport early enough to fly standby, and I did - but the airline oversold the plane, so no standby seats were available. The normal 2PM flight was cancelled, so I couldn't fly standby then either.
So, I got on my ticketed flight which should have left at 4:30 or so. We got in the air 2 hours later, after two de-icings (one of which was held up due to broken down de-icing equipment), and the fixing of some frozen flaps on the airplane. Well, I'm alive, and my bags made it in good stead (hours earlier than I did), so I had to walk from gate 4 to gate 25 to pick them up...sigh.
I picked up my bags and checked my cellphone for messages. My 3PM stock alerts were all bad news (not that Im worried about them..they're solid) and the news of the day says a suicide bomber in Iraq took out 115 people and injured more than 100 more.
For those of you who believe in karma - I believe now is the time I should pick up a lottery ticket, am I right? Good night folks - I'm heading for some sleep.

Who's Nerdier?

They [not 'They', but the weathermen] are saying we should expect up to 10 more inches of snow tomorrow - It's hard work hauling around rolled snowballs - as evidenced by my son taking a break here:

Me at the Piano: I practice playing the piano now and again - I'm not much of a player, but I like to sit and fiddle from fake books - I can fake a song by tri-chording and sustaining and playing the melody, and it's an enjoyable little side-trip on the road of life. Recently I've learned to play 'Piano Man' by Billy Joel - one of my favorite artists. Click the pic for bigger version.

Found on: Bread and Roses: "Bold the states you've been to, underline the states you've lived in and italicize the state you're in now." Ok - I'll play this game...

Alabama / Alaska / Arizona / Arkansas / California / Colorado / Connecticut / Delaware / Florida / Georgia / Hawaii / Idaho / Illinois / Indiana / Iowa / Kansas / Kentucky / Louisiana / Maine / Maryland / Massachusetts / Michigan / Minnesota / Mississippi / Missouri / Montana / Nebraska / Nevada / New Hampshire / New Jersey / New Mexico / New York / North Carolina / North Dakota / Ohio / Oklahoma / Oregon / Pennsylvania / Rhode Island / South Carolina / South Dakota / Tennessee / Texas / Utah / Vermont / Virginia / Washington / West Virginia / Wisconsin / Wyoming / Washington D.C. /"