Photographic Evidence

As I mentioned in the post below, HURRAH VICTORY EVERYBODY CHEER: I am at long last up-to-date with photos. Flickr is, for the first time in a long time, current. There are several sets of completely new photos.

In August, highlights included:

• meeting RA at her Gap-sponsored Born To Fit party (where all the guests got free jeans!)
• celebrating Preston's birthday
  
• vacationing in Wintergreen, where we breathed in mountain air, soaked in all the Virginia we could, and visited with friends:

Margaret and I at the top of Crabtree Falls in Nelson County, Virginia.

Kelly and I at Blue Mountain Brewery.

• painting our apartment (though I'm not sure either of us would necessarily call that experience a highlight). I still haven't taken official "after" shots of the rooms we painted, but if you would like to see the fugly before shots, or learn where I got all the furniture in our dining room, you should check this set out. As a teaser, our den went from this:

to this:
Highlights of the fall have included:

• watching the Phillies game from awesome seats (courtesy of parents of one of Preston's students). We took lots of smiley pictures (like the one on the sidebar), cheered on the Phils, and ate ice cream in little hats! Squeal!

Cheering on the Phillies while awkwardly holding this towel. Sweeeeet.

• meeting Penelope and my friend Mary (Penelope's sister) for delicious brunch (Crème Brûlée French Toast OHMAHGOD) while we celebrated Mary's engagement! Also, learning that I'm going to be a bridesmaid! Eek!
• heading to Virginia for a night and visiting with my friend Margaret, and having an IN REAL LIFE blogger reunion with Ab and Jamie! As Jamie wrote this morning, this occasion deserves a post of its own, but for now, I think these pictures will show that my friends officially have the cutest babies ever in the entire world. Lydia and Jackson totally melted my heart (and it was also pretty awesome to see their lovely mothers as well =) ).

Jamie, sleeping Jackson, and Ab during brunch at Galaxy Diner.

• (again, this might not necessarily be a highlight, but...) travelling to Gettysburg this past weekend with my War and Peace (in the Ancient World - not Tolstoy) seminar, and taking many, many pictures. As per usual. This trip would have been better if it hadn't been POURING RAIN for (almost) the whole day. It also would have been better if we hadn't had to sacrifice an entire Saturday to the cause. Ah well. At the end of the day, it is a pretty incredible place and I'll bet that on a clear day the views of central Pennsylvania are spectacular.
• and, as ever, hanging out at home with Pres, Callie, and Ness, the most awesome of awesome baby families I could ask for. I know that from here on out the semester will be jam-packed with papers, meetings, colloquia, symposia, and exams. And to all of those end-of-term stresses, to all of those seemingly insurmountable pieces of minutiae, this is what I say to you (or, rather, this is what I'm having Ness say to you):

Piss off.
Love,
Mary Frances