Basketball!

 I found a Groupon deal for basketball tickets the other day, so we want to a game! The Washington team is called the Wizards. They played against the Brooklyn Nets and won! Our Groupon deal came with free Wizzard scarfs, so we cheered the team on in style! (Shep took one of those 3D pictures - you can see my scarf but can't see my face very well!)

They were also celebrating the Chinese new year that day and were actually broadcasting the game in china as well! (Shep and I thought they were trying to recruit more Chinese basketball fans!) They had a number of people playing awesome traditional Chinese instruments in the lobby area. There was a xiao flute, a gijik fiddle, a yangqin zither, and a pipa lute, to name a few! Then, during half-time, some local students prefomed some traditional Chinese dances (the person who posted this YouTube video had a much better view than we did!)

Snow!

Point number 1: it snowed last night! Our first snow of the winter! We still went to work, though many schools had a delayed opening. It wasn't quite as cold today as it has been lately, but it still didn't get above freezing all day!
Point 2: its been so cold, in fact, that our bird feeder cracked! I didn't even realize that would happen, but I guess there must have been a small crack that got split. We will have to try and find something else for the birds in the spring!

Agent Skully

One of my coworkers got a plastic skull from her sister for Christmas. She didn't want to bring it in at first, but I convinced her that her office would benefit greatly from the addition. She named him Agent Skully (she is also a big x-files fan).

Inauguration

DC is getting ready for the inauguration! On Saturday last week Shep and I went into DC to see a show. When we were headed home we saw a line of 18-wheelers piled with cement barricades.  When I came into work on Monday, I saw these outside the metro stop. It seems that they will be blocking off parts of 14th st.
I am very glad that the inauguration is happening on Martin Luther King Jr day and that I don't have to go into work. They are expecting 600,000-800,000 people to attend, and many roads will be shut down, forcing everyone to go by metro! I can imagine there will be quite some delays!
Shep and I were in this area for the second W. Bush inauguration (in early 2005). It happened there was a small snow storm the night before, and they must have gotten all the trucks that normally plow northern Va to plow DC. I was working at Georgetown and Shep would pick me up from Rosslyn. I remember it taking forever to get home that day, with the traffic and road closures in top of the snow!
Shep will have to go into work on the 21st, but he will be headed the opposite direction than the sight-seers.

Tascam 8 track tape recorder

Shep's friend Ali wanted help moving some old recordings that he had from this old 8track recorded to digital format so he brought over this old tascam machine. Shep was excited to mess around with it!

Shep's show!

More later :-)

Rock practice

Wednesday is Shep's band practice day. They play in he basement. From left to right, the guys are Mark on bass, Sam on guitar (they are twins) Mike on drums and Shep on guitar. Shep is also the lead singer. I couldn't tell which picture I liked better so I uploaded both!