Moving on into Fall

So Summer ended and Fall began, and by "Fall" I mean the semester started.  I celebrated by going to my favorite apple orchard.  Oh how I love apple orchards.

And uber large watermelons, I also love uber large watermelons

And pumpkins the size of elephants.

How can one NOT be happy around jumbo produce?  I mean really?

If I were a pumpkin I'd be this one:

Warty and totally inedible. 

Although I was also drawn to this poor confused critter as well:

Merna also took me to a grape stomping party...unfortunately the harvest was kind of sparse and there wasn't a lot to stomp.  I loved it anyway.

Since I'm a super serious doctoral student who spends every waking minute trying to get ahead of the academic curve I signed up for the "Great Gopher Adventure Race"...because spending 8 hours running around campus with 300 undergrad students doing insane feats of strength and force is exactly what serious doctoral students do.

I was lucky enough to drag Kit (she really is a serious doctoral student) with me for the fun.  I thought we'd pound the race out in a couple of hours...but when they say it's going to take 8 hours, they weren't kidding.

We were Team Steve...named for our program director.  We wore our official Gopher gear and had buttons with Larry the Catfish on them (guess he's the mascot for the Mississippi).  A sweet park ranger helped us make the buttons, and let me tell you, we wore them with pride as we ran across three campuses doing things like lugging canoes, rappelling off of buildings (ok, Kit did the rappelling...she's a champ for that)

We played basketball in wheelchairs, ate Popsicles, climbed walls (after 5 minutes of hard core rowing...made for weak arms), fenced,

Identified plants, solved puzzles, and rolled through burr covered bushes

We didn't finish first, but we also didn't finish last.  

And at this point in the academic game, that's all that matters :D


This was one of the highlights of my day:

I heart witty advertising...the kind that can only be found in a bathroom stall :D