It also was once my home – for college.

Scott and I went up to my old college town to visit our grad school friend Chris Dunn in her new work town. So of course, I had to show them around campus.

We found this squirrel inside the trashcan. He scared the pants off us at first. Scott put a stick into the lid to keep it open and our little friend eventually made his way out.

Then we went to see my sorority house, wherein we scared the pants off some of the sisters. When I lived there, every so often we would get some random old-looking alumni poking around the yard and coming to the door to show off the house. We thought it was creepy, yet endearing. I totally earned the “creepy alumni” pearl today.

We ended up back at Chris’s place and sat around discussing the merits and usage of ‘backs of people’ photographs and other news-y things. This was our ‘campfire.’ Chris is in the middle of a move. I’m just happy to spend time with a friend.

We capped off our evening with glow bowling, but I opted to fully enjoy it* instead of taking photographs.

Funny, in hindsight I wish I hadn’t.

* I have this strange theory that I don’t necessarily ‘fully enjoy’ experiences when I’m behind my camera. Not that I don’t enjoy being behind it – it just changes the way I see the events unfolding. I look for moments before they happen when I’m photographing, hitting that shutter just at the right time to capture something so fleeting. But when I’m just me, no camera in hand, I let time take its own course and I watch moments that could be photographs pass me by. Perhaps the fact that I still recognize those moments is why I feel like I wish I had taken some pictures that night. I see them in my memory, but not on my card. Alas, the perils of attempting to ‘just be normal’ for a moment.

Protests are nothing new in Washington, DC. Neither are protests at the White House, held in the blocked off section of Pennsylvania Avenue. But this was the first one I’ve seen grow from maybe 50 people to hundreds in a matter of minutes, and the first one where I wished that the President really could hear them (he was out of town) and DO something about it.

Their grievance? The Coptic Christians in Egypt are reportedly being killed by the Egyptian Police and Military in a semi-covert effort to create a Muslim state. Whether this report is true or not, people are dying, and those who gathered on October 19th to shout are hurting.