A quick tale of Wednesday

"Johns Hopkins midfielder Kadie Stamper (no.24) drives past a Towson defender toward the goal in the opening minute of the first half at Homewood Field, Wednesday night. Despite four goal performances by Towson University midfielder Hillary Fratzke and attacker Meggie McNamara, the Tigers fell to the Blue Jays, 12-10."

Woo-hoo. Officially on my last Spring Break of my undergraduate college career. Woo-hoo Spring Break 2008! Don't get too excited, I am not going anywhere fun. I'll be staying at home working on homework, trying to relax and yep, shooting assignments.

The relaxation part is well deserved after a long, long Wednesday.

My day unofficially started 3:14 a.m. when I randomly woke up needing a drink. But being addicted to checking my e-mail, well, I checked my e-mail on my iPod touch, which I often refer to as my iNottaPhone before passing back out at 3:17 a.m.

Officially, I would say my day began at 6:45 a.m. when I unofficially woke up, took a shower, got dressed and ate my breakfast of champions (read: a banana, a Gatorade and one bagel).

After my on average 35 minute commute to Towson University turned into a 55 minute nightmare, I grabbed my gear for NFL Pro Day.

Pro Day ended around 10:45 a.m., a lot longer than I had anticipated, but I had some time to burn and was at least outside all morning. At this point, I had officially woke up.

Around 11:00 a.m., I ventured into The Towerlight office to start downloading, editing and captioning images for the next days paper. From about 12:30 p.m. on, I made some calls to get other photographers work in and ordered some lunch from China Best (or is it Towson Best)? Either way, good food and cheap lunch specials.

Tummy (as Bear Grylls would say) full, I started archiving some photos before escaping for an hour to run some much needed errands. Last week, I noticed my 70-200 f/2.8 had seized, so I headed out to ship it off for repair.

Around 4 p.m., I ran (not literally) out to the baseball field to cover the game and a possible 500th win for a Towson coach. Apparently, Mike Gottlieb became the first Towson coach in any sport to earn 500 victories.

However, although I got to the game during the fourth inning, stayed until the end of the game hoping for a win, in which they got locked in during the eighth inning, nothing short of a dull moment happened after the game ended.

I had overheard talk of players planning on dumping water on the coach, but it never happened. I don't even think the coach cracked a smile. Odd.

After moving a baseball image, I headed back to the office where I spent some time looking at what the section editors had for layout, gave them some pointers and made sure they had cutlines spelled/styled correctly.

I grabbed a quick dinner, Chick-fil-A, and pigged out in my car before pulling into the media lot at Johns Hopkins for the women's lacrosse game versus Towson.

It was freezing outside with some gusting winds. My hands; numb. At half time I decided to blast my heat in my car for 15 minutes. But then I realized I had forgotten my computer, so I couldn't edit or move any images.

By 9:30 p.m., after the Tigers lost in a close game, I was back at The Towerlight, all images in, all the photos laid out of each page and walked out the door.

My day was long, but I wouldn't want it any other way. Well, maybe a news assignment in there somewhere.

The above image is just something different at the opening of the game. I got maybe three minutes to shoot some different images using the sun. This weekend is pretty jam-packed with more sports...and rain.