Katie's 99 in 999 (currently 55 in 555!)

Even though my marching band days are far behind me, there's something about a drum corps show that is just so fun.   Ricky had no idea that drum corps even existed before we started dating, so I made it a goal to eventually drag him to an event, and--lucky for me!--DCI Orlando had some nice corps this summer. (For those of you familiar with the DCI scene, Carolina Crown took first--their show was awesome!  It was unpolished, but they had this crazy intensity.  The Cadets were cleaner, and I actually had them pegged to win it, but they took second.  The Cavies' show was surprisingly boring.) We weren't even sure if the corps was going to march, because there had been a threat of pretty bad rain, but the weather held out!  (Which was good, because we drove three hours to see it.)  Ricky agreed that seeing drum corps live was way better than watching YouTube videos.  I only wish DCI Orlando was later in the season so we could see more...

Some backstory: I've had my Nikon Coolpix point-and-shoot since my senior year of high school started.  That's over seven years!  That little camera's been stepped on and dropped all over the place, and it still takes great outdoor shots, even though the lens gets stuck sometimes and the battery cover barely hangs on.  The problem is indoor pictures!  That poor little camera takes the crummiest low light/indoor shots, and I was ready for a new one.  So when Kodak announced that they were pulling out of the camera business and all their cameras went on sale, I snagged a Z990 for just over $100.  It's not an SLR--I didn't want to deal with all that!--but it's a better-quality point-and-shoot, and the pictures are MUCH better.  A lot of waiting paid off for such a great deal! Please note that I did NOT take this picture to be artsy or hipstery or whatever.  I only posed it this way because it reminded me of the Borg.   

Catching up some old events!  Last October (that's right--2011), Ricky and I took advantage of a Groupon for a dive class.  I really want to get Ricky his open water certification (I'm already certified), but he wasn't sure if he would like it, so this was a chance for him to get his feet wet, literally speaking.  He loved it!  I had a great time doing a refresher course, and it was fun going with Ricky.  (The title here is misleading.  SCUBA certification never expires, but you do have to do a refresher if you haven't been diving for a while.)  I forgot how amazing diving is.  I told Ricky that as soon as he's done with school, we're going to get him certified so that he can be my dive buddy. I wound up leaving my dive gear (oops!) and we had to go back to Orlando the next month to retrieve it.  But it was a good excuse to visit the dive shop again!

After a disastrous attempt at "traditional" Thanksgiving last year (I dropped my pecan pie taking it out of the oven and it exploded everywhere; Ricky's turkey didn't thaw in time), Ricky and I decided Thanksgiving is The Worst Holiday Ever and that we needed to Do Something About It.  So instead of stuffing our faces with genetically deformed turkeys (that's my only vegetarian jab, I promise!), we turned to a celebration of our nation's pilgrim heritage by crossing a body of water in a boat. I guess our city is technically in the Everglades area, but everything here is all about the beach, so there isn't much in the way of inlet/swamp exploration.  For that, we drove to the neighboring Everglades City, where you can rent canoes or kayaks for the day and explore.  We were pretty excited at the chance for adventuring, but a little wary--they just send you off with this poorly drawn navigational map and tell you to be back by 4:30.  We had to stop in th...