One thing that would have been fun and interesting to blog about was my trip to the Orange Bowl in Miami last week. For those who are unaware, Virginia Tech played in the game, and I work for the athletic video department at Virginia Tech. We're the ones who film football practice for the coaches and run the video board during football and basketball games. We do a bunch of other stuff, but I'll save that for another time. So being part of the football staff, we got to stay with the team in their 5-star hotel, the Westin Diplomat. Well I can tell you I did not have a very "5-star" experience. When we got there, it took them about 8 hours to get us a hotel room. So we did a whole lot of nothing all day, unshowered, just waiting for our room to be ready. Our room never became ready, at least we'll never know if it did, because we finally found someone at the front desk with the bright idea to just give us a room that was ready. Just great.

Another fun experience was the Miami Improv. Laura, who also works with video, is a stand-up comic and thought it'd be fun to check out the Miami Improv. It was fun...for the comics who got to make fun of the only white group of people in the room. Yeah it was us. I made it sound like it wasn't fun, but I think we all had a pretty good time. Also I was finally able to see my girlfriend Taylor during the trip. She was staying with the band at the BahiaMar in Ft. Louderdale. We can't be away from eachother for too long, so I had to go see her.

Game time finally came and was pretty exciting since I've never really been on the sideline of a game before, I'm usually inside editing the rebroadcast of the game to air on Comcast SportsNet. I took my camera and got some shots of the action, but I wish I had taken my Canon HV20 instead. I actually was so caught up in all the sideline action that I forgot Katharine McPhee was coming out to sing the national anthem.I was rooting for her to win American Idol since she simply had a better voice than Taylor Hicks. So I was walking along the sideline and she walks right by me, like 5 inches away, and I thought, "Hmm, she looks familiar." Then I remembered. So she sang the anthem and all, then she just kind of hung out on the sideline for the first half of the game. So Scotty and I decided to try to get some photos with her and we were successful, as you can see. She seemed very happy to pose with us, so that was nice.

Another celebrity sighting that was exciting was the halftime performance by ZZTop. I'm a big "Back to the Future" fan, so I best knew the band from their appearance in the third installment of the trilogy as the band who played at the clock tower celebration. That was a cool performance even though they only played one song. Check out my Flickr for some photos of that, and of the game and scenes around our hotel.