"I won't hit any of those pins." "Not with THAT attitude!"

One of the best things about the Center for Imaging Science at RIT is all the fun and free stuff we provide our students. I took full advantage of this when I was a student here myself - weekly IS&T meetings with pizza, the Winter Games, the Hunt, treats on holidays, copious amounts of t-shirts, etc. Since then the list of benefits has expanded to include outings such as dinner, laser tag, bowling - ask, and ye shall receive. Which is just what our second year students did, so last night CIS hosted a dinner and bowling outing for them!

Since the bowling lanes had leagues until 9PM, we started the evening with dinner at Tully's. Almost all of the second year students made it out, and then there were three adults (Joe, myself, and my fellow CIS-alum husband) to later serve as team captains for bowling. Since this was a pretty large group, we had to wait a bit for tables - but, we found ways to pass the time.

And then we experienced some of Tully's namesake "Good Times".

And stuffed ourselves with noms.

While we waited for the check, Joe, Matt, and I pulled names from a hat to make our initial bowling teams. Since the first letters of the names of the people on my team spelled "S-K-A-B", we decided to be Team SKABz. Matt's team named themselves Team MATTLAB, and I have no idea whether Joe's team even had a name or not. Then with pretty much perfect timing, we headed down the street to Bowl-A-Roll.

There were 12 of us and they gave us 3 lanes, which was perfect! 4 on a lane made for really well paced games, and since we had three adjacent lanes there was always something entertaining going on.

Each game we re-pulled names from a hat to get different teams and mix things up. (But we still kept the ridiculous nick names chosen for the players, such as "Cheezekurt", "Hamburger", and "A1 Steak Sauce", "Gonads", etc...)

Epic 10th frame.

Best bowl of the night - I scored a spare on a split, YEAH!

So many funny highlights happened that we decided to get plates from the snack bar and do paper plate awards, including: Best Muppet Freakout award; "Wha' Happen?" (so many 0's) award; Straight Shooter award; Best Curves award; Hottest Granny (for granny-style bowling) award; and the coveted, "It's 11 o'clock and I'm out of time" award; among others. I won the Future "So You Think You Can Dance" Winner award, for the spontaneous loosey goosey dance that made an appearance several times...

There may or may not be a video of this somewhere...

The event overall ended up being so much fun, and it really gave us all an opportunity to get to know each other better outside the stress of classes and work. It also gave CIS a chance to show our students how much we appreciate them and want them to succeed not only professionally but personally, as well. I definitely look forward to having more of these outings in the future - our students are the best! (Speaking of which, have I ever mentioned that I have the best job ever?)

You can view all of the pictures from the night here.