The weekend's here! Have a can of beer!

This evening Jess, Rashaad, Tracy, and I went to the Texas Roadhouse for supper. We are all coming off of 13 consecutive days of work with all sorts of arrival craziness, and I think we deserved to cut loose and have a delicious, non-dining hall meal. Everyone had steaks, and everyone complained a little bit about their food babies as they left the restaurant. I had a NY strip steak smothered with onions, mushrooms, and Jack cheese. Tom Colicchio would probably call that an abomination, but for me it was seriously tasty. It was a good evening.

On the way to dinner, we stopped at FedEx to mail some football tickets that we sold through Stubhub. I spent 10 minutes in the place, and ended up not shipping them because FedEx was out of both labels and receipt tape. A FedEx that is unable to ship items is like a Starbucks without coffee cups. I declare that the FedEx on the corner of Atherton and College Ave. is the worst FedEx in all of the land.

Plans for the weekend include. but are not limited to: watching season 2 of "Flight of the Conchords," sleeping in, helping Jess w/ her dinner club meeting on Sunday, and getting some reading done for school. I am so glad to have a real weekend.

Getting Back on the Wagon

April 13 seems like forever ago, but in reality it has been a quick 4+ months since I have updated this blog. Let's recap, and set some goals for the new school year, shall we?

Summer went incredibly quickly. Jess and I went to Disney World in May for our basically annual trip. It was a great time. We took advantage of a promotion that allowed us to stay and play for 7 nights for the price of 4, so this trip marked our longest adventure in "the World." It was both the Epcot Flower and Garden Festival and a Star Wars Weekend. Highlights included:

• Being in Florida for the statistically rainiest May ever. Orlando got about 14 inches of rain during the week we were there (Daytona got even more). We did not allow the rain to ruin our good time, though. With ponchos in hand we took advantage of smaller crowds. There wasn't anything we could do but laugh. It certainly made for a memorable trip!


• Some really awesome meals. We took advantage of the Disney Dining Plan, and although it is certainly an added expense (and we could make sure not to starve for cheaper) it is a lot of fun to try out all of the different restaurants at Disney. We had a phenomenal meal at the California Grill (maybe our best Disney meal ever?), had a very good time at 'Ohana, and in general ate like royalty throughout our stay. When you are having a hard time deciding where you had the tastiest steak, you've had a pretty good week of eating.


• With more time in the parks than we were used to, we had no issues taking advantage of all of our favorite attractions. Some of our big-time favorites we did many times (Toy Story Mania, Soarin', Tower of Terror), and we got to check out a few attractions we hadn't done before, or hadn't done in years (Spaceship Earth, American Idol).

The rest of the summer was something of a blur. I worked for Conference Services this summer, which was very easy. Jess and I took Rashaad to see Kathy Griffin in Baltimore for his birthday. We visited my folks in Erie and saw a drum and bugle corps show. There was some hanging out with Caden and Kenzie. We saw some Pirates games. In short, summer was spent doing the best things with my favorite people.

We are back to work, and I am excited for the year. I have a good supergroup with a great sense of humor. I have a good supervisor (something I am appreciating more and more each day) and I think that for the most part the student leaders I am working with are good people who want to do well. North Halls is a good place to be (even if I have 3 additional staff members and a grand total of 860 residents this year)

Let's set some goals for the year, eh?

1. Success in my doctoral program. Specifically, I would like to get A's in all of my classes, and at this time next year I want to have a specific vision for my dissertation research.
2. I want to run a 5K in the next 6 months or so. To that end Jess and I have bought a treadmill, and I am following this plan to get ready.
3. I want to use my reusable coffee cup everyday, instead of accumulating wasteful paper cups.
4. I will blog more.

That's good for now. Thanks for tuning in!