Under the weather...

the past week now i've been a bit under the weather. that's not good for many reasons 1) i hate being sick 2) i have a lot of classwork to do and no energy to do it 3) i have a lot of work to do and still no energy to do it & 4) my job requires me to supervise late night events such as concerts and comedy shows in which i don't get home until 1 am usually...none of which are good/easy when you aren't feeling 100% nor does it help you to get better...it's also frightening because health officials talk about how swine flu will impact the campus, so that's always a pleasant thought.

the past week has been productive though, i've been able to stay almost caught up on school work, tonight after my football game i'll write a 2 page paper and create a few powerpoint slides with it and tomorrow i'll read for my classes. then my next huge project is to select a research topic and start writing because i have 3-4 pages of it due next thursday. being a grad assistant is great because you earn a masters degree without going 30-40K in debt...BUT it does put me in an interesting situation where i have to balance being a student, adviser, and employee all at once. time management is still very challenging for me, because the last thing that i want to do when i get home from work is homework or study. my mind is usually so fried by the time i get home that i can't focus on anything that requires me to use my brain. my job isn't really that hard, but it requires me to use parts of my brain that i really haven't used before or ways that i've used before. people aren't telling me to do tasks really, i'm being given an idea or resources and having to synthesize my own tasks, or projects...which is a really good skill to develop it's just that i've never really had to do that before so it's taking me a bit to adjust...being sick is not making that very easy though.

Kathryn came up this weekend and we got to hang out and do a lot of nothing which felt amazing! that was the highlight to an otherwise very tiring and short weekend. i worked thursday, friday, and sunday nights in which the earliest i arrived home was 12:45 am. also every football team i've ever rooted for has generously blessed me with the worst weekend of football i've ever experienced (which for any of you who truly know me, puts me in SUCH a great mood {sarcasm}) so needless to say, i was not a very pleasant person to be around saturday night and sunday....to make matters worse, my roommate is a cincinnati bengals fan (i didn't even know people rooted for the bengals). i'm hoping that the rest of the week will bring a bit of sunshine into an otherwise very gloomy week.

Clueless...

no not the cheesy girly movie, but my life right now. last week my boss was sick and took off, i was felt like my favorite childhood book "the puppy without a boy" (or something like that, my mom would know). i felt like i had no direction. i realize that it is times like this where i should take initiative and make work for me to do...but i also feel that i've only been in this role for about a month now and that without direction i really don't know what to do. i found that i'm not very good with initiative right now...at least with my job. if it were next year, i feel that i wouldn't have any problem with it, but right now i'm still overwhelmed and trying to take in everything like an overfull sponge. but i'm still learning and will hopefully continue to improve my initiative skills. grad class assignments aren't too overwhelming with the exception of the reading. i told fink, my best friend, that i've read more in one week of grad school than i did the whole way through high school. the reading is important BUT i'm a slow reader so having to read over 300 pages per week is pretty much impossible, so i've had to improve my scanning skills very quickly so that i can keep up with the rest of the class. well enough about classwork...

this past weekend adam gave me friday off so i drove to tampa to spend the weekend with Kat. friday she cooked some awesome steaks and we just relaxed and watched a movie since i got there late. saturday we went to crate & barrel (really really really expensive housing/furniture store), giordano's pizza (really good chicago pizza place, it was really good and the only time i've ever been full from eating 2 pieces of pizza {don't worry NY pizza is still my fav} but it was still definitely top 5 pizzas i've ever eaten), then we played mini-golf at a really cool course which we placed wages on it BUT we tied!!!...o well it was fun. i came back to tally last night after watching the depressing steelers game...it's gonna be a long season if we can only put up 2 scores per game.

today we had our first IM football game tonight...our team name explains the team very well "We Try." we lost by 2 scores on 2 big plays...our offense is pretty bad but our D isn't too bad. it was a bit frustrating b/c of the rules, i've never played co-ed football so it's very different for me. this week should be a good week with school and work. i'm caught up on reading so hopefully tomorrow i can work ahead a bit!! that will be nice!

First Times and Wet Times

this week has been CRAZY busy. the world of student activities never really has a "down time." this week i've been planning a retreat, doing research for information to present at the retreat, advising students, helping students plan events, and the list goes on and on. but as a grad assistant i also have the added responsibilities of completing my homework on time and making sure that it's done right (in grad school the phrase "to the best of your ability" is thrown out the door, they don't care what YOUR BEST ABILITY IS they want it done their way). i also have to work the different functions, events, and activities in the evenings as well. somedays my day looks like this:
7:30 get up,
8 try to find parking,
9 maybe have found a parking spot,
9:30 finally get to the office after the 30 minute walk across campus in the nice FL weather, 10-12 attempt to get caught up on homework or office work,
12-3 meetings, tasks that i'm assigned to do by adam, or help my students with their events,
3-4 meetings, find food, walk to class,
4-7 class,
7-1am work event,
1:30-2 am get home/bed,
7:30 am--do it all over again....

i feel like no much how sleep i can get, it's never enough on the weekends or weekdays that i don't work events. i'm still trying really hard to figure out a schedule that i can balance things out. friday i worked my first concert in the club. it went pretty well, we had about 250 people there for the bands. it was the first time for the manager to work as well so it was a very good educational experience for me. i got home around 1:30ish and had to get up at 7:30 to get ready for our Union Productions Retreat at Camp Weed (which is in Live Oak, FL). Retreat was a lot of fun! it was also a great bonding experience for the group. adam said that this is the best group, in that aspect, that we've had in years. we had A LOT of rain; which for those of you who know me know that i just love rain...we went on a walk during our free time and i got soaked to the bone because in the middle of our walk the bottom just dropped out of the sky. the rain finally subsided by the end of the night and we were able to have our bonfire which i lit with a flare lol. this morning we covered a few more subjects, did some planning, did "fears/concerns in a hat" which is really cool (if you ever have a team building retreat you should do it). then we cleaned up and left. i got back here at 2pm and now i'm ready to try and catch up on sleep. it's going to be a great/busy week this week. IM football practice tonight, homework due this week, lots of concerts/events in the club, penn state game saturday, and steelers game on sunday!!

Way Behind and On Pace at the Same Time...

i spent this past weekend with kathryn in tampa. it was great! we went to siesta key on saturday afternoon (in which i got SUPER burned), we met up with Rick and chatted for a while, then we had all you can eat shrimp at redlobster! sunday we went to church and chilled in the afternoon. monday we got up, went to ikea, toured tampa, went to clearwater beach (where i got even more burnt, BUT i helped Kathryn face her fears of getting into water in which she can see the bottom, what i didn't mention is that there were stingray/jellyfish sitings at the beach that day, which made the "getting into the water" ordeal all the more fun!...at least for me). we then went to quaker steak and lube, which if you know me, makes me very very happy, then we drove over the skyway bridge (which is one of my favorites).

i find it interesting how human nature does not naturally let a person let go of old/bad habits. i have never dated a person that has really made an effort to make me happy before, so dating kathryn is a very new experience for me. the thing i have trouble with is letting her make me happy. it's a bad habit that i'm trying to break. she made chicken spaghetti on friday night which was amazing! BUT then on monday i was stubborn and wouldn't let her make a PB/Chocolate pie...so it's just something i need to work on.

this week has been very interesting at work. i'm planning the retreat for this weekend for my staff. i've never done this before so it's been a little difficult and unnerving. today was a very interesting day, Cam'ron (a low key rapper) was supposed to play a concert tonight BUT at 9am this morning he texted our talent buyer that he was in NYC and couldn't find a direct flight to Tallahassee...(and this surprised him?!) soooo he contacted us around lunch time that he found a flight BUT it was $5000...only $2000 less than we were paying him for the whole concert...SO at around 1 or 2 today Cam'ron cancelled the concert....SOOOO it was a very very intense day in the office so hopefully it'll be better tomorrow.

So even though i FEEL way behind...i'm on pace at the same time with school work, work, relationship, and just life in general.

P.S.--it's been a great day, i got my A/C fixed in the jeep for good!, my best friend Fink got home from Iraq and i got to wash the jeep!!!

Adjusting....OR....Getting My Butt Kicked?

ok so i knew grad school was going to be tough, and that i was going to have to adjust to a completely different lifestyle...but i think i've passed the "normal adjustment period." i believe i've now hit the "i'm just getting my butt kicked now" phase. so FSU decided to do a "favor" for their students in letting EVERYONE have a car and campus and instead of charging each of them separately, they just included everyone's parking fees in the fees hidden in their tuition...do you know what happens when 40,000 people have cars and there's only about 20,000 or less parking spaces?? let's just say if i don't get to the school before 7:45 am, i'll be paying $3 that day to park at a catholic church parking lot across the road...so this week dave and i have been getting up at 6 or 6:30, getting to school around 7:30 (sometimes working out, sometimes just going straight to our offices) my office hours don't start until 12 pm usually. so i've been usually getting 5 hrs. of sleep, working from 8-3 (no lunch break) class from 4-6:45, getting home around 7 or 7:30, making supper, cleaning, and by that time it's 10 or 11 and i still haven't started reading for class yet which depending which class ranges from 220 pages per week to about 50 pages per week per class. my supervisor was correct in saying that from this point on, i'm never going to be ahead in the game, it's just going to be a constant state of trying to catch up. which i'm not used to, i'm used to having a plan, and doing things at a decent pace. it's a much different lifestyle than i'm used to in good ol' dayton, where life is simple, where people relax. but this is my new life, the life of a chicken w/ my head cut off just running around. this week has been crazy, but it's been very good. i've gotten a lot accomplished at the office. and the only thing i didn't get done is the massive amounts of reading that were assigned, but i still was able to catch on and learn in class which was good.

steelers preseason is now officially over, now it's time for it to count and i'm super excited! it's also time for fantasy football (let the trash talk begin!). Fall is definitely the BEST time of the year and this is why: best weather of the year, college football, pro football, mlb playoffs & world series, changing of the leaves (@ least in the North), Hockey season starts, and pumpkin lattes at starbucks!! i am in my happy place for the 2 months of fall. see in PA fall lasts from sept until the end of november, fall in TN lasted from mid october until late november, in FL idk if fall exists...this could be a very depressing fall if not...