OP, Welcome to WDM

Thanks to a text from Stacy the other night, I learned that one of my favorite establishments from college, the Other Place, is opening a location in West Des Moines!! I spent many Thursday evenings, FAC afternoons, weekends, and summer nights at the OP on "the Hill" in Cedar Falls during my college years.

This past fall, Jake and I went to a UNI football game, and I made sure that stopping at the OP for a drink and some pizza was on the itinerary. It was my first time there in about 4 years and brought back a lot of good memories. It's not only a nostalgia thing, they have great pizza too! Can't wait!

Green With Envy

One of my good friends from college recently moved to Germany for a year for her job. In an email to her today, I was telling her how I was trying to figure out plans for a trip somewhere in the next few months. Her reply to me included this:

"Our next 3 week line up is Switzerland this weekend, Budapest next weekend, Greece the weekend after (For Easter!) Should be fun and busy!

Planning on taking a week off in May as [her husband] has to use up his remaining vacation days and going to Italy (Venice and Florence) and then a couple days in the UK"

This, of course, comes one day after I was viewing her newest Facebook photo album that includes pictures of her in Paris, Zurich, Greece, and several places in the U.S. How lucky is this girl?!

I will always be indebted to her for giving me the opportunity to take my first international vacation, when I went with her to Greece in the summer of 2008. Maybe I can be indebted to her even more if I add Germany to my list...after all, she did end her email with this:

"Well, you are most certainly welcome to come visit here!! Or Greece!!!!!"

The Power of Women

After reading, "Mighty Be Our Powers", the story of how Leymah Gbowee brought women together to fight for peace in Liberia, I learned of the documentary that was made, based on this story, "Pray the Devil Back to Hell", and immediately put it in my Netflix queue.

If you want to read/see a truly inspiring story of just how strong, resilient, and powerful women can be, I highly recommend reading "Might Be Our Powers" and/or watching "Pray the Devil Back to Hell".

Cheers

What better way to appreciate 79 degree weather in mid-March than grilling out with your roomie and enjoying a Summer Shandy...cheers!

Midterm

It was brought to my attention in an email today that we are at midterm, and it got me thinking about how the first half of my semester back at school is going...

Remember when you were in college and there was always that one non-traditional student in the class who was always 15 minutes early to class, sat in the front row, always had something to contribute in class, seemed to be a brown nose with the professor as they talked about the industry, in relation to her full-time job and you always had to hear, "well, at my company..." and she just, well frankly, annoyed the sh*t out of you?

...funny how 5 years down the road, you can start to resemble that "lady". I was in denial about it for the first few weeks. I mean, it's not like a sit in the front row....2nd row. And I don't always talk about my own personal experiences at work...I let my other classmates talk too. It wasn't until we had to turn in our first homework assignment that I began to recognize what I've become. The assignment was to read a case study and answer 4 questions about it. Well, my paper turned out to be a little over 4 pages. We got into groups the night the case study was due to discuss them before turning them in, and as I looked around and saw the other papers, most everyone else had 1 or 2 pages. "Oh my gosh, I'm that girl in class", I thought. In my defense, it was double-spaced...although the assignment expectation was about 350 words....oops. I did get 100% on the paper though, with the comments of "way to tie in the HRM concepts! ...watch the length."

I'm starting to come to terms with it and accept that the 19-year-olds probably roll their eyes at me and talk about how annoying I can be, like I used to with the non-trads in my classes. Oh well, as long as I continue to do well in the class, I'm okay with being "that girl" (because I refuse to believe I'm old enough to be referred to as "lady")

Photo Project Failure

Well, for those of you keeping track, I state the obvious when I say I failed at my attempted photo project. No excuses - I chickened out at taking photos of myself and not taking a picture everyday led to forgetting what I wore on a particular day, and after that, I decided to just give up on the project. My bad. I don't want to give up on the idea of a photo project entirely, however, a fashion one appears not to be the one for me. I'm tossing around a few ideas and hopefully by the 1st of March, I can start on a new one.

President Awesome

Obama is the man, enough said.