school

100% Certified Sara Free

/ Shane / Leave a comment

So Sara left today to go to Salt Lake City (party capitol of the world) for a conference until Saturday.  I’m already bored.  On the plus side though I got to turn on the heat, use the laptop and watch ESPN for hours.

I just noticed that when I made that post about my old man down there, I was listening to “Father of Mine.”  That’s weird!

So yesterday I started my LAST CLASS OF GRAD SCHOOL! But man does the class suck!

It’s called Communication Skills for Management.  It’s essentially any freshman year comm class you ever took (Comm 114 at Purdue).  Let me attempt to recreate the first class for you.  Well first off, the teacher is hardcore about missing class.  If you miss class you have to do a 2 hour web course within a week to make up for what you missed, which would be nothing because the class is stupid and worthless.  If you miss more than 1 class for any reason, you automatically lose 1/3 of your grade, like you’d go from an A- to a B+.  So no chance of skipping.

But seriously, it’s like comm class for freshmen who failed out of their intro comm classes.  We have to give an informative speech, a persuasive speach and a couple of writing assignments such as writing a memo and critiquing our speech.  Seriously, as a grad school class.

Anyway, we get to class and we have to do an ice breaker where we introduce ourselves to people and find out things about them and then they can sign our sheet.  Yeah, welcome to 5th grade.  Then we spend 50 minutes learning that communication can be NON-VERBAL as well as verbal.  I know!  I’m as shocked as you.  We took a 10 minute break and then we did an exercise where a guy tried to get us to draw a picture that we couldn’t see using only verbal cues.  Then we spent 50 minutes learning that communication can get MESSED UP sometimes.  I about passed out with surprise!  Then we take another 10 minute break.  So finally we get to the big punch line of the class, you could tell she was really building up to this one.  50 minutes for her to tell us that it doesn’t matter what you’re trying to tell someone, it only matters WHAT THEY THINK THEY HEARD.  I just fell right out of my chair.  That’s some deep shit.  Finally we did an exercise where we had to interview the person next to us but here’s the catch!  We couldn’t write down words, only pictures!  And now in the next class we have to introduce the people we interviewed using only our pictures to help us remember stuff!

So all of that great stuff made the class spill over 15 minutes.  3 hours and 15 minutes to tell us what could basically be summed up in 3 bullet points on 1 slide.  I can only hope the rest of the classes are as useful.

Oh yeah, and get this!  Classes are supposed to be 7 weeks but we miss 1 class because of Thanksgiving, so she scheduled a class on the 8th week.  Then we took a secret ballet vote to see if we should have that class.  Someone voted YES!  So now we have to have the class.  I mean who votes yes??

And we can’t forget to mention the taking of attendence.  Of COURSE there was attendence. 😛

Oh well, at least 7 weeks and I’m DONE.

This my shit, this my shit

/ Shane / 2 Comments

This shit is bananas, b-a-n-a-n-a-s

Well okay, I’m back for some more mad phat blogging action. I can’t believe it was almost exactly a year in between posts there. Time flies. I re-read all of my old posts today. Good times. I’m a psycho! Sara always tells me I’m moody, but holy crap. I don’t know how she put up with me. The big take away was that I was really really freaked out about getting married. I totally didn’t remember that, but it’s obvious when re-reading this.

Okay, so what’s up? Like I said, I just got done with my capstone project. We made a pluggable card game. Essentially someone could create a few files and have a totally new card game that they could play in our framework. We implemented Euchre and Hearts. Stacy would have loved the Euchre!

Speaking of Stacy (LJ still reminds me of her), on the new Ben Folds CD there is this great song called Late. Its about a guy Sam Elliot who he kind of knew but he really liked his music and then that guy killed himself. It’s just like this really great song about things he’d like to tell the guy if he could. I just think it’s a really nice song because he’s just talking to the guy like he would if the guy were still around, not making this rediculous romanticized version of the guy. I used to think of Stacy and cry every time I heard it, but I’m over that now. I still like the song though.

Anyway, we went to NYC for our 1 year anniversary. It was a really great trip, although short. We saw Wicked and Avenue Q. They were both FANTASTIC shows. You can’t really compare them because they were very different, but I would strongly recommend either one to anybody.

Before that Sara’s mom came out to visit us for a week. It was a really nice visit even though we had to work during some of it. But here’s the weird thing. So I got this call from my friend Casey who I haven’t talked to in a long time. I called him back and he was like “Hey, we’re coming to see you, we’ll be there tomorrow.” So he ended up coming while Sara’s mom was here, which was kind of weird, and also he brought his new girlfriend Margret which was also weird because I knew her from high school but haven’t seen her since then. But she’s like suuuuper nice and I think they had a good time here. It was kind of strange though.

I didn’t really give the England trip justice in the blog here, but it was too big and too long ago to bother with now. It was the second biggest trip of my life and it was very nervewracking driving for a week on the wrong side of the road. But I only drove on the wrong side 2 times when we came back and I think I was even starting to master the round-abouts!

I’ve been listening to Tenacious D like a mad man lately. Best. Band. Ever. Sara bought me the new Dave Matthews Band CD because I was like insane-o fanboy, but I didn’t have the cd. So I got it and it was pretty much what I expected, by which I mean not all that good. It’s alright I guess, but I just feel like they’ve gotten away from what made them good. This album is too predictable.

Nala used to always sleep with me on the bed, by which I mean she used to let me sleep in the bed with her. But then when Sara moved in, there wasn’t room for the 3 of us. So Nala really kept us up a lot at night. Then last Thanksgiving we had left her alone while we went to visit Sara’s family and when we came back she was just flipping out because she was so attention starved. She’s such a needy cat. Anyway, we weren’t getting ANY sleep so we kicked her out of the bedroom and closed the door. Man did she not like that. She just banged on the door and cried so much that that was even worse as far as getting sleep. So then we tried putting her in the bathroom with the door closed and also closed our door, but even that didn’t work. She went so crazy in the bathroom that she started ripping chunks out of the door even though she has no front claws!! So we decided she was never allowed back in the bedroom. For about 6 months we tried EVERYTHING to shut her up, including wearing earplugs, running a fan, etc. Also I kept the spray bottle by my bed and about 3 times per night when she woke me up I went out and sprayed her. I thought that my sleep was going to be disrupted for the rest of my life and then one day, like magic, she just stopped! That was a few months ago and now she just doesn’t wake us up at all!! It’s like the craziest thing ever, it was seriously like magic. So the moral of the story is, stick to your guns and eventually the other person will have to give in.

My mom graduated with her masters, so congratulations to her. My mom, brother and sister are all up at the family reunions this week and I’m sooo jealous. But even more so, they’re going to NOAH’S ARK (the happiest place on Earth) this week. Ugh, I’m so jealous.

Alright I’m going to commit this because it’s getting long.

Hey, remember this thing?

/ Shane / Leave a comment

I was just catching up on some friend’s blogs and I remembered this thing here. I really would like to get back to writing in here. For awhile it just became too much of a chore.

So I’ve been married a year, so far so good! 🙂 Everything’s going really well and married life is even better than I thought.

Work has been a handful. About 5 months ago or so I kind of got a promotion to where I’m a team lead and I’m managing 3 or so people. I say “kind of got a promotion” because it was a promotion in responsibility but not a promotion in money or anything. 🙂 It’s been really good so far, but it makes me work a lot more than I used to.

On top of that school was really kicking my ass. I just got done with my capstone class, which is like the “end-of-your-masters-wrap-up-the-program” class. Between all the extra hours at work and all the extra hours for school, I’ve literally had no time to do anything. I can’t wait until I graduate in December!

Now that class is over and our delivery is about to go out the door at work, I find myself without anything to do. I’m still kind of in hurry up mode so I feel like I should be doing something. T.V. just seems boring now. (Hence me picking the LJ back up…)

I’m trying to actually DO some of my hobbies now that I have time, particularly picking the guitar back up. Unfortunately my callouses are completly gone now and I’m not able to play for very long.

Somewhere in there we also took a trip to England to see Sara’s sister who was doing study abroad. It was a great trip (although we prefered Italy) except for on the first day when someone broke the rental car window and stole Sara’s purse. Kind of put a damper on the trip…

Okay, I started this too late and now it’s time to go to bed. Who knows, maybe I’ll have some extra time now that school is out and I’ll update this thing!

The Final Nightmare

/ Shane / Leave a comment

So that pretty much catches us up. ::whew:: So now it’s late Tuesday night and I’m leaving early Thursday to drive to North Carolina for Sara’s graduation. I’m not used to seeing her so much! 🙂 It’s going to be weird though because I’m going to have to sleep in a room with her parents. That makes me uncomfortable. It’s going to be very crowded in that little apartment with 5 people in there! Okay, there’s probably most stuff I could say but I am JOURNALED OUT!!

That is all.

Over and out.

51

/ Shane / Leave a comment

I feel like there’s not much to do now that I don’t have school!

I came home from work and made a bunch of phone calls. First I called the guy in charge of the place where we’re having our reception. Sara gave me a list of questions to ask him. You know, it’s quite amazing, every time we have something we want to do, he says yes. No matter what it is, he makes it happen. Maybe I shouldn’t be so amazed because that’s the way people should be when you’re giving them lots of money, but frankly they aren’t. This guy though…he’s awesome.

Next I called 7 apartment complexes. I have 3 appointments set up but most of the places either didn’t answer or I left a message on an answering machine. I’ve decided that I’m going to make my decision after the places I see on Thursday. If I don’t hear from anybody else before then, so be it. I’ve looked at about 7 places, I’ve got 3 more for sure to look at and another 6 or so that I’ve called but haven’t seen. Nobody can say I wasn’t thorough!

Other than that I’ve just played guitar and watched T.V. tonight. I feel like there are things I should be doing, but I really don’t think there is. Oh, I was going to put a little extra in my final but the info I found didn’t really change anything, so I didn’t resubmit it.

Oh, one more thing, I weighed myself today. I was expecting something really bad since 1) I’m not working out AT ALL, 2) I’ve been eating easter candy like crazy, and 3) I’ve been eating bad things and going out to eat. I think I forgot to mention it in here, but on Friday night I had a full cheesesteak from both Pats and Ginos!! NOT on the diet plan. But you know what? I was down 4 pounds from the last time I weighed myself! I was 208, which was only 1 pound heavier than at the end of the contest.