Here are some pictures, in no particular order, and with no point to them

This is Chloe in San Fran. Mostly I just love this picture.

And me, calculating the weighted average cost of capital for Coca Cola... in between games of Bingo and Bowling.

My sister Carri: the Bingo enthusiast.

More San Fran.

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh...gotta go.

Shady's back, tell a friend

Over the past two months I've accrued 17,682 air miles, visited 6 major US cities in 6 different states, driven 2247 miles, read about 1500 pages of required reading, interviewed 23 times, lost multiple games of bingo in Mesquite, partied like it was a 1999 Halloween in Boston, turned another year older, nearly finished 1/4 of my degree, and yes, saw Twilight. It's been a pretty full couple of months.

Today is a good day to blog because it marks the day I make a big decision, and big decision days should probably be remembered. After having survived the recruiting season, I'm now tasked with choosing the internship that will hopefully become my job for at least the next who knows how many years. Kind of crazy to think of how much could potentially hinge on this day. No pressure or anything...

In other non-school/job related news, I somehow miraculously escaped illness this Thanksgiving, which breaks the pattern of my life for the past 5 years or so. This is truly a feat considering the fact that I even willingly exposed myself to the germ pool that was my sick niece and nephews all weekend. I'm kind of proud of my little immune system, and I also now feel justified in avoiding the flu-shot this season.

Lastly, I heart Redbox. Really, is there anything better than being able to drive over to your local McD's to pick up a sappy romcom at any hour of the night? The $15 in charges I racked up this weekend tell me there is not.

I Promise To Blog

Soon.

Too long baby

I was going to start out by apologizing for how long it has been since I last posted, but an apology would imply that I intend to correct the problem by blogging more often, which is not a promise I can deliver on. If there's one thing I've learned over the last few weeks it's that I'm not good for delivering anything but school work. I am a B-school content machine.

Yeah, yeah, school is boring boring to write about so let's move on. All in all, today was a pretty rad day. It started with a pre-interview interview for a potential internship for the summer, which I felt went pretty well. Oops, that's school talk. I also spent some quality time with my sister-in-law, bought two pairs of amazing stilettos, had a coke slurpee, went to a phenomenal concert at the conference center, and finished the night visiting with some people I just really like.

Now I'm sitting on my bed at my brothers house. It's a real bed with a bed frame and sheets that fit. Gosh I love it here. I realized just now that I haven't eaten all day, but I'm not going to do anything about it now because, well, it's 2 AM and the trek upstairs just isn't worth it. I am, however, going to end this pointless pointless post and go to sleep. Guess I was just feeling the need to reach out to the cyber world.

Flossome

A person can only tolerate school so long. For me,the tipping point is about 12 hours, after which I generally push my useless self through one more, then calmly exit the building while resisting the urge run and sing from the hilltops with beautiful exclamations of freedom. Thirteen hours may seem like an exaggeration, but I assure you it is not. If I'm not actually in class, I'm working on a group project, and if not that, I'm reading, and if not that, I'm attending an information session for a potential employer. And if I'm not still at school, I'm probably home sitting on my air mattress, ruining my back, and working on the stuff I didn't get done during regular business hours. But I'm not complaining about the hours. Really. The truth is that I'm actually very interested in everything I'm studying, and that factor makes the time go by rather quickly. Add that to the fact that school is about 9,000 times more interesting than my last job, and I'm sitting pretty. On my air mattress.

I am complaining, however, about the fact that since the start of school I have literally not had time to floss my teeth. Don't act all grossed out, I still brush three times a day, which statistics tell me is three times more than about 37% of you. Now that's gross. Anyway, the real point is that the epiphany I had while bloodying up my gums tonight was that I absolutely must make time for the little things that bring me joy--be they blogging or flossing, or doing both simultaneously. These are the things that will keep me sane. And gingivitis free.

As a bonus, taking time to do things outside the realm of education might also give me something more interesting to blog about than bloody gums. Are you grossed out yet?

MBA 101: Lifestyle

If there is one perk about going back to school it might be that I now have a real excuse to call Top Ramen and various Chef Boyardee canned cuisines dinner. Today, in fact, was the first time I've been grocery shopping in over a month and I really did delight in finding some of the crappiest/cheapest stuff that Macey's had to offer. Even shopping at Macey's screams student loan survival.

I guess there's no real reason for me to be living the "college" lifestyle. I own an entire house for heavens sake, but either my pride or my laziness keeps me rocking the air mattress and rubbermaid bins for my clothes even three weeks into this new situation. Don't worry though, I finally bought sheets today. Of course, in keeping with tradition of this lifestyle, they are a size too large and pushing 150 thread count on a good day--but hey, they were on sale!

Basically I probably need to re-prioritize my life so that I'm not curled up on my sagging mattress every night, eating ravioli and combing the web with every intention of purchasing new electronics or a flight to Boston for the weekend. Also, I need to start doing my homework before 10 PM. I'm out.

Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of this week

It's probably worth mentioning that I'm having trouble remembering to capitalize letters at the beginning of sentences since I refrained from doing so in my old blog. I once read a poem that persuaded me to write in all lower case letters in order to gain some street cred in the blogging world. Now, after years of doing so, my brain automatically reverts to this writing style within the blogger program. I'm trying to break the habit.

Tomorrow I start my real classes which begin at 8 AM and end in about two years. Simply based on the mass amount of homework I did this weekend, I think I can confidently surrender my personal life right here and now. The upside is that I actually enjoyed the chapters and cases I read in preparation for tomorrows discussions. Sick, I know. Also, I guess if there's a school that has to own my soul for the next two years, it may as well be the right one.*

In other news, I was stung by a hornet twice this weekend. The same hornet. While cruising down the road on the 4-wheeler we somehow collided at my neck, the only piece of exposed skin on my body, and at what felt like that exact moment he managed to sting me there, fall down my shirt, and sting me again in the chest. It felt like an electric shock had gone through me and I'm still not sure how I managed to pull the bike over, rip off my helmet, goggles, and gloves, reach down my shirt and pull him out of there without further injury to myself. I don't know if I can say the same about the hornet because my only inclination through the mind numbing pain was to throw him as far as I could, but I'd like to think he made it out of there okay and that I'm not going to hell for needlessly killing one of Gods creations. Hopefully there are exceptions for when a FREAKING HORNET GOES DOWN YOUR SHIRT. Anyway, this was by far one of the more random occurances of my life, and hopefully one of those occurances I can write about with proper punctuation and still gain some street cred in the bloggersphere.**


*This is my first attempt at Cougar pride. Is it working?
**Is the word "blogosphere"?

That's really uninteresting

When I decided to begin this new blog I thought that instead of writing about the general happenings of my life, I'd try to focus on making it an accurate depiction of my educational experience. Perhaps my hope was to shed some light on the realities of b-school at the BY for those who may be considering a future here. To create a beacon of truth for the unassuming and eager GMAT takers of the world. To publish a herald to the trials and tribulations of my fellow students and blah blah blah...BORING. The idea hasn't even held for the first two entries. I guess that could be because we're only half way through orientation at this point and the only things of mild interest I could share would be about the paper airplane my group built that didn't win yesterday's competition, or the moment we almost dropped a group member in the water at our Army leadership training. These things aside however, I realize that virtually no one will care about how much time it's going to take my group to put together a presentation on ethical financial reporting, the hours of sleep lost over a mid-term paper, or the number of chocolate covered cinnamon bears I consume each day. I'm already bored writing these hypothetical topics that could appear hereafter--except for the part about the cinnamon bears--so I'm guessing that if I can't even stay interested in myself, nobody else will.

The moral of this story is that the chocolate covered cinnamon bears really do live up to their reputation. Also, I have no intention of doing anything in particular with this blog except for making it pretty much the same as the old blog with a lighter template and a new address. It goes without saying that since I've sold my soul to school for the next two years, it just might come up every now and again but hopefully somewhere between the gummys and the balance sheets I can manage to do interesting enough things with my life to keep you three readers entertained.

Inaugural Night

This is a new blog for a new time of life. As such, something poignant should probably be written here, but, it's not going to happen. Mostly I'm just psyched to have a new computer and felt like a good old (new) blog entry was the prime way to break it in.

Stay tuned for more musings from Cougar country...which is what I think they call this place.