After more than a month, I am finally getting back into the grove of the semester and have found some time for a nice blogging sesh  🙂  Thinking back, the winter break seems like it was forever ago!  I was reminiscing about hanging out with friends and wearing summer clothes during the winter back home in SoCal when I decided to share it with you guys instead of hording it all!   The last time I shared the story of a great Thanksgiving and my Amish beard.  This time, it seems fitting to share about Christmas, my shenanigans over break, and the best day of the year: New Year’s Eve. 

This year, for the first time, I did not want anything for Christmas.  My parents kept bugging me and asking me over and over what I wanted, but I just did not have anything that I really needed.  Of course, WANTING something is a different story, but my parents (like most parents of teenagers) just would not lighten up to the idea of buying me a Corvette.  🙁  Sad, I know, but life goes on.  Due to my desire for gifts that are far out of the price range of gifts that any teenager should receive, my parents and I could not come to a conclusion on what I would get for Christmas until about a week before the 25th.  I was looking at my old ski/snowboarding gear since I was going to be using it when we traveled up to Mammoth mountain later over break.  When I tried it on, I found that it was far too small for my size.  Apparently I have grown since freshman year of high school!  Who would’ve guessed…

Anyways, I asked my parents if a whole new outfit would be within their price range for the holidays.  When they said yes, I immediately got to work.  I looked at all the deals at stores and online.  I must have looked through at least 2000 jackets before I found a couple that I liked.  After narrowing it down to two different sets of jacket/pants, I finally decided on a white and black colored outfit.  However, no matter how hard I looked, my size was sold out.  I told myself that the green outfit was just as good, and settled on getting that one.

Christmas day was a weird one for my family.  I could not sleep the night before, and ended up sleeping in until around 3 pm, when my family told me we were going to dinner with my aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents in half an hour.  After spending almost 8 hours with family, my parents, sister and I arrived home.  We started opening presents just before midnight.

When I opened my presents on Christmas night, I couldn’t help but smile as I pulled my new snowboarding outfit out of the boxes.  However, my parents threw me for a loop.  I had opened all of the boxes that had my outfit inside of them, but I still had a few more presents to open.  When I opened the first one, I was shocked to see the pants of the other outfit that I had seen with my own eyes to be sold out.  I ripped through the last two or so boxes and minutes later, I had the entire “sold out” outfit strewn out in front of me.  I simply could not believe my eyes.  I was speechless, and according to my parents I had a look on my face that was so priceless that it could only be called the look of “a kid on Christmas morning”.  If I had to guess, my expression probably looked like this:

On a different note, my uncle asked me if I could help him with his work over break.  He makes a living cleaning fish tanks, and a nice living at that.  It is amazing how much people will pay for others to clean up after them (or their pets).  Anyways, our job over the break was to remove all of the tanks in every Rubio’s grill in Southern California (except for one).  By the time he asked if I would be interested in helping him, there were only 3 or 4 tanks left to remove.  Each tank held about 100 gallons of water and it took us about 2 hours to disassemble all of the parts and get it on the truck to move.  It was a fun job and it got me up out of bed most days, something I was much too lazy to do on my own.  🙂

Now I know you have had the question “Why is New Year’s Eve the best day of the year?” stuck in your minds for a while now.  The answer: December 31 is my birthday, thats why!  This year for my birthday, I decided to just have a few friends come over and we would go to an arcade called Nickel, Nickel!  It is an arcade where you pay a small fee to get in, and all the games take nickels instead of tokens or quarters.  After hanging out at the arcade for about 3 hours, my friends and I headed back to my house for some epic NES battles and rice crispy treats!

After we finished bringing in the New Year with huge smiles and joyous attitudes:

My friends and I decided to go sit in the jacquzzi for a while.  It was so cool that night that the steam just made it nearly impossible to see us  🙂

The last part of my vacation was my trip to Mammoth Mountain.  It is an 8 hour drive from the beach cities, so after the long trek, my family arrived at our temporary home.  The snow was so-so, but it was still a ton of fun just to get out on the mountain and ride.  I also got to try out my new gear, and it was extremely comfortable so the trip was a complete success!  😀

I 

The road outside my apartment last Thursday. Maybe a few brave souls with snow and ice experience didn't mind braving the weather, but I, a born and bred Texan, decided to play it safe and chill out at home.

Back in Houston it never snowed, and I can't describe how magical it was to wake up to 3 inches of snow on the ground. It was actually the first time in my life that I had woken up to that much snow.

With that much snow on my back deck I decided to build a snow man. This Monday when I went back to class, my Psychology professor asked who had built a snow man during our days off. When I and a few others raised our hands she declared, "Look around everyone, these are the fun people."

Snowman again. Notice the NASA hat and Aviators - only a Riddle student would build a snowman like that.

And there is me in next to the snowman to prove that I was there.

My account of the Snow Days as documented  last Friday (my internet has been acting up, but all has been resolved):

In the past two days it has snow more in Prescott than it has in any other semester that I have attended Embry-Riddle. As a result today is the second day in a row that the campus has been closed for inclement winter weather.

If you know anything about weather forecasters, you may, like me, tend to take all of their predictions with a grain of salt. Since my time at Embry-Riddle, weather forecasters have predicted snowfalls in excess of 4-6 inches several times. My excited anticipation of a snow day was tangible on these occasions, only to be destroyed as throughout the night , the forecast changed to predict less and less snow until I awoke to a light dusting and a full day of classes.

Needless to say when the forecast predicted snow for the latter part of this week, I wasn’t going to fall for another weatherman crying wolf. No way! I went to bed unconvinced and prepared to go to my 7:45 a.m. class on Thursday morning.

When my alarm went off, it wasn’t the only beep my smart phone made. I had just received an email from the Executive Vice President Frank Ayers that the classes were canceled until 10:35 and that an update would be issued around 8:00 a.m. I was shocked. I jumped out of bed and ran to my deck to find 3 inches of snow.

So I asked myself, what would any self-respecting college student do now that they didn’t have class? Go back to sleep of course!

What did the update say? Due to extensive snow fall and dangerous driving conditions all classes would be canceled for Thursday, January 21, 2010. So I decided to build a snowman.

I used a spatula and spoon from my kitchen for the arms, my NASA baseball cap for a hat, the lid to a small pan for a smile, and my aviator sunglasses for the eyes. I named him Al, a facetious ode to Al Gore and the conviction with which he pushes his “Global Warming” beliefs.

Then I did something I never do. I spent the day watching movies. And it was wonderful.

Faced with a second day free of responsibility, I don’t know to do. Today is going to be a day of indulging hobbies.

I know I’m writing this after all the snow days, but I busy trying to carefully drive through it on those days! Since I’m a California girl, I’m not used to the snow, I still act and look like a child when I see it! I have only seen it fall once for a couple seconds and only been in it a handful of times- so for me, this was AMAZING! I live in Prescott Valley so I did not get hit as hard, but it was still oh so beautiful!<3

Wednesday January 20th, 2010. My Car, the day before the BIG storm! The front windshield was worse and very icy, so I had to get some water to get it all off! I had an appointment I had to make it to.

 

Wednesday, January 20, 2010. This was the day before the big storm as well. Stairs at my apartment!

 

Thursday, January 21, 2010. Right outside my apartment. This is in Prescott Valley, it was very pretty outside, I felt like playing in the snow!

 

Thursday January 21, 2010. Right Outside my Door. So much lovely snow<3

These pictures were taken last Wednesday and Thursday. I couldn’t get pictures on Friday because I was driving down to Phoenix during the huge storm!! It was pretty scary to drive with all the snow and then as I got down the mountain, it became heavy rain! So, it was a crazy experience and good thing I’m a live! 🙂

Part of me is happy the storm is done, but I do still love snow and definitely enjoy snow days! 😀

Let’s pretend I had this post written 2 weeks ago 😉

It’s been a super long time since I last wrote a blog post. That isn’t to say that I haven’t had time to…it just never feels like the right time. In my last post, I wrote about most of my Christmas Break. One of the few things I left out was seeing Avatar, twice (which still wasn’t enough), once in regular 3D and then the next day in IMAX 3D. Needless to say, I’m obsessed with the movie. I even found a 30 page book on the Navi language, including Phonology and grammar rules. It’s amazing to me that someone spent years of research and development to create a language for a movie! I guess it makes sense once you’ve seen the credits roll by twice; I’m pretty sure there’s several thousand names. I later found out that Avatar is literally the movie Pocahontas with different names and some insanely good graphics. Here’s a link to the plot duplication, ahem…coincidence: http://bit.ly/7Yb7TS.

I also went to the San Diego International Auto Show over the break. I think I’ve gone every year for the past four or so years, and there’s always a surprising amount of change every year. Some cool feature cars were ones with solar panel roofs, the same Lamborghini’s that never need to change because they’re just that awesome, and the indoor jeep track was neat. It’s entertaining to watch people freak out when the car they’re driving is balancing on 3 wheels on a 45 degree left-right slope. They also had a section with about 20 Camaros covering over a 40 year span. One of my favorite “vehicles” was an off-road wheelchair with…tank tread! I’ll try to write another post in the next couple days to cover our amazing snow days.

Here are a couple of pictures:

Is an explanation needed?

Off-Road Tread Wheelchair

I have been feeling really low for a week now. I think I got the flu initially. I had high temperatures and head-splitting headaches. To worsen it, it happened during the snow days. We got two of them last week on Thursday and Friday, thus a four day weekend as well. Except Dave, everyone at the house went to Flagstaff on Thu. The weather was so bad; they couldn’t come back till Saturday.

All that time, I was taking Tylenol, Thermaflu, Ibuprofin and a lot of fluids. I got done with a 24 pack Gatorade in 3 days. It was bad. L I went to the healthness center after four days of torture and self care. The doctor said I am on the way to getting better, so things should be fine in a day or two. Yeah, right. For two days, I am not able to eat anything. Nothing stays down. Hopefully, some more self care should solve it in a day or two.

To add to the pain, there was a structures quiz and HW. I managed to get the online quiz right but I was in no way capable of completing that HW. I bombed it real bad. I went to the Optimization class and found that the homework is postponded!!! What? There was homework? So, now I need to get done an upper level math course HW in a day. That is going to be great fun to watch.

Anyways, being sick alone taught me some things.

Real friends are very few.

They will help you when you need it, not when you tell them.

Don’t take medicines when the stomach is empty (I didn’t know that!).

Sometimes you just need to rest.

It made me think some of my long term goals and I have decided to graduate in 7 semesters! That is a whole semester of savings. However, I will also miss Riddle sooner L L

Let’s hope for the best! God bless you all!!

Last semester was really busy. So I couldn’t right a lot. Anyways, this is what happened last semester in short: Lots of studies. I was taking the Gauntlet.

Here at ERAU, we, Aerospace Engineers lovingly ( not! he he) call the combination of the three classes : Fluid Mechanics, Solid Mechanics and Dynamics as the Gauntlet. These are the first engineering course in which you use math and every other skill needed for good engineering. It is the first step towards taking higher level classes.

Things I learned:

1. Gauntlet is manageable. It is actually pretty much up to you. Don’t listen to people worrying about it, just hear it and forget.

2. You will have to sacrifice a lot of things like watching TV all weekend long or playing pool at the Union for long times. You know what takes the most time out of your day. Change it and you will be fine.

3. For every hour spend in class,  expect to spend two hours outside of class. That is what most of our professors told us. It is definitely true. So, that is like a max. of 36 hours a week and a week has 168 hours.

4. You will fail the course if you pile up the homework. These courses are homework intensive so manage time accordingly and you will see that you will be cruising through with ease

5. You don’t need to be a math genius to ace these classes, just don’t hate math. Solidfy your trig and calculus, and you will be doing just fine.

6. Keep up the spirit. Probably, it would be best if you attempt all questions yourself and then, have a study group to confirm answers and address problems and thus help each other as well.

Snow day number TWO!!  Despite having the heavy rains and wind the day before, the snow was still covering the ground when I woke up on Friday.  SNOW DAY AGAIN!  HOORAY FOR PRECIPITATION!! 

Snow at ERAU.

Actually, there is snow everywhere right now!  At home in Pinetop, AZ, there is (from what I’ve heard) about four FEET of snow, and they had school cancelled the whole week.  Apparently the brand new junior high got flooded due to so much snow.  I don’t know what my little sister is going to do for school!  It’s like a ghost town there… not even the businesses are open right now.  From Facebook, I got pictures from my friend at home and my friend in Flagstaff, AZ.

My friend Jessica Baker’s backyard in Pinetop!

Needless to say, I think they got WAY more snow than we did!

Here’s my friend Robin Myrick’s car in Flagstaff…

Can you see it?? Haha!

So that is Friday, January 22, 2010 in terms of snow!  Everyone, STAY WARM!

“…but the fire is so delightful!  And since we’ve no place to go, LET IT SNOW, LET IT SNOW, LET IT SNOW!”

Well, we got our first snowfall on Thursday, and it turned out to be a SNOW DAY!  The whole state is COVERED in snow, and we’re all in a state of emergency due to flooding, tornado warnings, and severe road conditions!  And I came here thinking that this would be a mostly dry climate (and apparently, so did all my friends from all different states!).  Pssh.

The snow day started off for Hall 1 at one thirty in the morning.  Someone had set off the fire alarm, and so our whole hall got to see the first snow.  For half an hour.  It was freeeeezing.  Anyway, people were having snowball fights in pajamas and taking pictures while security had to call the fire truck because, from what I could tell, they couldn’t find the right key.  So that was the morning of the snow day.

This picture was taken at one thirty in the morning.

When I woke up, the snow had multiplied by three!  I called the Weather Emergency Hotline for ERAU, and…. OFFICIAL FIRST SNOW DAY!! 

Before…

AFTER!!!

A couple of my friends and I ate at Chartwell’s then decided to build a snowman in the parking lot.  His name is…er, WAS,… Frosty!  And his dog’s name was Fido.  I know…. so original huh?

Fido wasn’t born yet in this picture.  He came later. 🙂

It rained heavily for the rest of the day, and it washed away ALL of the snow!  So that night, a few of my other friends and I decided to be brave (or stupid) and go bowling!  However, the bowling alleys were smarter than we were, and they were closed for the night.  So we went to the Harkins in Prescott Valley to see Avatar in 3D!  I definitely recommend it, by the way.  We drove safely home, though, even though it was raining like crazy.

We thought we were pretty safe in saying that we’d have school the next day, because all the snow was gone.  But the next day…….

“Oh the weather outside is frightful…”  Haha!

Well, it’s time to start school again…that means homework! 🙁  Which I got homework from every class one the first day! But I’m not complaining too much right now because I only have school Tuesdays and Thursdays. I also only have 4 classes this term instead of 5, like last term. I have Advanced computers, where we are learning how to use Dream-Weaver and how to create websites. Then I have Psychology 101, which is my favorite class! I took Psychology in high school and anatomy, so they went hand-in-hand, but I loved them so much that I thought about getting into psychology or biology. So for now I am taking the first level of psychology, but I want to take the advanced course to. I am thinking about minoring in it. 🙂 Next, I have humanities. I thought I was going to be doing the Beatles theme, but our teacher decided to try something new for the first time, and only on our section!!! Of course I get bad luck like that!!!! My last class is only on Tuesdays, it’s Public Administration with Sabotta. It seems pretty confusing so far, but I know she is very helpful, so I am not worried anymore. Yeah, so that’s my schedule. Sounds simple enough, but I went through a lot of hassle to get this schedule!

I originally was going to take an astronomy class, and I was scheduled for it, and it sadly overlapped Macroeconomics, which is another class I really wanted to take, so I could not take it this term. I have always loved astronomy and wanted to be an astronaut ever since I was little, but my eyesight will stop me from getting into that field, which is why I want to become a pilot and hopefully a manager at an airport someday. Anyways, at the beginning of this year I saw that ERAU messed up with the Astronomy time and it ended up being only on Thursdays and late at night. (Makes sense that it’s at night, but since it showed 8am when I was signing for classes, I could not take Macro) If that wasn’t enough to damper my day, I got an e-mail from the astronomy teacher saying I cannot take his class since I didn’t have the prerequisite Physics class. So, now I was stuck with only 3 classes…Psych, Humanities, and Computers- and I need to be full time (12 credits) for my scholarships, so I freaked out. Well Diane Kelm helped me out within a day and got me into Public Administration, so now everything is settled! 🙂  And I get my excess money from my scholarships on Friday, so I am real happy about that! I have so many different expenses I need to take care of. Well, I enjoy my classes, even though I have homework every time I go. lol. But I guess it could be worse, right? Hope everyone else is doing okay now that we are all back. It always sucks to have to leave vacation, but I’m getting back into the swing of everything. Take care everyone and careful out there, everything is slippery!

Wow, I must say it took a lot of initiative to even get on here during my time off. lol. I have been so busy, so anytime there is free time is usually means complete relaxation! I hope everyone had been having an amazing break, I know mine is going pretty well.

There is so much to catch up with. Let’s start from final exam days… I studied very hard for each class and I had three exams on a Saturday and then my last exam was the following Monday, so I started break early! And I had my other exam just on the last day of class since our teacher was very cool. 🙂   I ended up getting 3 A’s and 2 B’s. I received an A in speech, Business 201, and Computers. A B in Microeconomics and Business 102. I ended up getting a 3.6 GPA and making Dean’s List 😀 I was so happy and my grandmother was estatic!!! (My grandma has taken care of me since I was too, so she is like my mother).

After finals, I went down to Phoenix area to my Boyfriend’s and his family’s house. We hung around a lot out here, but the week of Christmas we took a road trip to California to see all of my friends (and now Wyatt’s friends) and to spend time with my family and my Grandma. We hung out in Palm Springs area with my friend Philip. We spent the night there for two nights and both days were packed with get together and a birthday party. It worked out great because we ended up seeing almost all of my friends! Since my grandmother moved the beginning of December we had to drive an hour north- to Fontana, to see her new house where she now lives with my uncle and his wife. They have a beautiful two-story house and they live in a nice neighborhood. My grandma is very happy that all her favorite stores are only about 10 minutes away from her. We stayed one night at her house and just visited with her. My sister stopped by and got Wyatt a blockbuster gift card and payed for my phone bill. (We have a plan together) Then my grandma and uncle gave us some money. We ended up leaving late Christmas eve in order to get back to Arizona for Christmas with Wyatt’s family.

Christmas morning consisted of gifts, of course. I got $100 American Express Gift Certificate, Penguin car seat, a new outfit, and season of Supernatural. I had a lot of fun and I loved my gifts. Then later we went to christmas party and had a gift exchange. (draw numbers and can either steal a gift of open a new one) I ended up getting a pretty candle set! I also got a lot of candy, but I gave that to my boyfriend since I’m trying to lose weight. lol. There was a lot of food because we all did a pot luck. It was delicious! After the party, we went home and relaxed.

The next week we just hung out with some of Wyatt’s friends and play games, then we came up to Prescott for a weekend so I could get my mail and enjoy some colder weather. 🙂 For New Year’s, we ended up not really doing anything, so that kind of sucked. The rest of the vacation was just relaxing and having no homework! So everything went pretty well. Hope all others breaks were great too!