These are the pictures from a student project in our Experimental Space Systems class (a second semester junior level class for students in the aerospace engineering astro track).  Our class was divided into groups and each group was assigned to make a student payload.  One of the requirements of our team’s payload was to take pictures during flight.  All of these payloads were attached to a weather balloon by a tether and launched from the lower fields on campus last Thursday at 9 in the morning.

The Balloon ascended through layers of the atmosphere until it reached just over 93,000 ft, which (if I’m not being a total blonde) is about 17.6 miles high, before it burst and began to fall again (with a parachute of course).

Our payloads landed in rough wilderness about 30 miles away from campus on the side of a mountain and it took a team of brave students about 7 hours of hiking to retrieve it.

Here are what I consider to be the best pictures from our balloon Launch.  They start with pictures from before the balloon reached the cloud level then go between we were between cloud levels, and the final pictures are taken basically on the edge of space (well kinda, but not really).

Notice the time stamp in the corner.  By that you can judge how fast the balloon is rising.  We think the camera stopped working between 50,000 and 60,000 feet (probably because the camera was too cold despite our heater), but the pictures at that point are still amazing.

Enjoy!

This past week has been filled with friends and fun from both my church and my school.  On April 10, my Young Single Adult (YSA) ward and I traveled to Flagstaff to compete in a 9 stake volleyball tournament!  It was sooo much fun!!  We all carpooled (I drove one of the cars) down to the Institute up in Flag and had breakfast, played against other teams formed from people that go to NAU, had a dance later that night, and just had a great time meeting new people from around the state.  Since I took my own car there, I was also able to go and hang out with one of my good friends from Pinetop, Becky Beus!  She was sweet enough to let me hang out with her at her place and get ready there so I wouldn’t look like crap at the dance.  It was great catching up with her and meeting all of her roommates who also go to NAU.  Here are some random pics from the day:

Here’s me setting Andrew, who was on my team and also goes to Riddle.

The team on the left is our Prescott team; the one on the right is a team from Flagstaff.

I had so much fun with everyone in my ward and getting to hang out with Becky just made it that much better!! <3

Yesterday, a week from when I went to Flagstaff, I worked Student Preview Day with all the other students who work in Admissions.  I had a fun time working it, seeing all the prospective students coming through with their parents and siblings just like I did exactly one year ago!  And the circle of life continues…

The whole campus was teeming with high school seniors and their families, coming to see ERAU.  The weather was GORGEOUS, there were balloons everywhere, and there were even helicopters in front of the Activity Center and on the softball field! (Or baseball field, whichever you prefer.  I prefer softball personally.  🙂 )

I was lucky, and Steven Leon and I got to give away free T-shirts to all the students who came through the Lower Hangar to see all the clubs in the Club Fair.  There were so many clubs, including the sororities/fraternities, the Underwater Robotics Club, the Sweatervest Club, the Music Club, and so much more.  The choir was singing, the band was playing, and there was just a great community atmosphere.  We had a BLAST doing it.  I’ll admit, things got a little crazy, and that’s what makes it fun!  Here’s a pic of our CRAZINESS.

We took a picture with Ernie the Eagle so we could blog about it.  VOILA.

And that is basically what has happened in the past two weeks!  Fun stuff, let me tell ya!

“What you see is what you get.”
– Flip Wilson

Awe yes, the ides of April hath arrived, and passed. In the Adult world this day is associated taxes. In the college world, April 15^th is the middle of a transitional period in which your focus and workload kicks into high gear as your end of semester projects and studying for final exams loom before you. Such is the reason I didn’t have this blog finished by April 15^th. As a senior in high school, April 15^th represents a period in time when you have only a half month left before you make your final decision on which college to attend and have all of your paperwork submitted.

This decision is far from easy, because in addition to choosing an academic program, you are choosing where you are going to live for the next several years. I looked at going to schools in a variety of ways to narrow it down to my top three. Some of the reasons were even a little silly. For example, I noticed that many of the girls featured in the engineering programs I received were the type of female engineers that don’t do their hair, wear no makeup, and generally don’t care about their physical appearance. Looking at these brochures I thought to myself, “I’m not going to be able to relate to any of these girls.” I weeded out schools I felt would be too uptight and places where I felt I couldn’t be myself.

At this point in my senior year of high school, I had narrowed it down to three colleges: Texas A&M at College Station, Purdue University, and Embry-Riddle.

I did all of the research on these universities and rated them based on their academic programs. Embry-Riddle, of course came in first in that aspect, but there really is so much more involved in choosing the final university. I’m pretty sure a pro-con list was involved.

Most of the people that I went to high school with were going to the big state schools like Texas A&M and it certainly had its advantages. Culturally, the people that went to Texas A&M would have similar viewpoint and backgrounds, and the unique Texas Pride that only Texans understand. I could go to the big football games and eat Texas Barbeque and go to one of the best schools in the country for my major. The school was also only about one and a half hours from my home, so it presented the possibility of going home to see my parents more than Thanksgiving, Christmas and Summer Breaks. Purdue would also have been an excellent choice. It has an outstanding Engineering Program as well as a huge Society of Women Engineers.

For me, what it came down to was where I felt the most comfortable after campus visits. I even visited both Embry-Riddle campuses before I made my final decision. When it came to walking around the huge campuses, I felt kind of lost in the hustle of people. There are some people who like to be in huge classrooms with hundreds of students where they can fade into the background and not participate in the lecture. I, however, want to be able to ask questions of my professor and attend classes where my professor knows who I am. In that respect, Embry-Riddle’s small size and high faculty to student ratio really appealed to me.

In the end, I felt the most at home at Embry-Riddle’s Prescott Campus. I don’t really know how to describe it. Driving into Prescott and seeing the trees and the granite dells and the mountains surrounding the campus instantly began to draw me in.

I’m one of those obnoxious people who likes to be super early to events and my campus tour was no exception. Before the tour began I remember walking around the campus with my dad and feeling like, “This is it. This is where I’m supposed to be.”

In my family, we call this a gut feeling, and when it came to choosing where I went to school, I went with my gut.

Embry-Riddle had such a personal feeling for me. At the end of my campus tour I had a meeting with my Admissions counselor and we talked about the road trip I’d taken out to see the school, some of the activities I was involved in and what I was looking for in my University. About a month later, Embry-Riddle came to Houston for a recruiting/information event. When I walked into the conference room where the meeting was held, my admissions counselor greeted me saying “hi Kerianne,” and then proceeded to ask me how the rest of my trip had gone. Not only did she remember my name, she remembered who I was and details about me. It was the kind of personal feeling I was looking for. If my decision hadn’t been made on the visit, it certainly was at that point.

There are actually psychological studies out there that show that going with your gut feeling can make you happier. It’s kind of like buying a car. Before you go to buy the car you do all of your research and narrow it down to your pick. You do test drives to get the feel and imagine yourself driving the car for years into the future. When it comes down to making the final decision, many people are going to pick the red one, rather than the beige one because despite all the research and practical reasons for getting the car you choose, in the end it comes down to an emotional decision. Often times, making that emotional decision will actually make you happier.

So my best advice when it comes to picking your school is to visit the schools you’re choosing between. Try them out. See if the shoe fits. And in the end, once you’ve made your logical assessment of the choices, and narrowed it down to a few top contenders, pick the one that feels best to you. Coming to Embry-Riddle was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

So the weekend before spring break I decided to do something COMPLETELY out of my element. I took a trip to New Mexico without any planning. It was very exhilarating to say the least. I was needing a change for being in Arizona and I was going to California for all of Spring break so I did not want to go there and have to come back for my classes and then go back. So a good friend of mine that I have known since middle school moved to New Mexico before we made it into High School. He is about to go on his mission (Mormon 2-year mission), so I thought what a perfect opportunity to visit him before he leaves and for me to get out of state and see new scenery!

I went ahead and got a hotel room for a couple nights (Friday and Saturday night) and drove out there Friday morning. It took about 5 hours, but it did not feel as long since the excitement of a new place kept the drive entertaining, even though the road was pretty flat the whole way there! Here’s a few pictures of my view.

This was the road for about 300 miles!

 >Yes, I was on the correct side of the road, the on-coming traffic is on the other side of the field. You can see a big white truck on the other road.

Talk about pollution!!!

>No joke, you could see the clouds of pollution from about 30 minutes away, which is about 35 miles away? It was extremely disgusting!

~Once I made it into New Mexico I went to my motel room and got ready before my guy friend came and picked me up. I also took a picture of my “view”:

The view from my hotel window

>To be honest, it was not too bad, the mountains looked very beautiful! And I enjoyed being on the top floor-third floor.

~So it was Friday night where Justin and I went to Wendy’s to eat (second time I have ever been there) and then we went to the movies and saw Avatar<3 That was an amazing movie, one of my favorites for sure! Too bad we couldn’t see it in 3-D, it was not showing at the time we got there :/  He dropped me off at the hotel at about 11pm and then the next morning he picked me up and we went shooting!!! It was a lot of fun. The best round I did was 80% accuracy. Not too bad. I had a lot of fun and we shot about 500 bullets together! After that we wanted to go ice skating, but the rink was used for lessons- so instead we went bowling for a few hours. We both weren’t that good at it, but it was still a blast. And we both did get a couple strikes and spares in. Afterwards he took me back to the motel and we watched Myth Busters! Then he had to leave to go run errands and such.

Friday night 🙂

>I’m not conceited, I  just loved this picture, and it was when I was in the hotel room! 🙂

~Sunday morning I got to go to church with him and his family. It was really nice to be there and after church they invited me over for dinner! It was really good and fun to be a part of their family. I had to leave at about 3pm so I wouldn’t home too late…

As I drove home I took a lot more pictures and stopped at a couple places to get souvenirs and pictures:

Route 66!

>I thought it was awesome to be able to drive on Route 66 and considering Prescott is all about historical places- I figured others would find it interesting as well.

Native American stores

>There were a few places like this coming back into Arizona. It was pretty neat.

Flagstaff at night- in a blizzard

>It is not fun to drive through Flagstaff when the roads are icy, especially at night! The weather was going cray too, it was rainy, then it would turn to hail or snow, and then back to rain. It was not fun, especially since my windshield wipers needed replacing 🙁  But I made it back home which is all that matters!

So that was my New Mexico trip in a nutshell. It lasted about 3 days and two nights, it was an absolute blast and it was definitely needed. I felt a lot better being there and when I got back. 🙂

I know this blog is very late, but I was busy most of February and all of March! Everything seemed to just come at me all at once!

So let us begin with the “holiday” in February- Valentine’s Day. I had a pretty fun time. I spent money on the elderly ladies I work for and bought them some roses. I also bought my ex some gifts. Believe it or not, he wanted a machete! It was a pretty awesome one that I got too! I also saw the movie “Valentine’s Day”. It was a lot better than expected, although Taylor Swift was a complete air head in that movie 🙁 And she is one of my favorite music artists! But the night was great altogether because I got to dress up all fancy and go to Red Lobster for dinner<3 I also got a very nice gift from my ex- It was this beautiful bracelet with a special engraving in it. Plus a jewelry box to match. They were both really nice, but it ended up being a bit of a waste considering a week later things were broken off. (Which this is probably why it has been a while since I wrote about this, I was not really in the mood to talk about what was happening after a break up of a year and half relationship)

But any-who…After that mess I started getting more involved in school! I am actually enjoying Embry-Riddle a lot more and taking a liking into my classes. I am taking Advanced Computers, Psychology, Humanities, and Public Administration. Psychology is by far my favorite class, I have always had an interest in it! I am now thinking of double majoring after I’m done at ERAU and get a major in psychology as well 😀 I know this year is almost done, but “so far” my grades are awesome. I have an A in all of them except Public Administration- I believe it is a very high B. I’m not too upset because it is a 300 level class, and I am trying hard in that class. I probably would enjoy it more if it was not almost 3 hours long on Tuesday nights :/  But like I said before, almost done with this year, so there is no complaining.

For next semester it looks like I’ll be taking 3 business classes (don’t remember the names- I’ll get back to you on that), Accounting, and Statistics. I am not sure if I’m taking a couple online or not, but I do know I am only taking classes Mondays and Wednesdays because my job is requiring me to be down in Phoenix more full time. I take care of an elderly lady over weekends- run errands and such with her. But now her daughter wants a live-in situation because her mother had 3 strokes in the last two months- which I went to the hospital every time! She is currently in Texas with the daughter doing therapy, but when she gets back I’ll be staying with her just about 24/7 to make sure she is doing alright. It will be pretty decent money, but I am happy that I’ll be able to still go on campus and be somewhat involved with school and church.

If anyone knows someone who could offer me a couple nights a month (Saturdays, Sundays, and Tuesdays) for some payment of course, let me know 😉  {I am looking more towards females though}

Last night was a perfect ending to an extremely stressful day!  Yesterday I had a humongous exam in my Geography class, which I was studying and cramming for what felt like forever, and I was just super stressed about it.  So this whole week was busy, stressful, and on top of it all, extremely windy.  However, yesterday the wind FINALLY died down, and last night one of the stars of one of my very favorite shows came to Embry-Riddle to do stand-up comedy!!!!! (which OF COURSE makes everything better!)  Dave Coulier, who played Uncle Joey from the ABCFamily show Full House, came here!  When I had first come to ERAU, I had heard that his son came to this school, and I flipped out.  When I heard that Dave was actually coming, I pretty much passed out from excitement. 

Full House is an absolute favorite at my house.  Whenever I talk to my nine year old brother on the phone, he asks, “Have you seen the Full House where…” and explains pretty much the whole episode if I haven’t seen the one he’s talking about.  Actually, last year at my Homecoming when I was being nominated for Queen, they asked questions about me.  While all the other nominees said that their favorite shows were from MTV and such, I straight up said that my favorite show was Full House.  It probably got me some snickers, but I didn’t care!  (or maybe that’s what helped me win, who knows?)  So I was jazzed last night when I got to see “Uncle Joey” in person!!  He was soooo funny too.  I laughed so hard that I felt like a six pack was coming on!  Impersonations, jokes, harmonica playing… it was all there!  And now my life is complete. 🙂

And here he is!  The man!

After the show, a couple of my friends and I went to dinner at “B-Dubs” (or, for non-local folk, Buffalo Wild Wings).  It was soo good!  I had honey BBQ boneless wings while we watched MLB baseball on the huge screen next to us.  It was a blast just chillin’ and eating and all that good stuff.  So, overall, yesterday was not only beautiful and warm outside, it was filled with laughter, fun, and good food!  What could be better than that?

“Cut it out!” 🙂

-Joey Gladstone (Dave Coulier)

This past weekend, and many of you know, was Easter weekend for many religions.  That being so, my family was very glad to have me home to stick to the traditions we have had for this holiday for many years.  Sunday was the only day that I had family traditions to fulfill, so Saturday was left wide open.  After a looooong drive home on Friday night, I didn’t wake up until about noon on Saturday.  Right about that time, my lifelong friend gave me a phone call and asked what I was up to.  I ended up spending the rest of the afternoon with my three childhood friends.  That night I was still tired from the drive, so I just hung out until about 11 p.m. then passed out as soon as I got home.

The next morning, my family and I went to church with my family at 11 a.m., which was still way too early in the morning for me.  The service had a lot of singing and rejoicing, the perfect day for songs of that nature.  After the service was over, my sister and I went home for about 20 minutes before we had to meet up with our family and other relatives for Easter brunch.  We went to a fish restaraunt called the Market Broiler.

Sadly, I have never been a big fan of fish, but I decided to be daring and test out some new things.  I tried fried calamari, Thresher shark steak, and Mahi-Mahi.  The weirdest thing was, I enjoyed all of them! 

After we all had finished eating, we went over to my grandmother’s house to have some desert that one of my aunt’s had made.  On the drive over, my sister and I were stopped at a red light.  While sitting there waiting for our turn, we both felt the car start to rock back and forth.  Neither of us thought anything of it until it didn’t stop after about 5 seconds.  I rolled down my window and the guy in the car next to us yelled to me “It’s an earthquake man!”  When we arrived at out grandmother’s house a few minutes later, we turned on the news and saw that there had indeed been an earthquake in Mexicali, a city that was 19 miles southeast of Calexico, California which is a city right on the border to Mexico.  After watching the news for the rest of the afternoon, the final story was that the quake was a magnitude 7.2, which is enormous, and the quake lasted for nearly 3 minutes.  There were also at least two noticeably large aftershocks that came along with it.

The big yellow square in the middle is the one felt all across Southern California and even in Phoenix.

After the excitement and shock of the quake had died down a bit, my family proceeded to have an Easter egg hunt!  Both of my little cousins got the majority of the eggs (fast little buggers) and in the end, I had gathered enough candy to satisfy my quota for the day.

Finally, around 7 p.m. we headed home and I started getting my things ready for the next morning, since I would be driving back to Embry-Riddle.  After falling asleep later than planned and barely waking up in time to leave before traffic began to pile up, I made my escape from SoCal and so ended my wonderful weekend back home over Easter weekend!

On Friday, I got my first ticket for the stupidest reasons. My friends and I decided to go to Thai House, one of the best places in Prescott when it comes to Thai Food. I was pretty exhausted after taking classes till 4 PM so I was ready for some good food. We got our food and on the way back we were listening to some good music, cracking some jokes and just having a good time. While driving on Willow Creek Road, the traffic was pretty slow on the fast lane outside Fry’s because of a left turn. So, I changed lanes and a cop was in front of me. After 10 seconds of changing lanes, the cop changes lanes and is behind me and flashes his light. I find the nearest right turn and park. After a minute or two, the cop comes up to me and asks ” So, how much distance should you keep when going 40 mph?” I was pretty freaked out because I had no clue why he pulled me over. I said maybe a car length or two. Well, it is “actually a car length for every 10 mph”. So, I was supposed to be four car lengths away from his car!!!!

He asked for my insurance and registration. I handed it to him and he took his sweet time. After like 15-20 minutes, he comes up with a citation with 2 violations:

1. “Driving to close” ( Bad English, but that is what he wrote)

2. “Failure to provide evidence of insurance”

Apparently, I handed him the wrong insurance ID. I got a new one this February. I had the old and the new one in my car and I accidentally handed him the wrong one when he asked for it, in the beginning. However, I told him that I had the new one in the front and I was reaching out for it. He tells me, ” Don’t worry about it, court will handle it” How much more ridiculous can this get? That is a total fine of $265. $165 for the ‘driving to close’ and $100 for ‘failure to provide evidence of insurance’.

Today, I went to the court to contest the citations. I showed the lady at the counter my insurance and she wiped off the insurance citation and I have a hearing on the 20th of April about the ‘driving to close’ citation. Let us see how much more ridicolus this can get.

Will keep you guys updated!Feel free to comment about some instances that you guys have faced with the traffic tickets!

As a side note, Manchester United’s loss to Bayern Munich was annoying to say the least. I was at the lower hangar watching the Red Devils keeping that 1-0 lead for what seemed forever, and then comes Olin crashing in at the last minute!! What happened in the last minute is unbelievable and now Rooney is injured and we play Chelsea this weekend. Great timing! This is going to be a very interesting season ahead. Glory Man Utd!

Now for the second part of my spring break!  After arriving home in Huntington Beach at around 3 a.m. my friends and I drug out bags inside and passed out.  We had wanted to go surfing around 6 a.m. that morning, but that plan definately fell through when we all woke up around noon.  Not wasting any more time in the day, we suited up and drove down to the beach for a few hours to try and get rid of our nasty goggle tans from the mountains.  Over the course of about 4 hours, my friends and I bodysurfed, bodyboarded, took naps, went back in the water, fell back asleep again, and got sunburnt.  Finally, it was too cold to be in the water, which was already frigid, so we headed back and warmed up in the jacquzzi at my house.

The rest of the night consisted of relaxing with the hopes of being awake at 6 a.m. Wednesday morning to go surfing.  However, we still did not wake up nearly early enough to go surfing.  Instead, we decided to go have some fun at an indoor rock wall!

None of us were very good, but we still had a blast until our fingers were just too sore to hold on to the holds.  After driving home, we decided to suit up and go walk around downtown since it was St. Patrick’s Day.  The Adams and I explored the shops and restaurants downtown for a few hours.  We finally wound up back at my house around 11:30 p.m. and went to bed, once again with the hopes of waking up for a surfing session at 6 a.m.

Thursday afternoon rolled in on us before we knew it, and we once again missed surfing in the morning.  The weather proved to be warm and sunny, like usual for socal, so we hit the beach for the afternoon.  The water was just as cold, but this time we had a surboard and skimboards with us, so we didn’t have to spend as much time in the water.  I taught both my friends how to skimboard, and now I know how funny I must have looked when I was first starting out!  While we were gone, my neighbor asked if I would want to go see Alice in Wonderland in Imax 3-D later that night.  We didn’t have any plans still, so it was decided that we would take him up on the offer.  The movie was great, and the Imax 3-D experience was phenomenal!

When Friday finally rolled around, we were trying to figure out what to do to pass the time.  We had been to the beach a few times, gone rock climbing, and gone hot tubbing, all of which were awesome.  Still trying to decide where to go, we decided to pull out some of the beach cruisers at my house and ride over to 7-11 and grab some slurpees.  Still not being able to find anything to do, we decided to drive up to UCLA and look around at what college life was like there.  After getting lost a couple of times, we finally found the heart of the campus and what a shock it was.  There were students left and right, shops, restaurants, bars; and that was just the campus village.  Not even a block away we discovered the residential area and Greek row.  What an experience it was to see huge two-story houses with greek letters worn proudly as we passed each residence!

We drove around in the neighborhood looking for a place to park until we finally found one.  After getting out, we set off for the Sigma Pi house, since I am a brother here at Embry-Riddle.  When we found it, it was a glorious sight.  Yes, it was somewhat dirty and unkempt, but it was the first real fraternity house I had seen and it belonged to my brothers!  We set off to the door and were met by a brother at the UCLA campus, who gladly let us in and gave us a quick tour of the house.  Unfortunately, most of the brothers had left earlier that day, because they had finished finals the day before.  Even so, the Adams and I mingled for a bit with the remaining brothers and just enjoyed hearing stories about living on campus in such a huge city and attending a large public school.

At about 1 a.m., we said our goodbyes and headed towards the village to check out the social life aspect of UCLA.  Unfortunately, In-n-Out was closed by the time we got there.  Luckily enough, Taco Bell was still open and thriving!  We ordered some food and since all the tables were taken, decided to eat outside and people watch for a bit.  It might not sound like fun, but it was a blast!  We all admitted that we felt like we had become part of the campus just by being there for a few hours.  When we got home around 3 a.m. we had to hit the hay a.s.a.p. because we had to be up and on the road by 8:45 later that morning for our last big adventure: Disneyland!!

Fortunately for us, we woke up on time for the first time in the week and got up to Disneyland at about 9:40 a.m.  My friend Josh was waiting for us to help us get in for the day, since he works there.  Being a Saturday, the park was starting to get busy fast, so we had to grab fastpasses for Space Mountain right away.  Also, one of the Adams had never been to Disneyland before, so we had to make sure and give him the full experience!  We went on the Autopia, the Astro Blasters (which I got a score in the 700,000 range on that day XD ), Star Tours (which we found out is closing in May or so to be remodeled and upgraded!), Space Mountain, Pirates of the Carribean, and the Winnie the Pooh ride.

After that, we decided to head over to California Adventure.  We hit up the Mission tortilla factory a few times for free snacks and the sourdough bakery for the same reason.  Then, we watched the Bug’s Life show, went on California Screamin, and ended with the rapid ride 3 times in a row.  Soaking wet and tired out from the long day, my friends and I went to McDonald’s and headed home.  Tired, but still functioning, we decided to drive down to San Diego and hang out with one of my friends who attends San Diego State University.  After getting down there, we found out that she couldn’t go out, so we were on our own.  We drove around and just explored the city for a bit until we were getting tired and needed to head home before we passed out.

Sunday morning rolled around and we woke up at around 9:30, so we decided to get one last day in at the beach before heading home to Embry-Riddle.  My sister wanted to tag along with us, so we took her surfboard and found a beach that had some waves, since the surf was pretty dead that day.  Also, the marine layer had hit hard the night before, so it was a pretty dreary looking day.  Regardless, we enjoyed just being at the beach again.

When lunch rolled around, we left the beach and went home to change because my family had invited us to go to Ruby’s on the Huntington Beach pier.  We all had a great time eating and talking, until the Adams and I needed to head home and pack up out stuff since we would be leaving for Embry-Riddle in only a couple hours.  It was a sad moment leaving home once again, but what was even harder was leaving the beach and Southern California in general.  Spring break had come and gone in the blink of an eye, but thanks to the memories of that week, we will remember it forever!

This past weekend was the Air Force’s annual “Dining Out”, where people in the Air Force all go to a fancy schmancy place in Chino Valley and have an elegant dinner.  I am not in the Air Force, but one of my friends is and he invited me to go with him.  It was a very educational experience for me!  I dressed up in one of my best homecoming dresses (yeah, it was that fancy!) and he went in his “blues” (the Air Force’s formal attire) and we went to have a fun evening!

This is the Windmill House, located in Chino Valley, AZ.  This resort hosts weddings, anniversaries, parties of every type, and this year, AFROTC’s Dining Out!

They have a cool little bridge that leads to a little dock overlooking the lake and a little gazebo next to the dock.  It is SO pretty!  The inside is gorgeous as well!  The tables were all covered with a navy blue tablecloth, except for one; this table had a white tablecloth, reserved for POWs and MIAs.  On it was a single rose, glasses sitting upside down, and different hats, to honor those people who are fighting for our country and who are not able to reap the benefits.  On one side of the room was the Head Table, where the, well, head people sat!  (I’m really sorry I’m not using the right lingo here: I’m only guessing at the terms from what I heard that night!)

In the middle of the room, separating one side from the other, sat the table with the GROG.  I have no idea how it came to be, but in the midst of this formal dinner sat a trash can filled with all sorts of nasty stuff that different flights brought for unlucky victims to drink (the GROG).  Apparently, every flight brings some sort of (edible) thing that starts with the same letter their flight does.  (For example, Foxtrot (?) would bring french vanilla to add to the GROGgy concoction).  After the meal was finished, there was a sort of competition.  To make someone drink the GROG, a person would go up and say a poem inviting that person to drink it.  The victim has one minute to come up with a rebuttal poem, and if it’s not good enough, well, then they get to drink it!  That was extremely entertaining!  (I tasted some of the GROG though, and it was actually pretty good because everybody brought fruit punch to put in it!  So, it was basically fruit punch.  How terrible.)

Anyway, that was my experience at Dining Out, which I found to be very fascinating!  I felt honored to take part in such a cool tradition held by ERAU.

“It wasn’t the reward that mattered or the recognition you might harvest.  It was your depth of commitment, your quality of service, the product of your devotion — these were the things that counted in life.  When you gave purely, the honor came in the giving, and that was honor enough.”
-Scott O’Grady