This last weekend, my team and I went down to the Prescott Courthouse, during a local craft fair, and gave out information cards and put up posters concerning our Dig Pink match to fight breast cancer.  It’s our game at Embry Riddle on October 27 that we play against Yavapai College, and people who come can give donations for the cause or just support those who battling breast cancer.  Everyone will be wearing pink, including the Embry Riddle team and the Yavapai team, and so we needed support from locals and anyone else who would listen to us!  My little sister came with our team to help, since my family was in town.  She fit right in, handing out information to any and all people passing through the fair. 

Here are some pics of my team (compliments of Gina Conley):

I have no idea why the horse was there…. but the team couldn’t pass up posing with it!

And neither could Mahlet….

Kelsey and Ashley are trying to ignore it, with no avail.

Shaw just being Shaw! <3

Cassie and Shaw posing with our poor Laura, who tore her miniscus and had to get surgery. 🙁

After our Dig Pink Awareness activity was through, I drove my family down to Phoenix to have some fun! (minus my mom: she had left early that morning in my family’s car for a convention down there).  It was a blast hanging out with my family!!  After a day filled with shopping and eating, we went to Coolidge to stay with my grandparents.  Overall, it was one of the best weekends that I could’ve asked for! 🙂

Well…this blog post was supposed to be written exactly two weeks ago.  It doesn’t feel like I’ve been that busy but I guess every moment of downtime feels like it needs to be spent away from school-related activities.  For a couple days, I trained as a “telemarketing agent” for the admissions department asking people if they were planning on coming to our open house this weekend.  That’s where my Saturday will be spent.  I also have my first Air Force PFA (physical fitness assessment) on Friday.

If anyone is looking for a good TV show to watch, NCIS and House just started with a couple of very intense season premiere episodes.  I guess if sitting in front of a TV and just watching it isn’t your thing, you can try out Halo 3 ODST.  That’s pretty much the story of our hall for the past two weeks since it came out.  It has a feature called firefight where you just fight wave after wave of aliens.  It may not sound very fun but I think the XBOX in our lounge has logged more hours in these past few weeks than it had in its entire lifetime before then.

We had Friday off last week, which was coincidentally the day that NASA landed a probe on the far side of the moon to check for ice deposits.  Myself and about five others stayed up until 4:30 am and then drove down to the schools telescope to watch the event.  NASA predicted a several-mile-wide ice dust cloud…their prediction was wrong.  We lined up at the telescope and watched mission control reset the countdown timer several times as they recalculated the landing time, but in the end we saw nothing.  Needless to say we jumped into bed when we got back and didn’t wake up for a very long time.  My eyes opened briefly around 9:30 am, but drifted back into a slumber until 1:30 pm (my friend slept in until after 3:00 pm).  Later, a friend and I went geochaching on our bikes around Watson lake.  Geocaching is where you use GPS to find boxes that other people have hidden and sign your name in a log inside.  To make the day even better, when we got back we went to see Zombieland…it happens to be one of the BEST movies ever made.

You may be wondering why I’m writing this post at 1 in the morning on a Monday…wait, Tuesday.  I have an Air Force ROTC briefing in 8 hours that I have been preparing for and consulting friends for the past five hours.  We actually have PT in four and a half hours too.  Anyway, my briefing is on Air Force Organizational Structure, which luckily isn’t a hard topic.  I’ll probably post my results in my next blog, but right now I’m going to bed as soon as this post is live.

So my weekend started out on Thursday with a check from Embry-Riddle work. I got 116, which isn’t much but it came in perfect timing! My boyfriend’s birthday is Sunday, so I had to do some shopping. I ended up spending about $80 on him. I wish I could spend more, but money for gas to come see him is $20 as well. 🙁  But anyways, I came down to Surprise to see my  boyfriend and his family this weekend and I actually went down early to surprise him, but funny thing is they were out of town because they thought I would be there later! lol. So I had to go shopping until they got back in town. I ended up buying all the gifts for my boyfriend and the next day when he was at school I put it together. It looks amazing! I bought a cool looking bag and I bought lots of tissue paper to make it look fancy! I bought him two games, on for X-box (Assassin’s Creed) and another for Wii (Pikmin) since I hear him talk about these games all the time. I also got basic necessities that he always complains about not having enough of-Socks and underwear. hehe. I got him a sweet card and I filled his bag with lots of candy and his favorite- nutter butters! 😀   Let me know how you think of my birthday gift! 🙂

Anyways, next weekend we will be having his friends over on Saturday and then Sunday we will have family time. He is very excited for his birthday since it is also his fall break! He gets Friday and Monday off, so it is an extra long birthday weekend gift! I think that would be my favorite gift of all! LOL.

So, enough about birthday, my weekend was great when I finally got to see him and be around him. We all played aggravation and then we got to watch this cool TV show called Deadliest Warrior, it is pretty awesome! It takes two different warriors from completely different times and compares their fighting styles and weapons and sees who would have won in a battle! We watched about 4 episodes, and so far Spartan seems to be craziest since he could kill a Ninja!!! :-0   Oh, and also this weekend I got to go eat at Macaya’s after church, that was so yummy. I recommend that restaurant to anyone who enjoys Mexican food! I had fajitas, with shrimp, steak, and chicken. The meal was heavenly! <3 

I hope everyone else had a fun weekend. I’m looking forward to next weekend already, but I am NOT looking forward to Wednesday! I have an economics Exam. This will either make or break my grade. I hope I can make it through it, and do well. I am afraid! But I am hoping to study with a tutor tomorrow! Wish me luck. And good luck to all those who have any tests or exams this week! Friday no school, so you can stick it through! Have a fun and safe week. Talk to you later!

Cassie

The past few weeks have been CRAZY!  No joke.  So I decided to have a weekend off, just for fun, with no homework or worries.  On Saturday, Teri and I, (my awesome roommate), had a girl’s day!  We woke up at eleven that morning, which I had NEVER done before in my entire life.  In ‘N Out was calling our name, so we had breakfast (er, lunch) there.  It was so good!  For anyone who has not been able to go to In ‘N Out, when you came to the west, it is totally worth it!  Although, Teri is from Oregon and she says that there aren’t any of them up there or in Washington, so I suppose that you’ll have to go whenever you visit the SOUTHwest.  Haha.

After our breakfast/lunch, we headed over to Wal-Mart and bought necessities for our dorm.  A dustpan (so we didn’t have to use any more tipped over Eggo boxes!), pop-tarts, grapes, and movies for FIVE BUCKS.  Nice, right?  So we’re pretty much stocked up.

After our little escapade to Wal-Mart, we headed over to the Barnes & Noble at the mall.  For two hours we looked at books, discussing Stephen King, Dan Brown, John Grisham, and other authors.  Only a real friend would sit there reading the covers of books with you for so long!  I love you Teri!

Sunday was a volleyball dedicated day.  After my alarm didn’t go off and Teri woke me up (thanks again), some of my teammates and I went to Glendale to watch the AVP Event, where pro beach volleyball players all gathered from both the USA and Brazil to compete.  It was a hundred and ten degrees, but we knew it was gonna be a good day when we almost hit Kerri Walsh with our car as she was walking on the sidewalk.  Hopefully she didn’t hear five screaming girls as we drove by… that would’ve been embarrassing… haha!

Kerri and Misty May-Treanor didn’t win, but I guess it’s forgivable since it was their first time back together since their pregnancies and Misty’s hurt achilles from Dancing With The Stars.  They could still pretty much pound the ball into the ground.  Straight down.  So jealous.  Anyway, Phil Daulhausser and Todd Rogers on the other hand totally dominated!  They were BEASTS!  The whole time, the crowd for USA went wild!  It was interesting listening to my Brazillian teammate and her family cheering for Brazil, but hey, that’s what made it fun!

We got to meet PHIL DAULHASSER!!!! 🙂 🙂 🙂  Gina was starstruck. (“H-hi Ph-Phil!  I’m Gina!”)  Haha I love you Gina!

So that was pretty much my weekend in a nutshell.  Overall, not bad at all! 🙂

“Real joy comes not from ease or riches or from the praise of men, but from doing something worthwhile.”
– Sir Wilfred Grenfell

Hey!

Hope everyone is still enjoying school! I am in love with it! I am having a great time in my classes, although I am starting to get confused in Economics. 🙁    But my business classes are fun and I enjoy my speech class, even though I am so nervous speaking in front of everyone. I even like my computer class since I hardly have to show up 😀   Work is going good at school, haven’t had too much time to go in since sorority and classes got overwhelming, but I’m trying to get back in there. I also have sad news about my sorority… I went through pinning and everything, and I cannot wait to join, but I do not have the funds to join this semester, so I am pending until next semester. To ensure that I have more money, I am going to either take just 4 classes or 3 classes and 2 online. It would help me save some money and still get the same credits and still get scholarships! 🙂

So, now that I am getting into this swing of school, I have had the chance to explore a little more, and two weekends ago my boyfriend, his family, and I went to Lake Pleasant and ate at Dillon’s Restaurant there. It was really fun and yummy!!!

As you can see these pictures are of Lake Pleasant and the Marina “scorpion bay”. We went down to the restaurant on this cool sideways elevator. And the sunset was the view we had at dinner. The picture of us is where we were as we ate, until the rain came in. lol. It was very beautiful and the dinner was so delicious! I would recommend going to Pleasant and eating there!

Oh and some cool news before I get going, my health insurance through AZ went through and my food stamps! I am so happy, since it is really hard to try to pay all these extra fees! I just hope I can start getting more work through school since costs are going up!

Well, have a great week and I’ll talk to you all later!

Exams are over!  Or so I thought until our calculus teacher told us we have another one next Thursday, a mere two weeks after our first calc exam.  Last week I had tests for matlab and physics, which went pretty well.  It gets confusing during the week when you have homework due dates all over the calendar.  Some assignments are due Tuesday in class, some due Wednesday to the teacher’s office by 4 pm, etc.  Wednesday is also my first ROTC test on basic knowledge…this weekend has been trying to cram in the last bits of information for that.

Last Saturday was the ropes course, which was cool.  I was bummed we didn’t get to use the climbing tower, but what we did was fun.  They had obstacle courses about 15 and 30 feet in the air.  Of course, everyone did the higher one which consisted of walking on a wire while holding on to an unbalanced rope with a partner, jumping from hanging platforms, and walking with your partner across an unstable bridge.  The last event that people could do was a rope swing.  After climbing 30 feet in the air on a pole, the swinger was hooked up to two ropes and after jumping off the platform, they swung back and forth for a while.  Most people did it upside down too.  Right as we were leaving, it started pouring rain; I’m not sure if the groups after us got to go up or not.

This week, our video game addiction level increased dramatically.  I think I wrote a couple posts back that we always played Nintendo 64 Super Smash Brothers.  I was mistaken with the word always; this week someone brought a Game Cube with Super Smash Bros. Melee.  The game console was on for at least 12 hours/day with various people playing.  Most of the people who were good on the N64 had to rethink their strategy because some of the characters in Melee had different strengths from their older counterparts.  A lot of us were also playing Halo ODST which came out late last week.  It’s a really cool game with some neat new features.

Yesterday was the all day production of the school newspaper, Horizons.  I do graphic design for them and I think yesterday I made about 6 or so graphics.  They’ll be in the issue when it comes out on Tuesday.  If you do not attend Embry Riddle and would like to see the newspaper, you can read the stories online at http://www.eraunews.com/ and if you’d rather see the print version, a pdf is available for download at the bottom of the left-hand side navigation bar.

When I got back from work last night, we all relaxed while watching Bad Boys 2, which I highly recommend if you haven’t seen it.

Below is a panorama and another picture I made from the sunset pictures I mentioned last week:

I photoshopped in the background text and cross

Hey everyone.  I was sitting around thinking and I realized that I have not talked much about my classes here at Embry!  It all started the first week here that my schedule began to take shape.  I had signed up to take four classes: Psychology, Microeconomics, Chinese I, and GSIS 100.  The weekend before classes began I had the opportunity to meet Diane Kelm, who was awesome at helping me figure out my classes and add one more for the semester.  I decided to add Dr. Bloom’s Personality and Profiling course.

After being in class for about three days, I realized that my schedule had a few flaws.  First of all, I had four classes on Monday and Wednesday, only one class on Tuesday and Thursday, and three on Friday.  Having four classes was not my first preference, but I knew if I had to, I could tough through it.  My second problem was the fact that on Tuesday and Thursday, I did not have class until 1:25 p.m.!  If I kept this class as my only class on those days, I knew I would just waste all of that time sleeping and I would not be able to get any productive work done.  My last issue was that on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday my first class was at 8 a.m.  I was not ready for this and by Wednesday morning, I was already contemplating skipping classes.  I drug myself out of bed and attended, but I knew that something needed to be changed.

I went to talk to my good friend Diane once more about my feelings of my schedule.  I explained to her that I was having trouble with such a lop-sided schedule and I wanted to know if I could change it around.  My first choice was to drop my 8 a.m. class.  When I brought this up, I had to immediately defend myself against being seen as just a lazy freshman.  I told Diane that I wanted to drop one of my classes off of the four-day schedule and add a new class on Tuesday/Thursday to make up for it.  My justification for dropping the 8 a.m. class was that I needed psychology because I am considering it as a minor, I had taken microeconomics just the previous semester at high school, and I needed to start Chinese a.s.a.p. because I wanted to take as many years of it as I could.  This left the 8 a.m. class as the odd-man-out, and so it was dropped.

After contemplating on all of the other classes I could be taking on Tuesday and Thursday (including English, management, history, and biology) I decided to take English because I had also just taken an AP English course at high school the previous year.  And so my schedule was saved!  I now had 3 classes on Monday/Wednesday and 2 on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday!

During my internship I was really fortunate to be able to see the Space Shuttle after it landed at Edwards Air Force Base. It was over Memorial Day weekend when the weather in Florida would be too dangerous for a shuttle landing, and NASA couldn’t delay the landing any longer.

Unfortunately I didn’t actually get to see it land, because I had gone home to see my family for the long weekend, but I heard that wasn’t nearly as exciting as watching it take off again. My friends who got to see it land said that they could see the shuttle just after they heard it’s double sonic boom and that it basically fell out of the sky like a brick.

When the shuttle lands they keep it at the Dryden Flight Research Center for about a week to get all of the excess fuels and chemicals out of it and to prepare it to piggy back on the back of the 747. This is part of what makes it such an expensive alternative to landing in Florida. NASA has to send specialists out to Dryden from other NASA centers to aid in the shuttle preparations.

This is a picture of the shuttle in the Mate DeMate Device from the closest spot you can get to it. The device lifts the shuttle so that the 747 can roll in under it and they can attach the shuttle to the top of the 747.

While it was there I had the opportunity to go up and look at it (not too close of course), and it was so awe-inspiring. I’m a space girl at heart, and looking at the shuttle right in front of me, I couldn’t help but reminisce about having childhood daydreams of seeing such a thing in person, and to realize that here I am, at 20 years old working for NASA. I’d been working towards this dream for years, and step by step, my dreams are coming true.

When they finally started rolling the 747 and shuttle away from the Mate Demate Device, the excitement was palpable. I was also very fortunate to run into the right people at the right time to secure a spot over by where the press stands to report on the shuttle and 747 taking off. It was awesome!

I like to take pictures where it looks like I'm holding aircraft up. I don't know why I think it's so funny, but it is quickly becoming a signature Kerianne pose.

Here I am standing in front of the shuttle and 747 on the morning before it left for Florida.

Another shot of Shuttle and 747 before take off

Later when I was looking at the online coverage, I was able to spot myself in a video on MSNBC's website. It gives you a good idea of how close I was to the shuttle

This is my reaction to watching the Shuttle and 747 take off.

One of my favorite things about going to school in Prescott is the variety and quality of outdoor activities.I was never really much of an outdoors person until I moved to Prescott.I still wouldn’t say that I am an outdoors-woman, because I when I go camping I really want there to be running hot water. I think the main reason I never got into hiking or rock climbing before college was that my family wasn’t really into it.

I really tried hiking for the first time when I moved out to Prescott, and since then I have fallen in love with the diverse landscapes and climates of the West.I grew up in Houston, which for thousands of years was actually an ocean bed.As a result, the landscape of East Texas is fairly flat, and it’s not even reasonable to drive to a mountain.I think it’s about a 12 hour drive to the nearest mountains, either to the Guadalupe Mountains in West Texas, or to the Smokey Mountains out around Tennessee and Virginia.

Since of I have lived in Prescott, I have taken several opportunities to venture out and try new outdoor activities.There are several reasons why I now love to hike.First, hiking gives me a sense of accomplishment.It is as relaxing as watching TV or reading a book for me, but it’s much better for my body, and helps me to feel physically healthier when I’m finished. Secondly, it gives you a chance to get away – away from people and anything else that is stressing you, to spend time with someone you care about and to admire the beauty and serenity of nature.

A good place for any Riddle student to start is at the Granite Dells, which are practically right across the street from the school.

In the picture above, I am climbing up a steeper part of the Dells. Hiking the Granite Dells is really a cross between hiking and rock climbing. Whenever I go to the dells, my legs always feel like I’ve done a few hundred lunges about 12 hours afterward.

Whenever I go to hike in the Dells, my goal is to hike to the dam that creates Willow Lake. It can take about two hours one way, or as little as an hour if you are a good hiker in good shape. It’s an awesome halfway point in the hike to stop, eat a granola bar, and enjoy the beautiful scenery around it.

Hiking in the dells affords great views of the dells themselves as well as Willow Lake.

After hiking the dells, there are so many places to hike in Northern Arizona.  One of my favorite places is Sedona, which has some of the most beautiful scenery in the west, and it’s less than an hour from the school.

This is a picture of me on top of a plateau in Sedona. Some of the most beautiful and challenging hiking that I have done has been in Sedona. On this trip, I learned that you should always bring foul weather gear with you while hiking, even if the forecast only predicts a 10 percent chance of rain. When I started this hike, it was sunny and pretty out, but I finished the hike in a thunder, lightning, and hail storm. I was drenched to the bone and freezing! Be prepared!

This is a great shot of the red rocks of Sedona that I took while hiking.

Another advantage of being at Embry-Riddle in Prescott, AZ, is that the Grand Canyon, one of the greatest natural wonders in the world, and the  great hiking that comes with it is only about two hours away.

This is a picture of my over a hiking trip to the Grand Canyon Spring Break Freshman year. The Grand Canyon is only about a two hour drive from the school.

This is a picture that I took of the Grand Canyon at sunset. Being so close to the Grand Canyon means that you can watch the sunset there and be back on campus by 9:00 that night.

After getting a little taste of hiking, some friends of mine talked me into going rock climbing (with ropes and everything).  Before this I had never even climbed a man-made rock wall.  Rock climbing is both one of the scariest and most rewarding experiences I’ve ever had, and it’s definitely not something that I can do back in Houston.

Every time I go climbing, I get about 10 feet off the ground and think, why on earth did I decide to do this again? But by the time I make it to the top my fears are mostly gone and have been replaced by a huge sense of pride. I defeated the cliff!

In this picture, I am climbing a rock face, about 40 feet off the ground.

Here is a close up of my adventures in rock climbing.

Whatever your skill level or motivations, there are tons of enjoyable outdoor activities in Northern Arizona that is sure to challenge or relax the typical college age student. Not that anyone at Riddle is really a typical college age student…we’re all pretty unique.  One might say as unique as the climate and landscape where the school is located, but then again that might be too corny… 🙂