an exciting weekend ahead... or is it a month?

I got an email two weeks back from my sweet friend, Jessica, telling about her work and all. She is a traveling consultant and is always in a different state with an amazingly funny story to tell. On two separate occasions she has asked me to meet her in one of her random cities to play and see the sights. On both separate occasions I have not been able to. Well in this email she was asking again, this time in Washington D.C. I've been saving my money for another trip that just fell through, so I decided to look at ticket prices. Not too bad. After about 30 minutes of debating and lunch, I had a ticket. I can not tell you how excited I am. I leave tomorrow! :)

Since I leave tomorrow, my boss was asking about the weather and all. (He's excited about me going too... and not because he won't have to work with me for a day!) Well just so happens Northwest Airlines sends this nice little email that includes the weather forecast for your destination. So I pull it up and start talking about that when out of the corner of my eye I see the return day of Monday. That's wrong, I think to myself, I booked my return for Sunday, February 3. But wait this is saying Monday is the third. Something is amiss with this email. So calmly I ask, "What day is the third? It's Sunday right?" My boss kinda looks at me with a little question while nodding yes. I look a little closer at the words quite plainly on my screen and in horror I see the problem.

"Return: Monday, March 3"

MARCH 3! Are you kidding me?! This is what I yell at my computer as I almost jump out of my chair! A whole month off! Are you kidding me?! I have booked a return flight for a month later not a weekend later! This simply is not going to work.

I embarrassingly look up from my computer and say, "I booked my return flight for March not February." I hear a chuckle and instructions to call and get it fixed from my boss. I run to my office and patiently wait for the customer service man to help me. I do have to say Northwest Airlines has very good customer service and another bonus the change of flights didn't cost that much. So with a huge sigh of relief I can say that I will be back in the office on Monday, February 4, not Tuesday, March 4. Pretty sure my checkbook is relieved too.

"I feel the earth move under my feet, I feel the sky the tumbling down..."

Last night I had to work late. Not that I mind, at all. I actually love my job! And, I actually mean that, but last night there was this... moment. What kind of moment, you might ask. Well it was one of those moments when you're dancing through life happy about where you are and where you're headed, and then a bomb is dropped and you're faced with the question, "What are you doing? Are you kidding yourself?" Don't get me wrong, I'm not now sitting at my computer with the puzzlement of what I'm going to with my life . But in that moment, just that one moment, complete confusion and question was the only thing found on my face.

I work with students. That's my job. I got my master's to learn about how to work in this world of higher education. I took classes that only talked about the student of today. I payed attention for the most part during those classes. I studied the theories, and actually memorized some of them. Well, anyway, I had this meeting with students last night and after the meeting a few of the students decided they wanted to talk to and the other leader of the group. If I were to paraphrase the beginning of the conversation, it go something like this:

students: We want to talk to you about something.
leaders: okay
students: The games we play at the beginning of the meetings, we don't like them. We don't really want to play them anymore.
leaders: okay
(This is also the point if my life were a sitcom the camera would pan over to me and see a look of astonishment)
students: Basically the whole group feels this way. We just don't want to waste time. We would rather be told what we would learn and then start working

umm... WOW!

That's like a comedian saying "I'm not going to go through this whole joke thing, I'll just cut to the chase and tell you the punch line... Hope you get it."
To let you know, that's not where the conversation ended, the few of us continued to talk and I think we came to a good conclusion to work through for the semester, but like I said for that moment, my jaw dropped. Then later I had another with another group of students. This meeting was much different in nature with much different students. A good end to a good long day.

umm... hi

So this is my first blog-ever. Wow, exciting I know... Calm down though. I wanted to write something really short for my first blog to get over the initial anxiety of writing a blog. I know you're thinking, 'anxiety?' Yes, anxiety. I've created a blog in the past but then immediately deleted it. Fear of commitment I guess. I don't know.
So basically I see a blog as a spot to place your thoughts, funny (embarrassing) recounts of life, and questions that come up during the day that seem impossible to answer. I figured since I occasionally have some thoughts and usually something embarrassingly funny happens to me, then a blog would be nice. I also have those questions that I have no clue about and instead of finding an answer, I would rather send it out into the great mystery of this thing we call the 'World Wide Web'. Maybe as my question floats around above all our heads, someone can snatch it up and know the answer. Maybe. Plus it will give me something to do in my down time. So hi! Nice to be here.