dear...sincerely, the grump.

dear RIT housing operations,

you and i apparently have begun on the wrong foot because i'm up to my ears in dislike for your little organization. 

to start of with, you do not give me housing in march when the lottery is supposed to happen. not only that but you then go ahead and move me into "temporary housing" 5 miles off campus. while this is all good and what not, it's a full 5 miles off campus when i lack personal means of transporting myself. i will then have to rely on your sketchy bus system that runs every 30 minutes. by the way, you might want to get your back tires re-aligned because they were a tad off. oh, more on this subject i find that apparently i do not actually have a room there? i'm hoping this is a rumor. 

moving on, let's go to our little summer shenanigans for a bit. i applaud your ability to reconsider our original agreement and let me have that reduced meal plan. thanks a bunch. that all worked fine and dandy until you misplaced my summer housing key. okay, that's fixed too. more applause. 

then my card wouldn't work. i didn't have access to that room you promised. temporary card was installed, i got in. yay.

finally comes college & careers. my real card access worked wonders for a week until you decided to lock me out of my own building. real nice guys, i'm staying here for 3 weeks. remember? okay, public safety to the rescue. oh wait, actually your real card is not going to work until monday because it's saturday and no one else works now. kay cool guys, it's a real good thing i'm exhausted and not willing to care too much about this. temporary card access # 2 put into place. let's see if this actually works this time. 

apparently  this is some part of your little scheme to make my life as difficult as humanly possible. well, you've succeeded. congratulations and be glad that i cannot post about this else where because there would be trouble. for now we can pretend to be buddy-buddy while i try and contain my true feelings. 

unsincerely, 

a grumpy and exhausted RIT student

ps: to everyone who reads my blog, stay tuned because there will be more on College & Careers when i'm done napping... possibly tomorrow!

twelve hours

last night i enjoyed twelve hours of wonderful sleep. you might be wondering how i can accomplish this task while still waking up at 7 am... well going to bed at 7 pm before the sun even has a chance to set helps this immensely. 

today is day one of college & careers. i finished showering and getting ready and now i'm just eating some crackers and peanut butter before heading over to work. we've got a full day ahead of us. if yesterday was any indication there will be lots of running about. i was absolutely exhausted after work yesterday, hence the early bedtime. anyway this morning we're setting up, i have a meeting at 10, helping with check in, i'm giving a tour, directing people, moving boxes, answering questions, sitting on a student panel, helping with evening activites and moving more boxes. we should be done by 11:30 or so. tomorrow morning is even earlier, we're meeting at 7 am to get ready for yet more tours, box/people moving, etc. luckily tomorrow night will not be quite as late. 

anyway, off to brush my teeth! i probably won't post tonight because i'll be SLEEPING. 

food updates

i don't know why i suddenly feel the need to document lunch and dinner but it's something to do.

lunch on tuesday was outside in this little garden place by building 7. carrots, a peach and homemade trail mix =) with a book of course, but i didn't eat that.

dinner tuesday night was spicy kung pao pasta made in the microwave and milk. tasttyyy

last night there were some crazyyy bad storms, huge thunder and lightening and pouring rain. in fact, it flooded one of the walkways i get to work on so i had the lovely experience of walking in 3 inches of muddy water to get to work today and ended up with water and mud all over me. 

tonight for dinner was oatmeal & peaches! there is actually oatmeal under that HUGE peach.

night

I'm back at RIT in the dorms. Looks pretty familiar, huh? I'm in a double room as a single so it seems rather large. I'm also on the bottom floor which is convenient for stair walking but not so convenient when I forget to close the blinds oops. 
Dad left around noonish on Sunday. I proceeded to watch a ridiculous load of gilmore girls at the office, took a trip to the gym and a walk around campus. Afterwards I came back and had some dinner.. which consisted of lentil soup and a lot of carrots. 

Don't worry I didn't eat them all, I left the leftover carrots on the air conditioning vent since I don't have a fridge. It worked rather well except when I woke up freezing at 5 am. 

Today I went into work around 8 am. It's nice to be back and see everyone again. Spent the whole morning inputting. Around noon I walked back and ate some lunch. Back at work at 12:30 and then worked until 4:30. Took a walk around campus and ended up back at the corner store to pick up some dinner.. blueberries and peach yogurt!! It was rather tasty and I plan on doing that again. 

Now I'm finishing up some gilmore girls, getting ready to read for a bit and then bedtime! It's so weird that it's still light out at 9 pm it makes me feel like i'm going to bed so much earlier. I did get a ridiculous amount of sleep last night, I even woke up at 6 a full hour before my alarm went off. 

Goodnight!

pictures

Picture dump, number one. my updating plan last week failed, so here are some pictures. 

Liz and I went to Silver Spring on Thursday. We ate some tasty breakfast at the Whole Foods, walked around the downtown, spent 3 hours in Borders, and went to Jeremy's rock concert. 

Wednesday night Dad and I took Ever and Lux to centennial park for the wednesday night music in the parks. 

This picture was from before mom and Sarah left so technically not last week but they were some pretty tasty cherry square thingamabobs.

day two/day three

Whoops okay, so this summer schedule has seriously gotten me out of the habit of blogging. I hope it comes back to me in the fall.

Anyway, yesterday included going to the gym in the morning, coming home and eating lunch and then hanging out with lux and mrs tonya next door for the rest of the day. Ever was off at camp and with everyone gone here it was nice to have people to talk to... and do arts & crafts projects with ;) Lux and I had a pretend plastic food picnic on the driveway, played some dress up and drew some pictures. Came home and a little while later dad came home and we ate some grilled cheese sandwiches & tons of fruit. Alison came over last night and we played uno and watched gilmore girls. 

Today included buying large 2 foot twizzlers for our roadtrip on Saturday, getting various other food stuffs for when i'm up there (the meal plan is not really going to cover the whole time) and going to the gym. In a little bit we're taking Ever and Lux to centennial park for the music in the parks and a picnic! 

day one

i decided that i should probably keep track of what i'm doing this week because skeeter's on the loose!

6:55 am- Dad leaves to drive mom and sarah to the airport to go to China! I check my email.

7:30 am- Wake Alison up, take shower, eat breakfast.

9:15 am- Drive Ever and Lux over to the River Hill pool for swim practice. Lux and I counted all of the beads on her necklace and made 3 trips to the bathroom in the span of 30 minutes. 

10:00 am- Drive them back home, play with bendaroos, color some pictures, watch hannah montana. 

11:30 am- Come back home, eat some yogurt and leave for the gym.

12:00 - 4.5 miles on the elliptical (yeah mom, i was going to 5 but i had no fan =( so i decided that 4 and a half was enough for today) did some stretching/abs and now i'm home. 

2:00 pm- back from the gym.. hmmm what to do now? i thought about taking a walk but that seems kind of silly because it's hot and i'm still sweaty from the gym. perhaps it's shower and reading time! 

i think i'll be able to entertain myself for 4 more days without getting into TOO much trouble ;) 

running fools

i love summer. i'm not sure if i've informed you all of that fact yet but it's true. i think i'd be okay if it wanted to stay summer forever. 

usually i have that feeling that my internal organs are going to melt away when i step outside but the windows are wide open and it actually feels a little coolish. on top of that i get to wake up at 7 something every morning and go to the gym-- this is a habit i started on last summer, gave up for the school year and started again july 1st. fortunately for me, my mom has been going for two years or more so she can drag my tired butt out of bed every morning. once i get there though it's wonderful, in fact today i made it a record 5.86 (yeah, we're getting technical) miles on the elliptical up from my 4 miles all of the other days of the week. yay. now i'm turning down a particularly fun adventure to the maryland souvenir store to pick up things to take to china for sarah and mom (who are leaving on monday morning). 

so what am i going to do for a whole week with the house ALL to myself (until around 6 pm when dad gets home...). that is yet to be determined. however nana has given me some excellent ideas... so stay tuned...

Midwest Adventures

Hookay, the much anticipated vacation blog post. After all, what could we have possibly been doing running around the midwest for 12 days? 

Started out in Valparaiso, Indiana for Joel & Jessica's wedding. Which was a lovely excuse for a mid-year family get together. We all spent the weekend pal-ing (is that a word?) about the hotel, swimming, eating, hanging out and being waited on attentively by the concierge who insisted that we all needed to eat more cookies and drink more water. The wedding itself was beautiful (the chapel is seen below) despite the crazy heat! Man that place was hot. After a boatload of pictures, we all drove over to a restaurant near the hotel for the reception which included lots and lots of dancing! 

The day after the wedding we piled back in the car and drove 4 hours to Michigan to meet with the volleyball head coach and tour campus -- a schedule to which we were about to become quite accustom to. 

Monday night after seeing Michigan we drove...err, snacked... 4 hours to Chicago to eat some pizza. Oh yeah, we were there for more than just the food. Tuesday morning we woke up and ate some pancakes. Right, right.. after that we drove to Northwestern and visited with the volleyball coach and toured the gym and what not. Seeing a pattern?

After meeting with the coach on Tuesday we drove 4 hours to Bloomington Indiana to eat pizza... Except that plan failed since Mama Bear's pizza was apparently "closing early for unexpected summer cleaning". Jimmy John's turned out to be an acceptable alternative. Wednesday morning we woke up and met with the coach at Indiana... pattern continuing. Apparently we're creatures of habit. Food, meet, drive.. 

Wednesday afternoon we piled back in the car and drove 3.5 hours to Ohio. Thursday consisted of.. coach, meet, tour, ask questions.. you know the usual. It's old hat by now. After that we got back in the car... oh wait no, we stayed the night! Two nights in one place!! 

Friday morning we woke up and drove to Kentucky for some good old horse racing... i mean roller derbying. Actually Sarah had a 4 day volleyball tournament there. It was really nice though because Grandpa & Frances were able to come up and rescue me from the insanity!! Just kidding, it wasn't that bad. But we did manage to get away and check out some fossils and a 7 story wooden bat. We even got matching tattoos (Grandpa insisted) and hung out at a local irish pub. (Apparently I have not loaded these pictures yet, so check back later!)

jourth of fuly

happy 4th of july! 

i haven't forgotten about my blog... just momentarily busy with other stuffs. i'll update hopefully sometime this weekend about all of our midwest travels. 

yesterday we picked 22+ lbs of tart cherries.. it was ridiculous! but they are oh, so tasty. we'll be making cherry pie, cherry crisp, cherry ice cream for a long while. 

going over to the mariano's in a little while for some 4th of july crabs & pool time. possibly going to see the fireworks later tonight.