Its that time of the year- summer!...vacations, sleeping in, laying around not doing much of anything sounds pretty good right about now. Except, I have to take summer classes! A lot has happened this year for me, one being that I declared a DOUBLE major. I am double majoring Business Administration with a concentration in Marketing AND Sport Management. It’s a heavy load to take on and I will definitely be here for 5 years. So summer classes are a must for me. This summer I will be taking 15 credit hours, one of which is a co-op that I got that should be fun because some of it has to do with volleyball J Vacation will give me a break in the smack dab middle of summer. My family is going to Florida!! Family vacations are fun, especially when the decision has been made to fly (thank goodness). Sleeping in will happen a little bit because I won’t be working full time. In addition to co-oping I will continue to work on campus a little and coaching still.

This week has been hectic with finals approaching, and the thought of moving alllll the stuff I have crammed in my room to the house I’m moving into. Since the place is only 5 minutes away it shouldn’t be too bad- but I’m sure you know the overwhelming feeling that I’m talking about that just sits in the back of your mind.

My finals days of living on campus are coming to a close. This gives me mixed feelings because I have loved the convenience of living on campus and being on my own. I loved being about to get up early, eat breakfast, and roll back into bed before class. The ease of being about to go to practice that was two minutes away was awesome when I had a busy day and needed a power nap to get me through a 3 hour practice. Finding a job at the bookstore on campus was nice too; because I could just walk to work. At the same time, I’m ready to move out of college style living and have a little more space to live and enjoy myself. My roommate’s dad actually bought a house as an investment in the Delhi area and we’re going to be renting from him. So, yesterday was the closing so we all went to see the house. It was awesome, like a feeling of freedom to know that I’ll completely be living on my own. J (A little scary, right mom?) I will be living with my current roommate, another player on our team, and our other friend who plays softball. I think it will be a good mix of personalities living together, but at the same time not too much clashing of opinions. I do have to admit, I’m very excited to start decorating on my own because I’m obsessed with any home show on HGT, TLC, or oxygen. 

I would suggest to any incoming freshman to at least live on campus for one year while in college, to “gain the experience” as I’m sure any parent would preach, but seriously it gets you to meet people and find niches that you wouldn’t obtain from commuting. I lived her for two years, but just like in any other facet of life, I’m moving on to my next chapter.

One of my least favorite things about college would definitely be having to take a class that you hate, solely because you are required too. Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could just make up your own degree with the collaboration of the classes you wanted to take? That would be the epitome of freedom. For my own good I’m not going to specify the class I’m talking about but I just dread going to it. It’s boring and it’s not that I don’t understand the material…it’s just a drag to go to it week after week. My professor is nuts and the course title hasn’t been reflected it in any classes? Odd. But, nothing I can do. I just do the assignments, show up, participate every now and then, and am on my merry little way. But after every class I have the feeling that I just wasted hours of my life, hours that I will never get back. I’m sure we’ve all felt this way about a “chapter” of our life, a class, or just regretting a decision that you can’t take back. There’s no turning back and unfortunately I can’t make up my own curriculum. Until then (which I never see happening), I’ll have to force myself to not skip class and count down the days until summer J

Spring season came to an end. Though practices at 6am are over (which ironically are awesome and extremely productive), it’s sad to think I won’t get to be with my team, formally, until August when we come back for pre-season. Things just get so predictable when you know the habits of every player on your team, when you can read the ball and almost foresee what will happen by the way she jumps to attack, the way her shoulders turn, and by the way the ball is tossed on a serve. It’s phenomenal and almost miraculous that any human can function that early in the morning and have so much fun that the hours fly by…. and at the same time you are thinking “I could be sleeping….” But, it’s such a great feeling to be up and moving while you know that almost every other athlete and student in school is snoozing away like it’s a Sunday morning.  We had our one and only spring tournament here at school on Saturday and it was really nice to be playing strangers rather than girls on my team. The luxury of having a team other than your own on the other side of the net is unexplainable. But, we did know our opponents last match. We played our alumni for our last match. I’ll tell you, they are good. There were words thrown back and forth across the net; of course it was all in good nature. You wouldn’t think that women that have kids could still play volleyball so well but they could. We did get our butts kicked and our side of the net was a lot more serious than the other, which is sad since we came out with the short end of the stick. Spring season taught us more than that it’s becoming that much closer until we graduate. We learned our strengths and weaknesses as a team through wins and one bitter alumni loss. We suffered through hard practices and mental blocks because our stomachs were so hungry, but its SO worth it. As collegiate athletes we have to make sacrifices like that, and when it comes down to it, the sacrifices to be 100% dedicated are what makes us who we are.

“Obsessed is just a word the lazy use to describe the dedicated.”

Lesson 1: The Wife
A man is getting into the shower just as his wife is finishing up her shower when the doorbell rings. The wife quickly wraps herself in a towel and runs downstairs. When she opens the door, there stands Bob, the next door neighbor. Before she says a word, Bob says, “I’ll give you $800 to drop that towel.” After thinking for a moment, the woman drops her towel and stands naked in front of Bob.

After a few seconds, Bob hands her $800 dollars and leaves. The woman wraps back up in the towel and goes back upstairs. When she gets to the bathroom, her husband asks,…

“Who was that?” “It was Bob the next door neighbor,” she replies. “Great!” the husband says, “Did he say anything about the $800 he owes me?”

Moral of the story: If you share critical information pertaining to credit and risk with your shareholders in time, you may be in a position to prevent avoidable exposure.

If you’re keeping up with my blogs…no trip to the outlet malls L. I decided to wait a weekend because I will be driving up to Columbus next weekend anyways for the team I coach; figured I’ll be passing by there and that I might as well save on the gas (we all know that feeling). I did make a stop at Panera though…… mmmm I could live off their carb guzzling food, which is where I got my inspiration for this blog.

I was sitting in Panera waiting for my roommate to arrive and there were three mothers who met for lunch there with their kids. One of the kids was just running around the table in circles over and over again. Then he would run the length of the carpet runner right up to the front door and do a karate kick as he got to the door. I was just thinking, “my goodness, how can the mom’s just continue to jibber jabber back and forth and not notice what the heck the child is doing?” This among many other fist curling incidents that I have run across have really forced me to think that obeying rules and teaching manners at a young age have completely slipped through the cracks. It’s almost comical to think back and just imagine this kid running around and doing a karate kick. I’m a very conscious person of what is going on around me and the place that I get most annoyed at it the grocery.

Everyone is in their own little world just getting the things off their list. I do think people drive crazier with a grocery cart than they do with a car. I feel like the same rules apply in the aisles as the roads. You get to the end of an aisle and you peek your cart out to see if anyone is coming…look left….look right…clear…go! But no one else seems to make the connections. It’s like a free for all and I get reaallllllllly frustrated. So, the grocery and I don’t mix too well and I try to steer clear.

In a perfect world for me the grocery would have a time where it was only me shopping, no crazy drivers, no kids running lose and touching all the fruit, and a quiet peaceful place. But, that won’t happen. Reality sets in and I just have to get over the fact that kids today are most wild and families are running a fee free circus……until things settle down I’ll just keep looking at these situations and laughing.

It’s finally SPRING BREAK!!!! I felt like it would never come because this week was so busy. I purposely planned this week to have nothing on my schedule: no work, no coaching, no practices, no homework, no nothing. It feels so good going into this week without any commitments on my plate. I feel like it’s really important to take this week as a mental break from like. For the past 9 weeks it’s been nothing but on the go, so to relax and rejuvenate this week will do wonders for everyone. The one thing that I do have planned is going to the outlet malls up near Columbus with some friends- I don’t consider shopping a commitment. It’s kind of like breathing….. It’s expected J I’ll do some damage on the Visa but it will be wellllll worth it.
Below is a poem I got in an email this week… Hope it serves everyone well. 

 Relax - let go, relax - let go

Let go of your useless worry
Let go of your helpless fury
Let go of your hopeless fears
Let go of your needless tears

Relax - let go, relax, let goLet go of the knot in your stomach
Let go of the tightness in your chest
Let go of the tension in your muscles
Let go of the pain in your headRelax - be still, relax - be still

Calm your restless breathing
Slow down your ragged heartbeat
Be still and think peace
Peace, peace --- be still !

Stop your mumbling and moaning
Quit your grumbling and groaning
Of what use is pining and whining
Or muttering and murmuring?

Relax -- be still, relax - be stillIn the waters of quietness
You can walk with your head held high
And above all the noisiness
You can hear all that of creation

So, relax - be still
Relax, be still
Be still, and know that all will be fine.

The biggest snowfall in 40 years said the weather man. I knew going on Thursday night that there was a calling for snow, but when I woke up on Friday of a knocking on my door my first thought was that I overslept for practice. No, I didn’t over sleep. My roommate woke me up to tell me that if I didn’t have classes that I better get on the road to get home.

I looked at my clock and then looked out the window, I couldn’t even see the sidewalks in the quad…it was one big snow field. I thought sarcastically, “This is just great.” A little bit later, the Emergency alert system notified me that the campus was closing down at noon. I had to make the choice and I decided it would be safer not to go to my 11:00 class because if I didn’t get out on the road to home then it would be a much harder venture later. I took some things down to my car (I immediately regretted not taking my car to the parking garage the night before). So I went to drop off something to my professor for the 11:00 class to cover my basis. I came back to the car and it was covered again. I was on my way.

What normally takes me 30 minutes to get home ended up taking over an hour. The problem getting out of Delhi is that there’s no route that doesn’t have a steep hill. So I picked and chose, trying to zig-zag the safest way home. I reached home and stopped in front of my driveway just looking at the snow that had started to pile up like the trash seems to in our room. I then proceeded to go down the street, turned around, pulled up and parked on the curb. I realized I needed to go ahead and be the good kid I am and shovel the driveway so that it wouldn’t be harder to shovel later. The shoveling took me about an hour. I finished and turned around and what I had just slaved over getting cleared had begun to pile up in the time I turned my back to it. Again, “This is just great.” So I quickly skimmed off the half inch of snow that had accumulated and pulled my car in the driveway.

It’s Saturday evening and I’ve yet to go back out yet. I open my front door and all I see a street of gingerbread-esque houses. I’ve spent the last two days watching movies and I even forced myself to get two papers done today. You have to kick back and relax, even though it’s not like I could get anyways if I had wanted to, but at the same time I had to use my time productively. Who knows, maybe we’ll be blessed with more snow on Monday and the campus will close again! ☺