Monday, August 30, 2010
Sunday, August 29, 2010
we are the leaders of it all.
i'm back at cmu for my fifth and final year. having just finished my first week back, i'm already up to my eyeballs in things to do. i'm still captaining the cmu money mellons, leading practices, planning practices, finding solutions to adding more practices. i'm starting a new ta gig with a first year architectural history class. i've already had a freakout that i wouldn't be able to graduate thanks to some system glitch that said i hadn't taken enough university electives. cleared up that mess with heather. i am still going to graduate on time. thank god. i'm almost completely moved into the gulag and am really liking the set-up of my room. puppy is safely back with me in pittsburgh. she's still just as aloof, fluffy and poopy as before and seems to be settling into her new home for the year pretty well.
this is going to be a long year...
Saturday, August 21, 2010
early morning without warning/woke me with a scare.
:: quick recap of summer 2010 (by category of events) ::
work
i essentially spent the summer working for the national park service. initially, i was just an intern in their historic architecture program, which was actually quite interesting in itself since it consisted of working at/for various sites, including the adams national historic park, the frederick law olmsted national historic site, and the nps regional office in lowell, doing things like helping them photo document the site and the house, cataloging their historic items, database entry, architectural descriptions, with a little CAD-ing thrown in. then, since my summer budget was winding down a lot faster than i had planned, i "applied" for a contract editing job, didn't take 'no' for an answer, and spent half of july and all of august editing the historic structures report for the new bedford whaling museum as the last step of the editing process before the book went out for publishing. so that was pretty awesome. something i had a decently large part in is being published! it was an achievement. and the $2400 i got for the job wasn't a bad perk either.
club ultimate
after ending the college season of 2010 with a decent showing at sectionals and breaking seed to finish 5th (the same result as the year before, just sans approx. 10 seniors who had graduated), i jumped right into the club scene trying out for ballometrics, a mixed team out of boston, at bell crack, a co-ed tournament in philly. after making that first round of cuts, since starting tryouts (i started late in the process), i didn't feel like i was quite playing up to scratch and, surprisingly, not having as much fun as i would've liked with them. unsurprisingly, i got cut not long after in the next round of cuts. meh. no biggie. at that point, i hadn't really decided if i was really feeling the people on the team anyway. then, i decided to try my hand in the women's ultimate scene in boston, since my college coaches had pushed for me to play women's more anyway, and tried out for hatch. again, made the first round of cuts, which i was pretty happy with. unfortunately, i then followed that up with a couple of pretty embarrassingly bad practices. talk about conservation of greatness. who knew it applied to a much bigger picture. again, unsurprisingly due to my disappointing showing that week, i got cut. by this point, i was seriously burned out. had figured i'd just train and condition for the summer. get into better shape for the next college season and then try again next year. cue unexpected email from 7th wheel, another mixed team out of boston, sent out to ultimate players known to be in the tryout process for teams announcing their final tryout and an invitation to join them. for shits, i said "why not?". it's more practice in a tryout situation. what harm could it be? plus, another chance would be nice. day of, started off by appearing pretty damn stupid getting lost and going to the wrong fields. got there late. turned out we hadn't missed too much, so jumped right in. unfortunately, we also had another event planned later that day and had to leave early. so here was my thinking: i got here late (super late in the whole process), and have to leave early. man, i must look like a jerk. two days later, to my surprise, i get an email offering me a spot on the team. well, crap. i was burned out. but excited! i would end up playing for the club season after all! :) so far so good. i'm happy i've gotten the chance to gel and play with a great group of people and having fun. i feel terrible for having to start school so early, but i'll still be flying back to boston for club sectionals on sept. 10th. again, excited. :D
7th wheel after our first tournament win!
summer club ultimate
i came back for another season with merge. we had quite a decent season, though again with a bunch of frustrations and annoyances. ended on a decent note. didn't get to where we wanted to be at the end of the tournament, but that's okay. had a great day one, going 4-0 against some pretty alright teams. day two, we tanked. the weather was meh. we had lost a few people. energy was low. errors were high. it was unfortunate. but we got to end the season with a fun team pre-tourney dinner at brayden's and a post-tourney meal at heidi's.
miscellaneous, but still awesome
- got to go to DC with aaron. :) even if i spent half the time either in terrible pain or nauseous as all hell, it was still a good trip and i'm glad we got to do it. p.s. the national zoo is awesome! and free! which makes it more awesome. seriously, the number of photos we collectively take at zoos is ridiculous.
- for the pre-tourney dinner, we whipped up a batch of chocolate guinness cupcakes from a recipe i had randomly found online awhile back. they were delicious. seriously. so good. i really should try and find time to make some more this year and share their glorious existence with everyone here.
- went to the franklin park zoo. yup. more zooing. more ridiculous photos. it was brilliant.
- watched a bunch of movies: despicable me (twice! so adorable!), karate kid, iron man 2, shrek in 3d, inception (so good! want to see it again.)
- went to my first red sox game. it was the sox vs. d-backs. so much fun. we won. got some adorable photos out of it. yay. :) another thing off my bucket list.
- went to toad & katie's wedding. it was beautiful. congratulations to them! i wish them all the best! :)
- wildwood. won hardware - best in bracket, bitches!! didn't get ridiculously sunburned. had a lot of fun. may have given myself first degree burns on the bottoms of my feet from running on the sun-baked sand a whole lot.
- had puppy come with me this summer! :) she lived with me in my room all summer and, though i may have developed an allergy thanks to all her shedding, i'm so happy she made the trip with me this summer. :)
work
i essentially spent the summer working for the national park service. initially, i was just an intern in their historic architecture program, which was actually quite interesting in itself since it consisted of working at/for various sites, including the adams national historic park, the frederick law olmsted national historic site, and the nps regional office in lowell, doing things like helping them photo document the site and the house, cataloging their historic items, database entry, architectural descriptions, with a little CAD-ing thrown in. then, since my summer budget was winding down a lot faster than i had planned, i "applied" for a contract editing job, didn't take 'no' for an answer, and spent half of july and all of august editing the historic structures report for the new bedford whaling museum as the last step of the editing process before the book went out for publishing. so that was pretty awesome. something i had a decently large part in is being published! it was an achievement. and the $2400 i got for the job wasn't a bad perk either.
club ultimate
after ending the college season of 2010 with a decent showing at sectionals and breaking seed to finish 5th (the same result as the year before, just sans approx. 10 seniors who had graduated), i jumped right into the club scene trying out for ballometrics, a mixed team out of boston, at bell crack, a co-ed tournament in philly. after making that first round of cuts, since starting tryouts (i started late in the process), i didn't feel like i was quite playing up to scratch and, surprisingly, not having as much fun as i would've liked with them. unsurprisingly, i got cut not long after in the next round of cuts. meh. no biggie. at that point, i hadn't really decided if i was really feeling the people on the team anyway. then, i decided to try my hand in the women's ultimate scene in boston, since my college coaches had pushed for me to play women's more anyway, and tried out for hatch. again, made the first round of cuts, which i was pretty happy with. unfortunately, i then followed that up with a couple of pretty embarrassingly bad practices. talk about conservation of greatness. who knew it applied to a much bigger picture. again, unsurprisingly due to my disappointing showing that week, i got cut. by this point, i was seriously burned out. had figured i'd just train and condition for the summer. get into better shape for the next college season and then try again next year. cue unexpected email from 7th wheel, another mixed team out of boston, sent out to ultimate players known to be in the tryout process for teams announcing their final tryout and an invitation to join them. for shits, i said "why not?". it's more practice in a tryout situation. what harm could it be? plus, another chance would be nice. day of, started off by appearing pretty damn stupid getting lost and going to the wrong fields. got there late. turned out we hadn't missed too much, so jumped right in. unfortunately, we also had another event planned later that day and had to leave early. so here was my thinking: i got here late (super late in the whole process), and have to leave early. man, i must look like a jerk. two days later, to my surprise, i get an email offering me a spot on the team. well, crap. i was burned out. but excited! i would end up playing for the club season after all! :) so far so good. i'm happy i've gotten the chance to gel and play with a great group of people and having fun. i feel terrible for having to start school so early, but i'll still be flying back to boston for club sectionals on sept. 10th. again, excited. :D
summer club ultimate
i came back for another season with merge. we had quite a decent season, though again with a bunch of frustrations and annoyances. ended on a decent note. didn't get to where we wanted to be at the end of the tournament, but that's okay. had a great day one, going 4-0 against some pretty alright teams. day two, we tanked. the weather was meh. we had lost a few people. energy was low. errors were high. it was unfortunate. but we got to end the season with a fun team pre-tourney dinner at brayden's and a post-tourney meal at heidi's.
miscellaneous, but still awesome
- got to go to DC with aaron. :) even if i spent half the time either in terrible pain or nauseous as all hell, it was still a good trip and i'm glad we got to do it. p.s. the national zoo is awesome! and free! which makes it more awesome. seriously, the number of photos we collectively take at zoos is ridiculous.
- for the pre-tourney dinner, we whipped up a batch of chocolate guinness cupcakes from a recipe i had randomly found online awhile back. they were delicious. seriously. so good. i really should try and find time to make some more this year and share their glorious existence with everyone here.
- went to the franklin park zoo. yup. more zooing. more ridiculous photos. it was brilliant.
- watched a bunch of movies: despicable me (twice! so adorable!), karate kid, iron man 2, shrek in 3d, inception (so good! want to see it again.)
- went to my first red sox game. it was the sox vs. d-backs. so much fun. we won. got some adorable photos out of it. yay. :) another thing off my bucket list.
- went to toad & katie's wedding. it was beautiful. congratulations to them! i wish them all the best! :)
- wildwood. won hardware - best in bracket, bitches!! didn't get ridiculously sunburned. had a lot of fun. may have given myself first degree burns on the bottoms of my feet from running on the sun-baked sand a whole lot.
- had puppy come with me this summer! :) she lived with me in my room all summer and, though i may have developed an allergy thanks to all her shedding, i'm so happy she made the trip with me this summer. :)
summer 2010 :: it's a win in my book.
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