Tag Archives: college

Five Years Out

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This last weekend was my college’s 5th year reunion.

I didn’t go (mostly because it was held a few states away).

We’ll just forget for a second that 5 year reunions seem a bit excessive, and focus on the bigger scarier issue that I have been out of college for 5 years.  I’m still in denial that I’m not 21 anymore.  It was something I looked forward to for almost 19 years, and here we are, 5 years after the fact.  Time is going by far too fast for comfort.  (Also forgetting that my 10 year high school reunion is NEXT year.  WHAT?)

Growing up, I wanted nothing more than to live in California.  So, when it came to college time, I knew exactly where I was going.

The school I ended up at was Saint Mary’s College of California, a school of about 3000 undergraduates located 20 miles east of San Francisco. Most people have never heard of it, aside from our Australian dominated basketball team, the Gaels.

I really believe that every kid needs to get away from home for college.  I was very fortunate to have parents who not only didn’t make college a choice, but also didn’t make going to our local school a choice.  I know a lot of times the financial resources aren’t there, but having to basically start over in a place where I didn’t know anyone was probably just as valuable of a lesson as reading Machiavelli and discussing what Pythagoras was thinking when he came up with that theorem (SMC was a “liberal arts” college…we did a lot of discussing).

I made some wonderful friends and had some wonderful times out there.  While there definitely are the future “real housewives” types with bleached blonde hair and more make-up products than I could ever imagine, I also met some of the most genuine and intelligent people, and I’m glad I got to spend 4 great years with them!  I’m sad that we all live so far apart now, but I know I’ll always be able to consider my college buddies good friends!

I  graduated in 2007 which you may remember as kind of a rocky time in the history of California economy.  Plus, I just wasn’t sure what I wanted to do.  I ended up coming home, and while I was pretty bummed initially, everything happens for a reason. Less than a year later, I met Aaron, and well, I think we all know how that turns out.  And Albuquerque has been a decent place to start a career.  Cost of living is low, there aren’t 400 people showing up for each job opening, and we’re near our families, which I think is important during the first few years of marriage.

But I will always look back at college as probably one of the best times of my life.  And digging way back through all of those old facebook photos and reliving memories is pretty fun!

So, to the Saint Mary’s College class of 2007, hope these last 5 years have treated  you well, and I hope you remember our time in school as fondly as I do!

Field trip to Brazil!

Nerd Time During the Perpetual Taper

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I kind of feel like a bum this week.

I started the second taper of the last 3 weeks after taking a few days off to rest the IT band (still tight, but not as bad as it was last week), so nothing too exciting with running.

I also did pretty badly on the April “Have Fun Everyday” blog challenge that I signed up for.  I tend to think that I have a pretty fun life.  Turns out I am SO UNFUN.  Some of my fun moments included stealing the remote to watch a Doris Day movie on TCM and taking pictures of the snow.  I need to liven up a bit.

I also looked at my daily horoscope after purchasing my car on Friday, and it said “DO NOT enter into any contracts today.”  Fantastic.  I don’t believe in horoscopes, but it kind of freaks me out that it said not to enter into contracts on the one day of my life that I actually sign one.

So while my athletic life, fun life, and astrological life are in need of some fine tuning, I did get in some major nerd time this weekend.

And by nerd time, I mean I hung out with my family.

My little sister goes to college in a town about 3 hours south of Albuquerque, and about 45 minutes north of Mexico.  You have to go through border security on your way out.  Albuquerque is barren desert.  This town is the barrenist of all deserts.

A couple of weeks ago, a club she belongs to (some acronym to do with building model planes…she’s a mechanical engineering major) went to Wichita Kansas to compete with other college teams across the nation.  They got through one out of three rounds before the competition was called off due to tornadoes.  Wichita actually made national news that day/night because the metro area had about 97 tornadoes touch ground.

The team was ok, though pretty freaked out because the competition site along with the gas station 2 blocks from their hotel were obliterated, but they also didn’t get to finish out the competition.

They decided to show off the plane and complete their missions on Saturday safely back in the land of no tornadoes, so Aaron, Giuseppe, and I hitched a ride with  my parents at the crack of dawn, and we all drove down to the desert to watch the plane fly.

{Giuseppe, walking through the barrenist desert}

They got through their first mission of flying as many loops as they could in 4 minutes, and finished the 2nd mission of carrying added weight before the plane crashed in fabulous glory during landing.  GAME OVER.  I guess it was a good thing that it crashed in front of friends and family instead of in front of judges.

{Meanwhile, the plane is flying and Giuseppe is stealing the show!}

{Poor little crashed plane}

{Where model planes go to die}

My sister designed the wings.  The wings did amazingly! They managed to fly even in the super windy Tornado prone Kansas, and they were still in good shape after the crash.  Good job, sister!

Next year she will be the president of the plane flying engineer people.  Hopefully the plane won’t crash under her reign.

We went to lunch, and by this time, because we were in the barrenist of all deserts, it was HOT.  We went to get some Frozen Custard (FroCu?  It sounds like a bad word phrase when you say it, but FroCus doesn’t sound any better), to cool down, and then dropped my sister back off at her apartment to have a finals induced heart attack/panic attack for the next couple of weeks.

And then we drove back home after passing through the border checkpoint!

Finally Getting Around to that Bucket List

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In January, I made myself a bucket list of items that I wanted to accomplish during 2012.

Well, here we are, May 1st, and I don’t have too much to cross of my list.  I am rapidly turning into a bucket list failure.

HOWEVER, this weekend, I finally got around to bucket list success #1.

This weekend, for the first time ever, I bought a car.

For the last 6 years, I have been driving a Ford Taurus.  On Friday, I traded it in for an Acura MDX at a price that was too amazing to ignore.  The Taurus was starting to not run as smoothly, and it was starting to look a little dated and beat up, but I still had a hard time letting it go.  So much of life is spent in cars, and this one got me through a lot.

I know it is a little ridiculous to be slightly sentimental about something like a car (it wasn’t even my first), especially a Ford Taurus, but me and the Cheese Biscuit have been through a lot.

My dad bought it in Virginia when he was getting a master’s degree.  It drove us to our first visit to New York (and started smoking, causing us to miss a turn and take a detour through a tunnel into Brooklyn). It brought my dad back home to Albuquerque, and then passed into my hands.

It drove me back and forth to California for college, and took me all around the Bay Area.  It braved the hills of San Francisco, and got used to driving in the fog. Many friends who I hardly ever see anymore have ridden in that backseat.

During my senior year, a deer ran into the back driver side door, and for a couple of months, I had a huge deer sized dent.  About two years after getting the door fixed, we moved to a place with a garage, and for the first time I had to learn how to back out of one.  That same door got smashed during one of my unsuccessful attempts.

When I graduated, it drove me very reluctantly away from California for the last time.  I proudly displayed my alumni license plate, and my college window sticker. My campus parking pass stickers though faded and expired, were still ready to grant me access.

It drove me around for my first job out of college (and there was a lot of driving involved!).  It drove Aaron and I to our first date (don’t ask) and it got me to the church on my wedding day.  The moment I got home after I ran my first half marathon, it got decorated with my 13.1 sticker.  It has endured only one break-in, and only a few dings to the windshield.

I can’t even count the number of states that it has traveled through, and despite it’s faults, it has been a good car.

When cleaning it out, I found a Valentine from the girl I baby-sat in college.  I found a name tag from my summer department store job.  I found my wedding binder in the back pocket (my wedding was 2.5 years ago).   The car only had a tape deck, so I found some old cassettes that I haven’t listened to in years. I found many remnants of my life over the last 6 years, and I had fun reliving some memories.

But, it was time, and I watched as my little Taurus was driven to the back lot as I received the keys to my new Soccer Mom car.  I transferred over the 13.1 magnet (and then the car was taken to the car wash by the dealership, and it came back with NO magnet) and signed it away.

I hope this new Acura will take me through just as many life events, and I hope that it will be a safe and reliable choice (I have two very smart friends who are engineers for Honda, so I hope they know what they are doing!).  At least I know that I will enjoy the ride with my sunroof open and the music blasting!