Summer Adventures

Working 40 hours a week and getting ~5 hours a sleep on weeknights is definitely starting to wear me down. The fact that it is the middle of July completely boggles my mind. Fortunately, work and summer are going quite well, so I shouldn't really be complaining.

In fact, I recently decided that I'm going to be interning for a full six months, so I actually won't be going back to college until after Thanksgiving. I'm kind of excited about this, as that means I will only need to intern for three months next summer. I already have my weekends for fall planned out so that most weekends I'll be going to Rochester or State College. While I love being home, it can be quite boring most of the time. The random trips with friends this summer have kept me sane.

Summer started off well, with a canoeing adventure down Pine Creek in May, rock climbing at Ravensburg State Park in June, and plenty of other events and campfires. I've discovered that a lot of my friends aren't home much this summer, and oftentimes, they are working when I am not. However, it's seemed to work out okay thus far.

I've ran several races, including two 5k's in a single weekend (the 5k Run For Kids in Williamsport and the JesVic 5k in Watsontown) and a 10k in Jersey Shore. I just got back from the Boilermaker 15k in Utica, NY. This is the second year now that I've done the race, and while there were only two of us for the road trip this year (compared to four last year), it was still just as fun. I put another 470+ miles on my car in two days, so I'm glad that it hasn't decided to blow up yet. Next year should be even more epic - considering that the Boilermaker is famous for its big post-race party.

Some of my family from Wisconsin came up in June also, which was nice. I hadn't seen my one cousin for a number of years. I'm looking forward to (hopefully) going back out to Wisconsin next year to see more family and friends. I finally got to meet my cousin's kid who is already five years old and basically a genius. I've never met a kindergartner who could read so well.

Besides the Boilermaker 15k road trip, I also went on a road trip with another friend of mine to Philadelphia. I saw my second baseball game in the new Phillies stadium (we won this time), so it was a great time. I also went tubing on the lake, bringing back memories of water skiing and tubing on the Wisconsin River two years ago. Besides the road trips already mentioned, I've also gone to State College once or twice. This year was the first year that I saw the State College fireworks, which are supposedly ranked in the top three in the country.

So, all in all a fairly good summer. The remaining summer plans include a trip to Hershey this weekend, a possible Baltimore trip with my parents to visit family and watch an Orioles game, and then another road trip with friends to Erie. Besides that, I'll be working! I'm sure I'll be posting again sometime in August... my weekdays will start to get less busy once everybody else heads back to college, for sure.

The Summer Internship Begins!

It feels amazing to be done with school for the next couple months! Even though I'm working 40 hours a week, I don't have to worry about finishing homework at 3 in the morning or studying for tests. I definitely have a lot more free time, even though I'm still getting about the same amount of sleep.

The school year ended well. It ended just as busy as I had predicted, with three or four projects due all in one week. I sadly ended my job at the Residence Halls Association, but will still be working at Student Government in the fall as a web content manager and at the Wallace Center as a training manager and desk worker. The apartment deal also went through, so four of us will be living together off campus in the fall.

The Penn State Blue & White weekend was amazing yet again (my 4th consecutive year), and the Imagine RIT festival was also good (3rd consecutive year). Spring Fest did not go so well however, as the weather was rather cold and rainy. In fact, it was so cold that it actually snowed a little as well, in the beginning of May! On a positive note, the concert for Spring Fest was great--a 4 hour concert featuring I Fight Dragons, Travie McCoy, 3OH!3, and Cobra Starship. It was actually my first concert here at RIT.

Last weekend, after I'd finished most of my projects, Curtis came up to my dorm for the weekend. We all went to the movies ("Robin Hood") and also went on the RHA trip to Darien Lake (former Six Flags). Unfortunately, it was rather cold that day as well, but the thrilling roller coasters made up for the bad weather. We also went to the Eastview Mall and did some mini-golfing before the weekend was over.

The last week or so has also been crazy, with about 9 hours of driving back and forth between Rochester and home, and also driving to State College to watch Penn State baseball and hang out with friends. While it's probably obvious, I'm now back home in central Pennsylvania for the summer. I'm not sure if I mentioned the specifics before, but I'm working as an IT intern for First Quality (http://firstquality.com). I haven't been doing much except for orientation last week and getting acquainted with some of the program files I'll be working with, but it's going great so far. I'll be working on some web projects for the company's database, among other things. I'm excited, and I already think I've learned quite a bit for only working two days.

Well, it's about 10:30 at night, and while my sleep schedule is still adjusting, I need to try and go to bed soon. I should be able to find some time in a couple weeks to post again.

Enjoy summer!

NCAA Frozen Four in Detroit & Student Government Elections

This is likely to be my last post of the school year... spring quarter is really starting to get stressful, as if I wasn't stressed enough. I register for fall classes next Thursday, and I think I'll be taking all 400-level courses. It looks scary.

The last time I updated this, our hockey team was in the middle of the Atlantic Hockey playoffs. Well, we achieved our goal this year and exceeded everybody's expectations--we advanced to the NCAA tournament for the first time ever! Not only that, but we beat #2 Denver and #12 UNH to advance to the FROZEN FOUR TOURNAMENT in Detroit, Michigan! Having only been a Division I hockey program for five years, this is quite an accomplishment for the RIT Tigers.

As you can imagine, the past couple of weeks have been exciting. We had to beat Canisius and Sacred Heart to win the AHA tournament and win a berth into the NCAA tournament, and then to play better than nationally-ranked teams. I may have been a die-hard RIT hockey fan before, but I am even more of a fan now. Not only is our hockey program now respected on a national level, but our fans are, too! (Because we are so awesome and loud, and stuck around for the entire Frozen Four after we lost in the semi-final games.) We ended our season ranked #9 in the country.

Life has been busy outside of hockey as well--from waiting all night at the Gordon Field House to get tickets, to running races with the Running Club, and even going home for a weekend to go canoeing and visit some friends. Schoolwork has been tremendous this quarter, with a total of 4 different group projects that I have to try and complete by the end of the school year.

It's getting crazy.

Student Government elections for the 2010-2011 school year will be happening next week, and as the technical contact on the committee this year, I am basically responsible for the voting application and voting web site. This week and upcoming weekend have been/are going to be extremely busy as I have to make sure that everything is perfect--we had approximately 2,500 ballots cast last year, and I'm predicting just as many (or more) this year.

Unfortunately, the possibility of landing an on-campus apartment for next year has sort of fell through, so a group of us are going over to an apartment complex close to campus later today to tour one of their 3-bedroom townhouses. It will be cheap splitting the costs with three other people (cheaper than dorms, for sure!), so I'm looking forward to it, even if we won't be on-campus as I had originally hoped. RIT Housing did not give us a housing assignment for next year, and we were placed into "temporary housing" while they sort out their space issues. We don't want to be forced wait on RIT in order to decide where we are going to live as places off-campus are filled rather quickly.

All in all, the past couple weeks have been a blast. Aside from having a couple of near all-nighters in the past week due to trying to get ahead for the Detroit road trip, trying to catch up from the Detroit road trip, etc., I have had no complaints. Weekends have been fun, and the Detroit weekend will be one that I remember for a long time. Detroit wasn't exactly the best city, but the hotel was cheap and we had a lot of fun--there were a number of RIT students who stayed at the same hotel, so there was never a dull moment. I enjoyed going to my first Frozen Four, and look forward to going back again next year to St. Paul (hopefully we make it!)

As I mentioned, the next couple weeks will be just as hectic. Next weekend, I plan on going home to Penn State for Blue & White weekend. The following weekend, my parents are visiting campus for the third annual Imagine RIT festival. Spring Fest is the weekend after that, and then I'll be packing up to go home and finishing up some of my projects/finals! What a quick year!

Well, it's time to go and enjoy the rest of the day... keeping my fingers crossed that this apartment meeting goes well... only six more months until hockey season. ;-)

Florida & Spring Quarter!

It may not be spring yet, but it sure is beginning to feel like it! Spring quarter has been fairly warm so far. This is good news, because I ended up spending 4 days in Florida over spring break. The 70 degree weather was amazing!

It's already the last quarter of the 2009-2010 year. As I'm sure I mentioned before, winter quarter was tough. However, I did well in my classes and the week break was refreshing. I only have 10 hours of class this spring (compared to having 20 in the winter), but one of my classes is "blended" (half online) and one is completely online. I don't have as many 8am classes as I thought, but I'm working 24 hours at three different locations on campus. Talk about busy!

Yes, three part-time jobs. I recently was hired by one of my friends on Student Government to work as a content manager for their web site, serve on the elections committee, and do some captioning for their videos on SGTV. We'll see how it goes--I have so many projects this spring that I definitely will have my time occupied.

Running club is back in action, after we kind of fell apart in the winter. There are a handful of us doing a 5 mile St. Patrick's Day race in downtown Rochester on Saturday, and then I'm volunteering for the RIT Indoor Triathlon on Sunday. If you remember from last year, I actually competed in the triathlon. This year, however, I'm not going to put myself through the torture.

In addition to the running club events this weekend, it is also the beginning of playoff season. RIT hockey is ranked #1 in our conference. Hopefully this year we make it to the NCAA playoffs for the first time ever! Nationally, we are ranked #21--we still have not made it into the top 20! I'm definitely looking forward to the next couple of weekends in college hockey.

As far as housing goes, the spot that I was trying for at University Commons fell through, but a group of us are trying to get in somewhere on campus. I'm glad that we finally got our housing contracts for next year figured out--although we waited until almost the last minute, we'll hopefully be finding out our housing assignments next Friday. If we don't get in to where we want on campus, then the four of us that grouped together will be going somewhere off campus (although still close by).



Anyway, the highlight of the past month has definitely been the trip to Florida over spring break. We left last Saturday morning at 4am--I was praying that our flight to JFK would not be delayed as we had received over a foot of snow the day before! It was quite hectic attempting to drive to the airport, and we had to shovel our way into a parking spot.

Saturday was spent in Boca Raton, FL. It was probably the worst day of the trip, simply because it rained and there was not a whole lot that we could do. I enjoyed going to dinner at the Chinese buffet! Sunday was amazing, as everybody went to the nature park and saw several hundred birds and a couple of alligators out in the wild. There were some pretty interesting ducks. We visited the beach in the afternoon and even managed to watch part of the Olympics, also.

On Monday, the three of us that went on the trip went to Orlando, FL via Amtrak. It was my first Amtrak experience. The resort that we stayed at was absolutely amazing, and our villa had it's own kitchen (w/ dishwasher, refrigerator, washer/dryer, etc), living room, master bedroom, and a bathroom. There were 2 HDTV's. I was highly impressed. We ate dinner at the Rainforest Cafe in Downtown Disney. I wish we could have had more time in Orlando, because we didn't have much time to enjoy the resort--although we did go swimming later that night.

Tuesday was my first time ever at Disney World (first time in Florida, actually). We visited all of the parks except the water parks and Animal Kingdom. There were hardly lines--we waited on average 5 to 10 minutes to get on each ride. I was so relieved because there was a chance of rain the entire day, and it did not rain at all. We got to see an Indiana Jones Stunt Show, and saw the IllumiNATIONS fireworks display when the parks closed for the night.

So, all in all, I've been having a great couple of weeks, as always seems to be the case. The next couple of months should prove to be just as amazing, and soon enough I'll be back home working full-time for the summer!

Let's hope the warm weather is here to stay...

Skiing, Hockey, etc

My 2010 has started off rather well. School hasn't been as stressful as it was the first three weeks of the quarter--it's definitely a hard quarter, but I finally got into a good routine. There are only one or two classes that may cause me some problems, but I'll battle through it.

My New Years was pretty great. New Year's Eve was spent playing the Wii Obstacle Course with some of my best friends and other randomness. Penn State won their bowl game on New Year's Day, which was also excellent. I did not enjoying leaving to head back up to Rochester so early, though--we started classes back up on January 4th. It's been four weeks since I've been home, and I probably won't be home again for another four to four and a half weeks--the longest I've gone without driving back to PA! My weekends have been busy, and with Friday classes and Sunday meetings, it really just isn't that practical to go home any weekend.

RIT hockey has been doing rather well (although they have lost some more games since the beginning of the year--however, none were at home!). I got my jersey signed a couple weeks ago by all of the players on the team. We just went three full weeks without a single hockey game, but RIT is back in action this weekend against Bentley University (we beat them 4-1 tonight).

The highlight of 2010 so far was last week when several of my friends and I went to see the Jeff Dunham show at the Blue Cross Arena. I also went skiing for my first time ever last Saturday. The Jeff Dunham show was great... I saw him two years ago also. Skiing was amazing, and the weather for it was also excellent. I definitely did not do so well in the beginning, but I got better by the end of the afternoon. I think I may have to go again sometime soon, next winter at the latest! I learned my lesson though, and never again will I wear jeans under my snow pants... I developed severe sores/blisters that are still healing.

Well, there are only another three weeks left to this quarter, and then finals. Spring break will soon be approaching, and then eleven weeks of spring quarter. I registered for my classes yesterday morning. I have almost the perfect schedule--no classes on Fridays, and I'm done by 2pm on Thursdays. However, I scheduled 8am classes... my philosophy behind this is that I will be waking up early all summer for work, so it's better to get used to waking up early now!

I'll also be figuring out housing for next year soon. I'm hoping to find a good apartment for next year--I'm sick of getting stuck with roommates that I don't particularly get along with (like this year, for example). There's a possibility that I'm going to get into a University Commons apartment, which is the best option on campus. Fully furnished, my own bedroom, washer/dryer, dishwasher, and they are all fairly new. I am excited, so we'll see how it goes! My friend who offered the room to me I don't really know all that well, and I don't know any of the people he lives with, but I hope that it might possibly work out. :-)

Well, I'm about ready to crash soon (I think), so it's time to be signing off for another couple weeks!

Looking Forward To 2010

It's New Year's Eve! I am having quite a good time at home on winter break, although I cannot believe that I have classes again on Monday. :-( This entry probably won't be very long, as not much went on up in Rochester during the first three weeks of winter quarter. It was just stressful and busy... my classes this winter might kill me! Why I decided to take all my hard courses this quarter, I will never understand.

Anyway, as far as good news goes... I received an acceptance letter for the internship position I applied for this summer! So, I will be working at a company near my house, which may or may not be a good thing, I guess. :-) I'm really excited though, and that was probably the highlight of my December.

I got home about a week and a half ago, and we promptly had a snow storm, of course. I've had a lot of fun seeing friends and just enjoying having no classes, although I do have homework that I've been putting off for far too long. I should be working on some right now, actually. I swear, my networking class is going to be the death of me this winter quarter. I even have a group project due for a class on the second day we get back (Tuesday). Hockey will have to keep me sane this winter...

And speaking of hockey, we lost our only home game in December, but we'll hopefully be getting revenge this weekend in Minnesota, and then next weekend when we are finally playing at the Ritter Arena again. :-) I have faith that we will soon reach the top 20.

My Christmas was pretty fantastic. I got a new HD TV from my parents, which was unexpected. I even got to visit some of my family that I haven't seen in a really long time. Also, yesterday a friend and I went to Hershey Park and saw the Christmas lights (and even rode on some of the park rides)! Who knew that Hershey was open during the winter??? I sure didn't, and it was freaking freezing. There's not much planned for New Year's, although I'll probably be going to my friend's apartment on New Year's Day to watch the Penn State vs. LSU game.

Well, we'll see how 2010 goes. I'm optimistic that it will be another great year. :-)

Fall Break - Boston & Run For The Diamonds!

So... I'm going to attempt to write after having taken some Nyquil about 30 minutes ago. I'm feeling quite drowsy, so I'm hoping I make sense.

The last few weeks of fall quarter went by quickly, especially week ten when I had all of my projects/papers due as well as three of my four finals. (During finals week, I only had a fifteen minute final that I took 8am on Monday!)

Hockey pretty much took up Halloween weekend and the weekend of my birthday, as well as other Halloween activities (Paranormal Activity!) and a race on my birthday at the park. RIT hockey is currently on about a 8 or 9 win streak! I also went home for my interview the weekend before finals, but I have not yet heard back from the company. I'm still hoping!

This fall break has turned out to be more eventful than what I had thought it would be, even though we only had a one week break this year compared to last year's two weeks. I ended up going on a roadtrip to Boston with one of my friends and a friend of his. We left on a Friday morning and I came home Tuesday evening. One of our good friends goes up to college at Bentley University, and we had a blast exploring the area and walking around Boston... to recap my "mini-vacation":

Friday: We traveled for 7 hours, then went to the Cheesecake Factory after meeting my friend and her roommates. Friday night was spent having fun around the university...

Saturday: We had originally planned on going to places in Vermont, but instead traveled to Salem, Massachusetts because we did not feel like traveling another 7 hours. However, Salem was a bit disappointing because there was not a whole lot to do there. I was expecting more "witchy" and historical things. When we got back to the apartment, we had dinner, went to part of the Bentley vs. Army hockey game, and then went out for a couple hours.

Sunday: BOSTON! We finally made it into the city and had a fun time exploring the markets, seeing the sights, and having fun. I'm glad the weather was nice. Sunday night was spent watching the AMA's, haha.

Monday: was not such a fun day, as I am not big on shopping and that's about all we did. (Besides watch House later that night. :-))

... and then Tuesday I traveled home with my friend. We left as soon as she was done with her last class in the morning. I really didn't mind the 7 hour drive to get there and to come back home, and would probably go back to visit again sometime.

Anyway, the rest of my Thanksgiving break has been fairly busy as well. On Thanksgiving morning, I drove to my friend's house and then he, his dad, and myself went to the Berwick Run For The Diamonds 9 mile race. It was my first time running the race, although it was the 100th year of it. It was definitely one of the more difficult courses I've ran, but I'll probably do it again next year! My time would have been much faster if I hadn't have had to pass around 1,500 people at the start of the race... I started way too far in the back, and there were about 2,000 people that participated.

I only had Thanksgiving dinner with my parents and I, so that was fairly uneventful (even though I still ate way too much food). I've spent the last two nights seeing friends and what not. It's hard to believe that I'll be leaving to go back to Rochester on Sunday morning. I'm kind of ready to go back, although I'm not too excited to be starting new classes on Monday. (First up--College Physics!)

Well, I think I've written enough for the night. I'll probably write again over Christmas break. I'm sure there will be other adventures by then. As for now, the Nyquil is really starting to kick in.

Only three weeks of class until I'm free again!

College Just Keeps Getting Better (and Busier)

I've been planning on writing an entry for the past week or so. I don't really have time to write this tonight, but if I don't do it soon, it will be 2010 by the time I get around to it. Yikes.

It's already the end of week 8, which means I have finals starting in about two and a half weeks. I've registered for classes for the winter (I have Friday classes now :-(), and it's going to be quite an interesting winter to say the least. I'll have all necessary requirements finished so that I could potentially find a co-op in the spring quarter if I wanted to. (I also declared a minor in Business Administration the other week.)

Anyway, I'm loving this school year, which was probably evident even in my last post. Perhaps sometimes I am just too optimistic--but I really couldn't ask for this year to get much better. (Although, I am getting rather tired of living in the dorms!) I haven't really had a completely boring day here--and let's just say that I love work and I love the people that I work with, and I'll leave it at that. I'm glad that I'm starting to become closer to the people at work, to the extent that they're often becoming the people I hang out with outside of work.

Running club has been going great, and I set my personal best time in a 5k race the other weekend after I FINALLY broke nineteen minutes! (I can't say I'm performing so well in fantasy football, however--my record is currently 1 and 5.)

There's always so much to do on campus. RHA has been keeping me quite busy, with recent events such as our Halloween Haunted Office and monthly bar-b-q's. I was also able to get a group of my friends from my floor around this year and compete in the annual Mud Tug event. We didn't get very far, but it was definitely pretty muddy. It's also hockey season, although the RIT Tigers are off to a rather rough start--we are currently 0-5, but hoping for our first 2 wins this Halloween weekend here at the Ritter. :-)

Our fall career fair was at the end of September. I talked to a number of companies, mostly ones that are based in the Rochester area--Paychex, Wegmans, Synacor (Buffalo), etc. I have also applied online to a couple companies around the U.S. One company in particular that I am quite interested in is First Quality. They have a large presence in central Pennsylvania and I was surprised to find them up here in Rochester. I recently had a phone interview, and will be going home for an on-site interview after week ten. I am really excited because if I am offered a position for the summer, I can still live at home and can easily commute to work.

Speaking of home, I've went home for a weekend this quarter, although I technically wasn't 'home' all that much. I spent a night at a friend's apartment at Penn State and saw the Penn State vs. Minnesota football game. Never before have I seen so much snow in the middle of October! (We made snowmen in Happy Valley--it was weird!)

Well, I think I've rambled on for quite long enough. I will probably try to post an entry again during my Thanksgiving break. I am excited for the upcoming month. It's strange to think that I will be turning 20 in a little more than a week... guess my teenage years are about over!

Sophomore Year!!!

Believe it or not, I've been up in Rochester for sixteen days already... and it feels like it's been about four.

I have quite a bit to write in here today, but that's okay--the only thing of any significance that I've done today is listen to Penn State beat Temple. :-) (And work on homework, sometimes.)

My last few weeks of summer were fairly uneventful compared to the rest of summer. I mostly worked, although there were a few end-of-summer gatherings. We also had another party at our pavilion in our backyard, but I unfortunately missed half of it because of work. The highlight of August (besides the O.A.R. concert and Pittsburgh) was probably running with the high school cross country team. That's about one of the only things I continually miss about high school, as well as FBLA.

Towards the end of August, my dad and I went to one of the Little League World Series games. My family and I also went to a Phillies game as part of a bus trip. I'm pretty sure I mentioned this in my last entry. Anyway, that was all well and good, except for the fact that we got absolutely DRENCHED and the Phillies lost. :-( So, perhaps not quite as great as we had expected...

Anyway, I moved back up to RIT on the 3rd of September, a Thursday. It took me over three hours to unpack all of my stuff. However, I absolutely love having my own personal bathroom this year (that I share with my roommate), and the floor that I live on is quite an improvement over the people I lived with last year. Not that I didn't enjoy last year, but there were some people who sometimes annoyed me.

The year has been going great so far. My parents came up the weekend before classes began so that I could have my mini refrigerator. I also helped with the Meal or No Meal freshman orientation event and represented the running club quite well at the club fair. We have so many new freshman (and upperclassmen) runners this year and it makes me very excited!

So, these first two weeks have kept me very busy. My Monday-Thursday schedules are pretty much full from 7:30 or 8:00 in the morning through 10:00 at night. I get some breaks, and work is often relaxing, but they are still very long days! Currently, I have 16 hours of class Mon-Thurs and around 21 hours of work... oh, college. :-)

I finally got my hockey jersey the other day, so I'm getting *extremely* excited for the upcoming hockey season that begins in 2-3 weeks. I've also been watching a lot more football this year... about a half dozen of us on the floor are even doing our own fantasy football league starting this Sunday, so we'll see how that goes...

Before I forget, I'd also like to make it known that I ran my first ever half marathon last Sunday. I placed 91st out of over 1,700, with a total time of 1:35:04. It was a great race, and I'm thrilled that I was able to do so well considering the fact that I've been sick for the past week or so. We have a number of races planned for the running club this fall, so I'm really excited to see how this year goes! I'm still in shock with how many new runners we have this year.

Well, I think that about covers everything for now. It feels as though I've written a book. So, what to look for in my next post--school updates, hockey updates, running club updates, and fantasy football updates. ;-) Oh--and co-op updates as well, as the career fair is coming up soon!

Until next time!

Boilermaker 15k, Pittsburgh & More

I've been doing a lot of working this past month. Working at the Crosscutters is turning out to be a pretty fun year again, and I'm glad that my dad is flexible with days that I need to work for him. :-) It makes planning trips so much easier.

Other than working, I've been thoroughly enjoying summer. I am definitely going to miss having a "real" summer next year. In about a month, I will be starting to search for a six month co-op for next spring/summer or summer/fall. With less than four weeks left of summer, I am starting to dread going back to college.

My aunt, my little cousin, and her friend came up to visit from Baltimore during the first part of July. It was great to see them again, and I enjoyed going to Penn's Cave and tubing down Pine Creek--two things I don't ever remember doing before.

I also went on a five-and-a-half hour road trip in the middle of July to Utica, NY with three of my friends. We participated in the Boilermaker 15k road race, which is the largest 15k road race in the United States. I'm proud to say that I PR'd in the race, and I placed approximately 773rd out of over 10,000 runners/walkers! I will definitely run the race again next year if I am in the area. I didn't mind the long drive, and we even got to check out the National Long Distance Running Hall of Fame. (We also toured a car show that was going on that weekend.)

Other than that major road trip, I've been on a couple smaller road trips this summer, as well as to a few graduation parties and such. I went with some friends to the Watkins Glen State Park in New York a couple weeks ago, and the falls were absolutely amazing. I bet we hiked in the park for a good five hours. I did accomplish another "first" this summer--I went camping out in the woods without a tent the other week. We decided to go on a 30+ mile biking extravaganza over five mountains... it was a lot of fun, but it was also a lot of work, and we will probably never do it again.

This past weekend was spent in Pittsburgh. I have never been in western PA, at least not in many places west of Altoona, so it was my first time over there. A bunch of us all went to the Cheesecake Factory and then saw a Pirates baseball game. We really got tickets to the game just to see the O.A.R. concert that followed the game. There were also fireworks. Although the lead singer lost his voice about halfway through the concert, it was absolutely amazing and I loved every minute of it. We also ended up going to the Pittsburgh Zoo the next day just for something to do.

Anyway, I guess that about covers everything for now. No more major trips are planned except for a bus trip to Philadelphia with the family to watch a Phillies vs. Braves game. (I'm a big Phillies fan... I don't care for the Pirates!) These next few weeks most people are starting back at school, so I will be stuck home working and not doing much of anything else. I've been running with the high school cross country team lately, which has brought back several good memories. I need to start running more these next three or four weeks--I signed up for the Rochester half marathon in the middle of September! What am I getting myself into!?

Time sure flies when you're having fun! Until next time... (which will most likely be after I'm moved into my new dorm...)