A weekend off

It has been a long time since I last posted ... I drafted a few half blogs, but have not sat down to compose something in full for over a year.  I have been meaning to move my blogging over to a new website, but have not gotten around to it ..I'm back here because
1. I am starting to forget some of my adventures ... that's why I write, somewhat to keep my friends & family aware, but mostly so I have something to go back to & read when all the memories have blurred together.
2. It's Sunday morning. I went to Mass yesterday.  I have work to do. It's procrastination, pure and simple.  Probably why I blogged so much while at Oxford.

The big decision today is, do I go for a bike ride, or go for a run?  I was all set to bike down to downtown Albany yesterday, but I might clean my bathroom today instead.  Big plans.  But fear not, things are going to heat up soon:

May 4: Weekend in Philly; originally Jen was going to come up from NYC to visit me, but I merged a trip to Justin in Philly with a weekend with Jen, because I'm efficient like that.  Going to pick up Jen in NJ on the way down to Philly.  I really hope Justin and the rest of the FMPs somewhat behave themselves around Jen. I put the odds at 70%

May 11: Weekend in DC.  Still not sure why, but Regan is the cheapest airport to fly to from Albany.  Makes no sense, but I'm taking advantage of it.  Going down for a long weekend to see the Monk Formerly Known As 'Topher.  I talked John into flying down from Chicago also, should be a quality bro-bonding weekend, insofar as Dominican monks can bro-out.  (Or is BPJ Franciscan?  I think he's Dominican.  I can never remember, and this seems to offend most of my Notre Dame friend.  But come on, if you're not super-Catholic, you have no idea either, right?)

May 18th: Pam's wedding!  Wedding season begins. Very much looking forward to seeing a bunch of old High School friends I haven't talked to in nearly 5 years.  Which is pretty much all of them.  Pam specifically asked me to not bring a date*, so I'll be sharing a hotel room with 2 bridesmaids, which would be exciting if my life was a movie and I made terrible decisions all the time. Also, I get to see my little sister before she heads to Texas, and the rest of my family!
*I feel like most people who have been offended by this request.  I was just delighted by Pam's pragmatism. 

May 25th:  Memorial Day weekend in the Big Apple with Maria!

June 1st: Tough Mudder Boston (actually in NH. New state! Still haven't figured out when I'm going to visit Maine while I'm here, really nervous I may not make it). Just started training for the 12 mile obstacle course.  Either I remain very motivated through the month of May, or things could get ugly.

June 8th: Grand Prix in Montreal with the guys at work.  This will certainly be a weekend of bad decisions.

June 15th: Lauren's wedding! Who knew Minnesota was so darn expensive to fly to? It's like airlines assume people only fly to Minneapolis if they really have to.

June 22 - parent coming to vist? TBD.

And that's it! So a very exciting time, though I can't say that I am taking much advantage of exploring my immediate surroundings.  Last weekend I went up to Saratoga National Battlefield, which was cool but the weather was a bit wet.  I did make it to Boston twice to visit Maura (and got to see Torie & Jordan while they were also there), but I wish I had done more that.  I did swing by Yale to see Lauren when I had to be down at Fairfield for class, but I haven't really made an effort to explore the Capital Region in the same way I tried to explore Milwaukee.  The fact that nearly all of the FMPs are up in Saratoga, 40 minutes to the north, means that I rarely go out with them on weekends.  The cold weather and the fact that they stay out until 4am also drive that decision making.

Highlights from earlier this Spring:

St Pat's in Boston:  Free tickets to a Bruins game (The Boston Garden is even uglier than MSG. Thankfully between the 2 venues, I have spent only $10 on tickets, vs the nearly $200 I spent going to 3 NBA games and a Marquette game in Milwaukee), and a mostly sober experience in Southie for the parade on Sunday (weirdest floats ever).

Elite 8 Game in DC:  Text from Sarah joking that she has free tickets to the Elite 8 and wishes I was there to share the tickets rapidly turns into AJ driving 13 hours round trip to DC.  Did you know that Scranton is in the Mountains?  Really cool to go to an Elite 8 game, but we were rooting for Marquette so I'd have to say I enjoyed the Vietnamese restaurant after the game more than the game itself, which involved Sarah & I bickering like old friends and odd looks from all the couples there on proper dates.  Also got to see Julie, which is always a good thing.  She has the coolest little place in the shadow of the Capitol Building. And without her help, I would have lost my car in DC. Again.  Really need to remember where I park when I go to DC.

Syracuse - Georgetown game:  One of the FMPs was kind enough to take us back to his college town & experience a basketball weekend in Syracuse, which had a very football-weekend vibe.  Now let's throw things over to AJ's email account for a breakdown of the weekend:

This past weekend I went to Syracuse with 3 other guys in my program, including 1 who graduated from Syracuse.  We had tickets to the Georgetown-Syracuse basketball game, which set an NCAA record for on campus attendance for basketball - which is my 2nd NCAA attendance record, along with ND-Michigan with Gina :)
We headed up on Friday & I was able to meet up with Mary, a good friend on mine from ND, and hang out with her & her med school friends.  Spent the night at Mary's, and then met up with my fellow FMPs and hung with them & some Syracuse alums in for the rest of the weekend.  Game was an awesome environment, the campus felt like it was a football weekend with the size of the crowd & the vibe. They had friends who work at the stadium who emailed them pictures of what the student bracelets looked like, and then we printed out our own bracelets on glossy paper and snuck our way into the student section ... and ended up only being 1 section over from where our real tickets would have been.  
Went out to local student bars after the game.  Went to Dinosaur's BQQ for lunch on Sunday, which is a famous establishment in Syracuse a bunch of people told us to go to.  Ran into Alan there, my Keough hall President from sophomore year who is working in Syracuse for a project for E&Y consulting (he actually started with GE FMP in Aviation & left after rolling off FMP.  Gave some nice advice to us while we were all waiting for food.

Hoping to stay in Albany this weekend, and then maybe out to Vermont next weekend.

Watching the Oscars right now with Ashley, heading to bed swoon.

Skiing in Vermont: Went, uh, skiing in Vermont. Meehan is spending her current rotation in Rutland Vermont and gave me a standing invitation.  Skied at Pico on Saturday.  We then partied at the token club in Rutland, got home at 4am b/c of the DST time change & the general dearth of taxis in Rutland, and woke up at 7am and drove 2 1/2 hours in Meehan's battered Hyundai to Smuggler's Point. Skied all day, drove to Burlington for dinner, and drove back to Rutland, at which point Meehan wrote her paper due at midnight.  Did I mention Meehan is a cyborg?

Skiing is awesome! Skiing is expensive. These are the difficult decision I have to deal with as an adult. 

President's Day Weekend - from a blogging perspective, this should have been the highlight of the season, so I'll save the ridiculousness for it's own post. 

Stacey the aspiring stewardess

On Saturday night, I was coming back from dropping my friends at the bar, wanting to head to bed early after a long day… and then I ran into Stacey in the landing of my apartment building.

I was all dressed out from going out, and after I offered her a neighborly hello, she responded, “You look delicious.”  I then stopped walking, deciding this is was conversation that needed to be continued.

We continued our awkward bantering, as I tried to unwind whether I was delicious or if she was referring to her Hot Pocket she was nibbling on. We also covered other topics, such as the fact that she watches me from her balcony when I come home from work, and my current relationship status:
Stacey, “So do you have a girlfriend?”
AJ, “No…”
Stacey, “Oh.  … So, do you have a boyfriend?”
AJ, “No.”

Just like in the movies, it was pretty easy to quickly move from initial flirting to getting her in my apartment.  Unlike the movies, I proceeded to stall for the next 2 hours, both keen to see what would happen and horrified to what could happen.  In that time frame, I learned the following things about Stacey:

1.       She’s currently a nurse, but is an aspiring stewardess, and just got hired by Jet Blue and will be heading to Cape Canaveral for training soon.

2.       She’s earning a degree in business, but only because her Dad wants her to.

3.       She doesn’t like people from Pennsylvania, or at least the fact that there are too many of them here in Wilmington.

4.       She’s 30, which I found out after I incorrectly (and honestly) guessed 22 ….

5.       She’s the Maid-of-honor at for a wedding August 3^rd.  I know this because she asked me to be her date. I politely declined, explaining that I will be in Milwaukee at the time.

6.       Stacey made blueberry jam for the wedding as table-toppers.  We sampled some, it was quite good.

7.       Stacey is not very good at banagrams, but she’s certainly a trooper while losing badly.  

After nearly 2 hours I got tired and sent her back to her apartment, and I went to bed.

The following lessons were learned:

1.       That girl/guy down the hall that you always check out but never talk to… they are probably doing the same.  The key is to wait until one of you admits it, preferably the other person.  

2.       If you are patient enough, you can, in fact, wait until a girl comes out of nowhere and completely throws herself at you. No need to actually go somewhere, or try in any capacity.  

3.       As a corollary to #2, chicks dig guys that are well dressed.  So when walking down dark alleyways, dress nicely, and eventually you will meet a nice girl. 

Blueberries and a battlefield

My mom was visiting me for this past week.  I was pretty busy at work Monday & Tuesday but was able to get off work at a decent time to spend time with her for the rest of the week. We had a full week. On Wednesday we attended Shakespeare on the Green and wittnessed perhaps the most adorable rendition of 12th night I'll ever see by the youth troupe.  2 identical 8-year-old-girls alternating the lines for Festes? Yes.). On Thursday we took a river boat tour of the Cape Fear River and got to check out the Port of Wilmington 

A ship, from Saudi Arabia

Tanks, presumably lined up for said ship

The crack security team

Are we exporting M1 Abrams tanks to the Sauds? Yes, yes we are. 
And on Friday, we went to a Jazz concert at Arlie Gardens, after mom got herself sunburned on Bald Head island.  :(

On Saturday we went to the Pender County Blueberry festival, because who doesn't want to spend their Saturday morning celebrating blueberries?  As blueberries have beeen my official favorite fruit since early elementary, I certainly was not going to miss out on the action.  As you can see below, you could get just about anything you wanted with blueberries.

My take-away from the festival? Ryder makes blueberries. 

We ended up having blueberry smoothies, blueberry turnover, blueberry ice cream, and blueberry wine.  Additional wine was purchased for later consumption.
Mom left from the festival, and I since I was in the area I swung by Moore's Creek battle, a small but very well done National Battlefield from the Revolutionary War. It was nice to walk around in the woods for awhile, and I got to brush up on my US History and certainly learned a lot about the Southern theater of the Revolutionary War, which often gets short shrift at the expense of the North.  When I got back to my apartment I tried to look some stuff up in my US History high school textbook, to compare what I thought I learned with what I actually learned, and was disappointed to discover I had left it in my bedroom back in Carmel, . And to think people ask my why I have nearly all of my notes and textbooks from college in my apartment... you just never know what you might need to look up. 

After leaving the battlefield, I had a lovely drive back to Wilmington on Blueberry Lane. For the first time since I purchased my Civic, I found myself sorely disappointed I wasn't driving a convertible. 

Race and Education

Just got back from volunteering at one of the local public schools, New Hanover High School (NHHS).  Through GE, I was volunteering to grade the oral presentations for student's Senior Project, which is basically a senior capstone project that is required to graduate; I had never heard of this before, but every student as to do it as a part of their senior English class, and I think it's a great idea.

Myself, Igor, 2 older men from the community, and an English teacher graded 4 students.  Igor actually made the observation right after we left, but the difference in both background and quality between the first boy and girl, who were black, and the second girl and boy, who were white. Their speech was different, the quality/expensiveness of their presentation material was different, and their educational prospect were, in turn, different.  The black girl and boy were going to a junior college and enlisting in the Navy, respectively, and the white girl and boy were going to ECU and UNC Chapel Hill, both traditional 4 year colleges.  Not to take anything away from the black student, but they early were not entering the world at 18 as prepared & developed as the white students.  The black guy, for example, seemed like a sharp, well-grounded kid who was joining the military with the hope of getting into engineering and earning his degree while in the military (and having the military pick up the expense, of course), but he mentioned during his presentation that his father was incarcerated, which certainly did not help him have more flexibility to go to a 4-year engineering school without needed to join the military.

The white girl* was clearly nervous and shook the whole time, but she had clearly done excellent research, had put together a website as her "product," and had really impressive booklets that she had printed out, and the white boy had a PowerPoint and fancy handouts. In contrast, the 2 black student used tri-folded posterboard and had handwritten index cards for notes; the teacher, who taught computer applications, mentioned that the reason not every student just puts together a PowerPoint presentation is because many students are not "comfortable" with a computer. In other words, they do not have access to a computer at home, and do not have easy, frequent access to a computer at school or a library extracurricularly. For me, this was an real life example of how a student can earn a high school diploma but still be functionally illiterate.  Knowing how to type is a basic skill in the 21st century, and it needs to be taught just like shop class was taught decades ago, and how cursive was mandatory for every student when I was in 2nd grade [apparently, and thankfully, that is no longer require because, case in point, everyone just types these days].

*Her name was "Chaffin"  I love the South.


On the way back to our apartment from NHHS Igor and I drag raced our Civics on Market Street.  Though Igor had the superior car (Civic SI), I one handily due to superior decision making. 

Lexington County Museum

I spent this past week in Atlanta, completing the 2nd leg of my Foundations of Accounting exam.  For reason no one but myself understands, I decided to drive to and from Wilmington, instead of flying like everyone else in my class. I felt I needed the departure time flexibility, and with over 38mpg on my trip, I'll make a tidy profit off of mileage reimbursements.

But most importantly, driving the breadth of South Carolina gives one the opportunity to visit gems they may never be near again.  AAA GEM attractions, that is.  So Saturday morning, I found myself sitting in the kitchen of ACE Atlanta, thumbing through my Georgia, NC, & SC AA Tourbook (2011 edition). I skipped over the Augusta and Columbia attractions, under the assumption that they are real cities I might actually pass through again. Thinking I would't make Moore Creek National Battlefield before sundown, I zeroed in on the Lexington County Museum complex.

The 'complex' didn't disappoint. it was a collection of old, mostly pre-civil war buildings from around the county that had been moved to a park across from a Bi-Lo supermarket in the middle of Lexington. Pulling in my Civic with Indiana plates, unshaven, and wearing running clothes, I would say that I looked out of place, except there was no one else there to out-place.

I came into the front office and startled the 2 old men shooting the breeze, clearly unused to people showing up unannounced during operating hour. After a brief back-and-forth in which I wasn't sure if the man was trying to be nice to me or was telling me to get the heck out of his office in a polite, southern-ly way*, I paid my $5, and my personal tour began.
*He strongly suggested I come back another day when one of their buildings was reopened after renovations. When I pointed out that I would probably never pass through Lexington again in my life, he finally conceded.

It was a pretty good tour, and I can tell you all sorts of things about quilts that I don't remember.  The highlight was entering a school house dated from 1815, and was something like the oldest schoolhouse outside of St Augustine, FL. The lowlight was when he pointed to a house and said, "this was Tom [some German name]'s first house when he moved to the area," and I asked, "who is Tom?"  He paused, and said, "I don't know, no one has ever asked me that before. I just know I"m supposed to tell you about him." Right.

After my tour I asked for dinner recommendations, and headed 17 miles to Batesburg-Leesville, SC to Shealy's Bar-B-Q.  Though sitting by myself among droves of local families chowing down on mustard-vinegar BBQ pork was a bit disconcerting, no one questioned my presence and I thoroughly enjoyed myself some South Carolinian BBQ.

Main street, Leesville, SC

Pre-Civil War farm house, Lexington, SC

The one and only

Physics!

I finally got my act together and restarted blogging, after gchatting with my good friend (and fellow traveler) Julie. But as it is nearly midnight, I have work and a 7 hour drive tomorrow, and an exam on Tuesday, this will be short.

I was up late (2am, which is very late for us old*, post-college 22 year-old, especially for a sober weekend) last night, helping out my cousin with her Physics 101 homework. It had been nearly a year since I've done that, and it was fun** to dust off the old intro textbooks and do some good ole rotational kinematics again. My cousin has an exam this week, so we skyped from 11.30pm to 2am, working our way through her practice exam. All in all a successful evening, given my other option was to continue watching Legion with my roommate.

*I was called old by both my cousin and her roommate. Unthankful little...

** I was a physics major. Don't judge.

Carly's roommate made a comment, "well, at least you don't have to worry about this stuff [studying] any more," to which I sadly responded, "you would think that...."

And so it begins again!

This blog will be about my time working for GE, moving around the United States (and hopefully the world) during my 2 years Financial Management Program (FMP)