European Tour 2009

We are all packed up and ready to begin our adventures in the Balkans. Our ride will be here in about 15 minutes to take us to the airport, the antibiotics are kicking in,* and we managed to pack everything into the smallest 2 suitcases.

Here's the plan:

• Montenegro to visit Tim and Lexi (and Liz and her dad, Joe G are already there) with a potential side trip to Croatia until Saturday the 22nd
• Saturday we head to Vienna and say goodbye to the company of Liz and Joe G
• the 24th we head for Salzburg - yes, we're totally doing the Sound of Music tour
• the 26th we move on to our final destination, Munich where will make a trip out to Neuschwanstein aka the Disney castle
• on the 28th, we head home. We're going to try to get a later flight out of Heathrow so that we can get out of the airport and see a bit of London. Probably won't work so I'm not getting my hopes up.

It's going to be a celebration of the fact that I don't have to be in school anymore and our vacation for the year. We'll try to blog but we'll see what happens.

*I have what was diagnosed as folliculitis on my knee (basically an infected hair follicle) and it was bad enough to warrant oral antibiotics. Since it's right on my knee, I think it hurts more than it might have had it been elsewhere on my skin. It does appear to be getting better so here's to modern medicine!

Before....

Before I travel, I have a compulsion to clean. There are 2 reasons for this:

1. I don't like to pack until everything is put away because I can't decide what to pack until everything is where it belongs.
2. I don't like coming home to a messy house - it's just going to get messy when I unpack, so I don't want it to be messy to begin with. Besides, it's depressing to come home from vacation and have to clean.

Sadly, this is what our apartment looks like right now - we're flying out on Sunday.

We don't currently have a working dishwasher :(

The living room

The dining room

Clearly, we have some work to do. :(

Grad School Review - FINAL year

I took my final final exam this evening. Therefore, I thought it would be appropriate to finish the grad school recap even though I was trying to space it out a bit.

Fall ’08 ­– I took this semester off for obvious reasons. ;)

Spring ‘09
Procurement and Contracting – very straightforward, kind of boring. Easy A.
Strategic Environmental Management – totally interesting, engrossingly interesting even, while also being the most frustrating class ever. Dr. Starik is so knowledgeable but is so academic. Learned so much and annoyed Will talking about it the whole way home every week. Lucked out on a great group again but they ALL graduated on me. :(

Kogan Plaza

Summer ’09 aka “the summer in which I decided that I had to kill myself and finish”
Strategic Management – Dr. Cook is awesome. Learned so much but I would have enjoyed it more in Paris. We got our project together in 2 weeks and from what we gathered got the highest grade in the class.
Global Governance and Public Policy – I can hardly express how much I hated this class and the group I was stuck with. Dr. Forrer does not teach in a logical fashion and I got stuck with foreign girl who didn’t get it and finance boy who would say “yes, I’ll do that” and NEVER EVER do it! I hate POLICY.

Duqués at night

Government Accounting and Auditing – Prof Lewis is totally hyper and loves his subject matter even though it’s terribly boring. Governmental Budgeting would have been a more useful class but I had a conflict but this was interesting.

Grad School Review - Year 3

I had my last class yesterday.... yay!! on with the rest of my grad school recap....

Fall ‘07
Introduction to Project and Program Management – I HATED this class because it was less information than I’ve even had in 2 week workshops for work and therefore a waste of my time. Fun group though.
Business and Government Relations – Dr. Englander again! Turned out to be history of economics kind of but it was interesting and it was the last class I had with Courtney and Katie before they left me :(

Marvin Center with a dorm - quite the juxtaposition of new and old

Spring ’08 – this was a hard semester since I planned most of my wedding during it.
Information Systems Management – time-consuming because of the labs but they were easy and in the computer lab. Dr. Vikas is a funny little man. Not bad but I don’t want to do IT either.
Operations Management – lots of work but again a great group (one of my partners from PM). Basically stats with decision making – learned all sorts of fun Excel stuff.

Lisner Auditorium and Corcoran Hall

Summer ‘08
American Business History – interesting while I took it but it didn’t stick because history never does

Babies everywhere!

I come from a long line of baby lovers. Here are some pics of a few that we've been hanging out with over the last several months.

(L) Elizabeth Rohling came out for some UD Softball (~9m)

(R) Reagan Armstrong in the Gaylord (~3w)

(L) Jacob Krisko back in March (~12m)

(R) Will and Sarah Glotfelty probably Feb/March (~17m)

A very rare shot of Will holding a baby

Family!

(L) my nephew Kevin with my nephew Austin (16 and 2.5)

(R) Baby William O'Connor, my cousin's baby (~8m)

And one of my original favorite babies - my niece Erin
She's about 10m and I'm almost 8.

Grad School Review - Year 2

Fall ‘06
Statistical Analysis – Dr. Z??? I didn’t like him but the Math geek in me loves statistics so, much to the dismay of most of my classmates, I loved it! And it was in a computer lab so I got to play on the internet half the time.
World Economics – they team teach this in the huge auditorium in Duqués. Hateful class. Both professors sucked and I was lost early on because I’ve never taken macro before.

on the edge of Kogan Plaza near Monroe and Government Halls

Spring ‘07
Financial Management – Dr. U?? is awesome but her name is weird so I don’t remember it. I didn’t like finance enough to pursue it but I met fun people in this class too (Katie!) and it’s math-y so I liked that too.
Individual and Group Dynamics – wow, ironically, I ended up in the worst group for this class. There was no structure to our final project and our group always disintegrated into me and Courtney against the other 2.

the hippo outside Lisner Auditorium

Summer ’07 – I took this summer off because they weren’t offering anything I wanted/needed. Now I know that I should have gone to Paris for Strategic Management with Katie and her friends.

I am 29 and a half!

I love cake and while my hubs knows this, I hadn't managed to get a birthday cake for the last several years until we had to be in NJ with my parents for my 29th. In the midst of all the craziness and husband abuse (not literally just me taking advantage of him), I turned 29 and a half last Thursday. And what did my dear hubs do? You guessed it, he got me a cake. He valiantly tried to get my favorite (chocolate with raspberry filling and white icing) and that's what the tag said but alas it was not to be.

It sure was yummy though! Thanks, dear!

Grad School Review - Year 1

The basic story is that I got bored living in VA, going to work in DC, not having a boyfriend, and not much else going on in my life. So early in 2005, I decided to go back to school to get my MBA. I did some research and intended on applying to George Washington, George Mason and American. I looked at Georgetown but they were just starting a part-time program and I didn't want to be a guinea pig. In the end, I only applied to and got accepted at George Washington and Foggy Bottom became my after work haunt 2 nights a week. Granted, I got a boyfriend (and now husband) before I got started with classes so I had the life I was looking for but I did it anyway. Why? I'm a glutton for punishment, the Navy was paying for the classes (with nothing asked of me in return), and hopefully someday, it'll get me out of working for the DoD.

Fall ‘05
Human Dynamics in Organizations – actually, not as bad as it sounds and I met 2 lovely ladies in this class but both finished before me :( We would have done better on our project had we not forgotten to tack on the discussion questions at the end.
Financial Accounting – um, when you’re a Math major and think logically, accounting is easy-peesy. Loved it but not enough to be an accountant.

Spring ‘06
Managerial Economics for MBA – econ sometimes escapes me but I like it. Nam Pham is an AWESOME professor. So much fun!
Managerial Accounting – HATEFUL class! Mostly because of our old Asian professor. He refused to use a textbook and I swear never told us when we actually had the answer right. I spent the semester comparing it to being taught by your grandpa. The only class I’ve gotten less than an A- in.

Summer ‘06
Marketing Management – Dr. Divita is awesome but has since retired. Somehow I ended up in a group in which I was the one to get it. It was weird to me because I didn’t think I would get marketing.
Business and Public Policy – Dr. Ernie Englander, how I wished he taught more classes. He managed to make the driest material interesting. Seriously, we studied Sarbanes-Oxley most of the session and it was interesting.