8am Sam
This week was insane. I had a lot to get done in a short amount of time. For the past three weeks I have been coming into the office at GVSU at 8am or sooner. I am generally the first one into my office. It is strange because when I worked at Johnson Controls as an engineer I would normally get into the office at 7am and everyone else would generally be there already. This is a nice change of pace though. I like getting in early, I get a great parking spot (nice end spot to avoid door dings) and no one is in the office to distract me from getting work done.

This week I got a lot done. Tuesday I was in the office from 7:30am to 11:30pm... long day. Then Wednesday I was in from 8am to 10:30pm... almost as long. Thursday my schedule ramped down a little more... I was only at GVSU from 8am to 7pm, not even 12 hours... easy. So I worked a lot, got my survey instrument almost completed for my practicum research, more articles read for my thesis, meetings with the IFC guys about the upcoming elections, Greek conference planning, 2nd year grad student meeting, professional development, lunch with Dean Merkle, and the list goes on. Today is much slower, just working at CompuCraft and looking forward to a weekend of reading for my thesis and starting on the research proposal with Becky.

So what happens after a long week? You go out of course! Last week it was the typical BFE trip with the Betas for some pool and then for Heather's birthday us grads hit up Taps and Gardellas. This week us Betas got to BFE kinda late and both pool tables were taken so we just chilled and Ramiro explained his fear of not getting free refills on pop (hence why he asks for only a little ice). I was paying so why did he care? And anyways, who worries about that?

Then I headed downtown with the grads. It was was Ken's birthday. We hit up this place called Z's Sports Bar. It was my first time there, and we made up more then half of the crowd. The place was not too bad, the juke box had much better music then the one in the basement of Gardellas. The bar tender was not very good, but our waitress was awesome. She was fast, funny and very creative. When Jody mentioned that pitchers of beer tend to get warm, she came by with a glass full of ice and floated it in the pitcher. This way the ice does not water down the beer, and it stays cold. I never saw that before... what a great idea!

Throughout the night I for some reason managed to get into several discussions about GVSU's grad program. Talking with Heather about class discussions, Jen about practicum and internship ideas, Carissa about setting up a meeting to give background information for a case study project and Kacy about the ethic fest. There was some non-program talk though. Oscar was there with his wife and we talked about Novali and his daughter hanging out when I have Novali here, that will be fun! Then did some soccer talk with Pablo's friend, I miss Futbol. I also learned that I no longer know how to yo-yo. Which of course is a very important skill.

Back to today... I am hoping to get my haircut, then do some laundry and clean my place up a little. Tomorrow will be thesis day... got a lot of work to get done. Going to be a busy weekend working on school projects. Ah.