Off to MGCA
This will be my fourth year attending the Mid-American Greek Council Association (MGCA) Conference. I attended twice as a student at Western Michigan and this will be my second time attending as a professional with GVSU.

This year is exciting because I am presenting and facilitating. Not only am I presenting, but I am doing three topics! I am doing one called "Your Council Dot Com", which is a program about why Greek councils need websites, ideas for building them, and resources to help them realize their online potential. I am doing one program with Aaron Haight, my supervisor at GVSU, called "My Culture, Your Culture, Greek Culture" which is about commonalities between Greek organizations and ideas for collaboration. My final presentation is with Michelle Goubadia who is a Zeta Phi Beta from North Carolina and that is called "Stepping, Handsigns and all those Shrieks: what's it all about?". That program will be fun! It is about the traditions of culturally based Greek organizations and how groups can respect the differences.

The University of Miami-Ohio Greek Life office has asked me to participate in a discussion with their students on Friday morning. I will provide the viewpoint of a member of a historically Latino fraternity and involved on the national level. I am pretty excited about this because it is something not normally done at MGCA. I am glad to be involved in this trial run. If I end up living in Chicago as planned I would like to get more involved with the MGCA Conference.

So needless to say I will have a busy weekend. I also will steal time away to see Novali of course! The last two years I took her with me to dinner with the Western Michigan crew. The GVSU group went to a rowdy bar for Friday dinner and I really didn't feel right taking Novali. Steve no longer works at WMU so I am not sure what my dinner plans will be this time.

Snowboarding update: I think I seriously injured my shoulder. It is still very sore and it has been three days now. I have a bad feeling that I might have really hurt something there... when I get back from Chicago I will have to get it checked out.

NX 2000 update: In a prior post I mentioned I had not talked about my car in a while. Now she is headed back to the shop... boo hoo... I am not sure how but I managed to crack one of my rear rotors. I have cross-drilled race prepped rotors.

I gave her a wash this week.

The cracked rotor.

I always figured I would blow one in a race... like I did my exhuast... not while tooling around Allendale! I have to make a special trip with her to Holland, MI to take her back to my shop. Not many places are willing to mess with my custom brake set up. If it was not so cold I would try it myself! Team PLP really needs a garage...

Whoa... lots of updates
A lot has happened in the last few days. First off my team did not win the GVSU CSAL Case Study Competition. I had a good time and learned a ton. Mike made a great partner and even though we did not spend a huge amount of time on the presentation I think it was awesome. I wish all three judges would have stayed awake for the presentation though...

The team in action.

Striking a pose with Mike.

On Friday I also got my pictures from Monsters, Inc. on Ice with Novali. They turned out pretty good. Go to Novali's website to see all the pictures. Novalí

It was great to watch the show with her.

She loved the $10 snowcone.

Saturday was the best valentines day I have had in a long time. I slept in, cleaned my room, then went out. Becky called and wanted to get some dinner. So Ramon and I headed out to Grandville. The lines at places were crazy, so we decided to go to the mall. I returned a few shirts to Banana Republic (I hate trying stuff on) and then ended up finding some awesome old guy shoes at the Buckle and a new Fossil watch. We ended up eating at Qdoba's. Then I went home and cleaned the bathroom (it is my turn in house duties). What a day.

Becky talked me into snowboarding today. It was something I wanted to try when I was younger and was a skater. I did not know anyone who did winter sports really. It is an expensive sport and I was all into my soccer once I got into high school and lost interest. We went with Tommy and his girlfriend Laura. I did not really dress for the occasion but it was fun. I am in a world of hurt right now from falling on my butt, my knees and twisting my arm pretty bad. Despite the pain I want to try it again, maybe I won't end up so sore this time.

Taking a break. I usually landed on my butt and would rest before trying to get up again.

Trying to ride down the hill. Notice the snow all over my jeans?

This weekend was relaxing, and this week will be fun. I am presenting three different programs at MGCA and am looking forward to have the "Presenter" tag on my name tag! Sam's all grown up.