brrr it's cold in here...

This weekend started out with a horrible bang, but luckily finished up good. Friday, Cory and I went to Sault Ste. Marie because I had to take an exam for work. We had been planing the trip for a couple of weeks so it wasn't anything real spur of the moment. My exam was scheduled for 12:30pm and it's about a 4 1/2 hour trip so we decided to leave at 6:00am to make sure we got there in time in case we ran into bad weather. The weather channel had extended the winter storm warning for our area for another 2 days and was predicting 11-17 inches to fall in the Houghton area. We actually got on the road early and were on our way, kind of, before we left the driveway we noticed the heat in Cory's car being finicky again but decided that it wasn't that big of a deal and then we were on our way.

Bad. Idea. By the time we got to Baraga (half hour down the road) the heat would only work if I kept my foot jammed up between the under part of the dashboard area and where the floor slopes up. Believe me, sitting like that for another hour was not fun. By the time we got to Marquette the heat had stopped working completely. We stopped at 2 different auto part stores to see if the had the tools Cory needed to do a quick fix. They didn't so Cory just did a temp. fix. that lasted about another hour. We stopped at another store in Munising to get some more wires and parts to try to fix it again and it ended up braking even more. Have you ever ridden in a car for 2 hours with the heat not working at all and it being 2 degrees outside? Ya, not pleasant. Luckily, Cory had an electric blanket that plugs into the cigarette outlet of a car in his trunk. His dad bought it for him 7 years ago when he first came up to school and used it for the first time this weekend.

Finally, at 12:45 we got the the Soo and I took my exam. I happened to bring the number of the testing center with me so I was able to call ahead and tell them that we ran into some car trouble and they understood. Thank God I passed my exam. 4 hours of sleep and the most miserable 61/2 hour ride of my life weren't really playing in my favor. Cory was also able to get the heat kind of working so we wouldn't completely freeze and we had 2 blankets on the way home so we were able to stay warm.

Besides that, the weekend was good. Saturday Cory and I went to see Jeff Daniels in show up in Calumet. I had never been to the old Opera house up there until this weekend, it is beautiful in there! ground floor plus 2 balconies built in the late 1800's = wow. We sat in the front row and I ended up getting called on stage to do the "Big Bay Shuffle". Jeff Daniels wife is from Marquette, and he has filmed in the U.P. before so he is really familiar with the area. Big Bay is the name of one of the towns up here and the "Big Bay shuffle" is a dance that he saw in a bar one night when he was in Big Bay. It's essentially the dance that all 6th graders do awkwardly by not moving their feet and just bobbing. The twist is that you are holding a beer in each hand. He didn't give us beer though, I had to just pretend like I was holding them.

On Sunday, Cory and I went snow shoeing and ended up finding a waterfall that we never knew existed in Hancock. I want to go back in the spring to see it running with all the spring run offs, I think it will be really cool. I have pictures of our adventure, I'll post them later.

Oh Christmas tree!

Cory and I put up our tree last night! We even cut it down ourselves. I think that is the only way we would have been able to get a real tree small enough to fit in our house. We don't have very many ornaments and we haven't put on the lights yet so it looks kind of sad. We need to get an extension cord before we can put them up because there is not a plug close enough. Also, we don't have any room to put the tree on the floor so it's on our table :) oh! also, Cory made the star . we couldn't find a star small enough for the top so we bought 2 ornaments, but one in half and then glued the star to the tip of the other.

What about the Pilgrims?

So I was at Wal-Mart today, like usual, I typically go there almost every other day it seems like these days, mainly because that is because it's pretty much the only store in town. Anyways, while I was there I was looking around and noticed all the Christmas stuff that was out already. They already have the fake trees up, candy out, along with wrapping paper and ornaments out. I think this is wrong. Firstly because it's still 2 months until christmas, and secondly because I didn't see a single decoration for thanksgiving! Not one little turkey wearing a pilrgram hat, one single indian fether, or "Happy Thanksgiving" sign! This saddend me because Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. ever. There is nothing better than eating copious amounts of food and enjoying the afternoon with your family, and pretending that you care about who wins the football game. After I thought about it for a while, I decided that I can't be too sad about not seeing any Thanksgiving stuff because that just means that Corporate America hasn't gotten its nasty, dirty, little paws all over it like they have with every other holiday. I think that is why Christmas isn't my favorite holiday. People these days don't seem to care about the true meaning of Christmas, or really any holiday really, they just care about selling as much as they possibly can.

Ok. I'm done with my negative nancy ranting about corporate america. I came up with a new game. Here is how you play: go to any store and while you are shopping just smile at people and see how many people smile back. It can't be a creeper smile though, nothing really big either. Just a simple smile. thats it. It's not really a game, but it's fun to do. And it makes me happy when someone smiles back. My statisitics show that mostly elderly people smile back, and it almost seems to make their day, people between the ages of about middle aged people fall in the middle, some smile back, but it's normally jsut one of those I'll smile to be polite, and others give you a funny look like why are you smiling at me. kids between the ages of 12-18 don't really count becasue they only care about themselves so they are most likely not paying attention. And then little kids just think you're smiling at them because they think you think they are cute. Yes, I left out people in their 20s and 30s, thats becasue I don't have enough data on this age group yet to show any real statistics. Anways, it's fun and I think you all should try it!

cold piggies

I think our house is backwards, or confused. We don't have a timer on our thermostat or anything like that and we don't ever touch it, but it's always really cold during the day and WAY warm at night. It wouldn't be a big deal except for the fact that I work from home so I have to deal with it. I generally end up sitting on the couch (because I don't have a home office, or table) under a blanket to stay warm. I'd go to campus or somewhere else to do m paperwork but I'm afraid to go somewhere with more work space with EVERYBODY in town with the flu. I think the count of people I know is up to 6 and a bunch of the public schools have been closing for a day or two because of it. and all the people I have been meeting with for work have been talking about it and saying how they have someone out with it. I know I could just go and get the flu shot but I'm not going to because it always seems like whenever I get a vaccination shot it ALWAYS makes me sick. So, I'd rather take the chance of getting the flu rather than getting the shot and knowing that I'm going to get sick.

Top 10 reasons I love fall

1.) The gorgeous colors the trees turn
2.) New seasons of tv shows
3.) The crisp weather in the morning.... there is nothing else like being bundled in your jacket and the cool breeze!
4.) Sweaters can start to be pulled out of the closet again!
5.) Scarves and pea coats... I'm weird and I like the smell of wool pea coats. yes, they have a smell.
6.) Pumpkins!
a.) picking them out
b.) roasting the seeds and eating them
c.) carving them
7.) The first snowfall
8.) The first snowfall that sticks
9.) Thanksgiving!
a.) delicious food
b.) family and friends
c.) just an all around good holiday!
10.) Being able to bundle up under a blanket and drink hot chocolate and not get funny looks! :)

I just noticed, these are pretty much in order of how Fall in Houghton goes too! haha :)

Our little home

Here are a few pictures of our house... It's kinda messy but I figured I'd do it while it was on my mind because I'd probably forget to take them after I tidied up. The first one is the bedroom view from the bed, and the second is from the other angle in the bedroom. The third is our little kitchen and the last one is from the front door... on the other end of the couch is where our table is..unfortunately there isn't enough room to sit at it...we just use it as a mail table and have a bunch of stuff under it for storage. Notice our HUGE TV that take up half our house.

My Summer

So I know that summer has been over for a few weeks for some people, but I feel like it's just ending for me. Reason number one is because it's finally cooling off again here after the late summer weather we got. And number two is because of the time of my honeymoon I feel like it extended summer even longer because I was way to see everybody start back up at school.

Because I haven't posted in quite some time I figured I would write about my summer as a whole..mainly because when I was in elementary we never had to do a "What I did on my Summer Vacation" report. I feel jipped. So here it goes...I didn't feel like my summer was super eventful but looking back on it now I think it was. First off I graduated from college (YAY!) but I still had to take summer classes to actually finish and get my degree (BOO!). Summer classes where only 7 weeks long so it didn't take up all of my summer time. During this time I also landed a job locally (YAY) but then the Friday before I was supposed to start work I got a call saying that funding fell through so they could no longer hire me (BOO!) Then, in my last week of classes I ended up having to have surergy to have my appendix removed (another BOO!) which ended up making me take 2 incompletes in my classes that I was taking.. I was able to make up the work once I had recovered a bit so that I could actually finish up and graduate...I still have yet to recieve my diploma though...I think losing the job I had gotten was a bit bitter sweet because I was actually able to enjoy the rest of what was left of summer for me and not have to worry about work or school for the first time in 4 year. However, the money would have been nice.

In July Cory and I went to a friends wedding, and did a lot of my own wedding planning and thats really it. In August Cory and I went to a tubing trip with a bunch of friends from school down state. That was nice because most of the people that go on it are already graduated so it was a good time to see everyone again. After that it became crunch time again with wrapping up wedding stuff making sure everything was falling into place. I also landed another job (YAY!), this time with Aflac as a Sales Rep. Before I could start though I had to get my state licence to be able to sell insurance which consisted of having to take a 3 week course all about health insurance rules and laws and then take the state exam. On top of it all Cory and I also moved. twice. So you can say it was a very stressful time for me that month.

Then came September, the first few days of the month I was downstate getting all the last minute details in place for the wedding. Thankfully Betsy came up from Luisianna to help me with it all! The 5th cory and Igot married ( YAY! YAY! YAY!)! It was a blast and people don't lie when they say it goes by SO fast...it really does. After the wedding we went to Niagra Falls (the canadian side) for a few days and then to Toronto for our honeymoon. It was a lot of fun and some much needed relax for both of us. It was the first time in a while for both of us where we had a break where we didn't have any commitments what so ever (every other break we've had lately we've still had wedding plans to take care of or homework to do, or something). While in Niagra we went on a Jet Boat ride through the rapids of the falls. It was a blast! Although I did think I was going to drowned at one point in time. We went though class 5 rapids down stream from the falls and got soaked. The only way to explain what it's like is by imagining getting sprayed in the face with a fire hose for 5-10 seconds, now repeat 5 times. In Toronto we went to Cirque de Solie which was incredible! If you every get the chance to go, go. It's a bit pricey but it's definately worth every bit of it. The act we saw was called "Ovo" which is "Egg" in french, the story line is about a fly that brings an egg back to the "bug town" and him and the mayor have a battle of wits as to how is going to win the egg and get to eat it...all the other bugs were on the mayors side. Also in Toronto we went to see a filming of "The Hour", which is a Canadian late night talk show which Cory watches everynight. It was fun too, but not really what I expected. The only portion of the show that they film with a live audience is when they are interviewing the guest.

After that we went back to Lake Orion for a few days to pack everything back up that we had at Cory's parents and headed back up to Houghton. Cory's back in School and I have now started trainging for my job and summer is finally over. But thats ok, because I love fall...something about the leaves changing and the crisp air in the morning. I just love it.

Bad news bears

I'm watching the Today Show right now and they're talking about health issues for women when they start to get older.I decided I don't want to get old. I already have to get up in the middle of the night every night to use the bathroom.. Maybe I can somehow just stay young forever.

Look What I can do!

This summer I'm taking an intro to web design class to finish up with my classes and actually graduate....here are a few things I've learned how to do so far.

First, I leaned how to embed movie clips into websites and Blogs!! (now I just hope it works!)



Second, I learned HTML coding by hand! its really rough and a few glitches / things missing still.
http://www.hu.mtu.edu/~alwaselo/Personal%20Website/Alexandra_Cory3.html

This week and next week we'll be working in dreamweaver to make better websites!

Suprise!

I got a letter from MTU today. I thought it was just junk mail and was just gonna toss it because I figured it was just about my tuition bill. I ended up opening it up just to make sure that it wasn't. It's a good thing that I opened because it was a letter from the registrars office saying that I had grade changes in a couple of my classes and that 2 of my grades for my classes last semester got boosted!!! One class went for a "C" to a "BC" and the other went from a "BC" to a "B"! I was super excited because I was a little disapointed with those grades when they origonally came out. :)

School is yuckie!

I know its been forever! Schools been going good...it's starting to get a little overwhelming seeing how the end of the semester is finally coming!!! But break starts Friday at 11:00am for me! YAY!!! 2 of my three classes have been cancelled! however, in my 10am I have an exam yuckie! Over the ENTIRE book! don't ask me how it's only a quiz...I think the teacher is a bit nuts.

Last week the sorority had our group picture taken along with our indiviual pictures for our composit. The link to look at the pictures is attached. The indiciual ones are going to be cropped and matted with the crest being in the center. It should look really good. The guy who took the pictures is another student and does it on the side for a bit of extra cash.

http://jbaumann.zenfolio.com/p891292365/h23624dd7#h2792eff7

Can't wait to see everyone next week!!! YAY!! :)

A great weekend with a horrible ending

This past weekend Cory and I went over to the west side of the state for a big river tubing party with a bunch of our friends from school. We car pooled with a couple of other people who live in the Detroit area to help save on gas. Cory and I both left our cars in a park and ride just down the street from where he works, hopped into our friends car and were on our way. We had a blast! Friday night everybody hung out and then Saturday we went out to breakfast at the ONLY restaurant in town, Bob Evens. After that we all went back to the house to get ready to leave. We got picked up by a bus from the tube rental place got to the river and rode down. I think the trip took about 3 hours do get to the pick up station. Once we were there the bus picked us back up and brought us back to the house that everyone was staying at. When we got back we cooked out and then hung out for the rest of the evening. Sunday everybody packed up and headed in our own directions again. It was pretty nice car pooling because that meant that I didn't have to drive and I could sleep the entire was home. It was nice.

Well it was nice. Right before we pulled into the park and ride I was joking around about hoping that both cars were still there and hadn't been stolen. What was supposed to be a joke turned out to be not so funny. Somebody smashed out one of my windows and stole some stuff out of my car. They got away with about $70 Canadian cash and some pampered chef stuff that I had in my car. I'm pretty sure there was nothing else in the box besides that...there might have been a couple of little things but nothing I can think of off the top of my head.

After waiting an hour and a half for the police to arrive, we were finally able to file the report and let them know what happened. Apparently that park and ride gets hit all the time, which surprised us because while we were waiting we had to of seen 20 people going in and out of it getting dropped off or picked up. The Cops said that because it was only a total of $170(ish) lost that there is nothing really that they can do about it. If they had stolen a larger amount in value then they could. Also, because the window is only going to be $190 to fix insurance wont cover it because the deductible is more than that. So including what we lost to the river on our trip (Corys native sunglasses and my crocs) we are out a total of about $450 in two days. Awesome. Well, at least we had fun.

Kid Rock

Each summer Cory's dad gets 4 free tickets to all of the DTE energy concerts because he takes care of all the lawn equipment for their venues. So with Cory's dad being nice he gives us some of the tickets to some of the shows... past weekend Me, Cory, Ashley, and Erin went to go see Kid Rock in concert! It was a REALLY good show too! Uncle Cracker opened for him and then Rev. Run from Run DMC did a couple of songs with Kid Rock...The music never stopped and he played hit after hit!

So far this summer we have seen Stevie Wonder and Kid Rock. This Friday we're going to see O.A.R. Also on our list to see is Josh Turner, possibly 3 doors down and Finger 11, and maybe Maroon 5...I really want to see them but its the night before a wedding that Cory is standing in. Journey is also coming, but unfortunately I'll already be back up at school when they come. Backstreet boys are coming as well haha, but we're passing on that one.

Last weekend Cory and I went up to Houghton for the fourth. I think this year was the first year that I actually noticed how many people actually go places for the long weekend. In the UP they always talk about everybody traveling but you never actually see it on the roads, there might be 5 cars instead of the usual 2 or 3. We left after Cory got off work on Thursday, the trip generally takes 8 to 9 hours depending on traffic and the weather it took us the full 9 this time because of everybody heading up north. When we got in we met up with everybody that was in town and hung out.

The next day a bunch of us went out to eat and then went to the Gay parade and all of the festivities there. No, it's not a parade full of gay people, there is a itty bitty town in the Keweenaw named Gay and all that they have there is the Gay Bar. The parade was interesting to say the least, it even rivaled Gladstones! Anybody can be in the parade as long as they come up with something interesting to do while in it. One guy just wore a bathrobe and underwear and drank beer as he walked down the street and there was another guy that took 10 wiener dogs and dressed them up like baby reindeer and made them pull a mini sleigh as he walked next to them as Santa. There was also a group that danced to the chicken dance the entire time. After the parade everybody gathers in a field for the trout tossing competition. After that we all headed back to Houghton for dinner and to hangout until the fireworks. The fireworks were good but nothing spectacular.

Saturday I actually had to do something productive, move all of my stuff into my new room. That was actually the reason that we went up to Houghton. At the end of last semester the girl living in the room that I am going to be in next year wasn't out yet so I had to pack all of my stuff up and put it into a corner in my old room. Seeing how I'm not going to be up until after the girl living in my old room is there we had to go up sometime to move everything around. After getting everything moved in we met up with everybody at the beach and hung out down there all day and then a bunch of people came back to our house for a BBQ! All in all it was a fun weekend, it was nice to see everybody and be up there for the long weekend.

Schools out for summer!

WOW! have the past couple of weeks been hectic! Last weeks were exams, I had three in class exams, one take home final, and one final project! The final project wasn't difficult at all, it was actually really fun! It was for my Rhetorics class, I had to design a campaign piece for a presidential candidate and it could be whatever I wanted it to be. Seeing how I'm a marketing major I wanted to go for something a bit more fun and people could see very easily and all over the place. It ended up being a t-shirt. I took a different approach on the project then everyone else (like always because I think outside of the box) and made my piece more of a get people to vote in general than for one person in particular. Although I did put a candidates name on it(because I had to), it wasn't my main focus. The shirt ended up saying McCain 2008 on the front and then on the back it said "You say one vote doesn't count...What would happen then if nobody voted? Make you vote count Vote McCain" I didn't really have a reason why I chose McCain I just did because I knew not too many people would be doing pieces on him.

My three in class exams were finished by Tuesday and I wrapped up my take home Tuesday afternoon too. I think I put a total of 12 hours working on it. My teacher said it would take anywhere between 8-24 hours to complete it so I was really nervous that I wouldn't do good on it. I've been freaking out about getting a good grade on it since I turned it in seeing how I had to do good on it to do good in the class because I struggled with the class this semester. But guess what! I ended up getting an 81% on the final! I was so excited when I found out I jumped up and down! haha!

Now that school is done I get to relax (YAY!) for a bit. I'm living downstate for the summer just North of Detroit with Cory, and I'm looking for an internship / work for the summer and I'm also going to be taking a couple of classes, but they don't start until July. Right now I'm just waiting until Golda's wedding and starting to try to get everything together so that Cory and I can start planning ours too!

My Ring!!

Sorry it has taken so long for me to get this up. I lost my camera at first, it was then found when I was gone on spring break and then lost again. I ended up finding it last week in my sock drawer, weird I know. Anyways here is a picture of my ring. its the best I could do.

Update on life

Its been awhile since I've posted so I figured it was time for an update. My computer is back up and running for the most part, my wireless internet doesn't work which is a pain but at least it works again with it plugged in to the cable. School started back up again on Monday, the semester shouldn't be too bad I have one class Mon. and Wed. 4 on Tues. Thurs. and none on Fri. YAY for long weekends!!! Unfortunately with the start of the semester means carnival (UGH!) so that will be keeping me pretty busy for the next couple of weeks. mandatory hours aren't as bad as last year luckily its only 5 this week, 6 next, 7 the next with a work party (3 hour block) each week as well, and then a 6 hour shift on the all night which is was better seeing how it was like 12 last year. I really shouldn't complain about the hours at all because some of the frats put in 30+ hours a week per person plus going to class and studying, needless to say they don't sleep for like a month. Also this semester I am the sororities Social chairman and House manager. Thats really all thats new with me my life is pretty boring.

I think my computer hates me

about a month ago now my computer started running really really slow. At first I really didn't think anything of it but then it kept getting worse so I finally did a virus scan and found out that it was infected after all. Seeing how I am not very computer literate when it comes to anything other than the internet and Microsoft Office I had no idea what to do. Luckily I do go to one of the nerdiest schools you can possibly imagine and have friends that like to fix computers for fun! (YAY for overly nerdy people!) So I thought it was fixed because it was working over at the Sig Ep house low and behold though when I get it home it stops working on me again! I did another virus scan just for the heck of it and it said that I had over 130 viruses within 10 minutes!!! So, a few days later I bring it back up to the Sig Ep house to have the boys look at it again and it was working fine once again! I finally got sick of trying to fix it so I ended up re-formating the entire thing wiping it clean. Now it's fast and happy again! more problems though;
1.) The wireless no longer works at my house, I can bring it to campus however and the wireless works just fine. just not in my own home, weird?
2.) The mouse is now set up so that if I tap it twice it is the same thing as double clicking the button and I have no idea how to shut it off, still after trying for half an hour!
3.) The scrolly thing on the mouse pad also no longer scrolls for me, no idea how to change that either.
4.) When trying to use the scroll bar on pages it goes really really REALLY slow, don't know whats the deal with that either.
5.) This I have found out as I am typing this, the courser keeps jumping up lines, don't know if I'm stupid or whats the deal with that.

I'm sure they're more things with my computer that I haven't found yet, but just from the list above I think its clear that I am computer illiterate and my computer officially hates me.

P.S. if you know how to fix any of these problems it would be greatly appreciated if you told me!

The Hedgehog

My roommate has a hedgehog.

Hedgehogs are nocturnal.

It keeps me up at night.

I am sad now because I enjoy my sleep.

oh, and it smells too.

The End.

Utah!

The First picture is the view out of our hotel window in Ogden and the other three are from Deer Valley, the one with me sitting on a rock is only a itty bitty part of the rock. We climbed up it and Cory didn't think I'd be able to in my Crocks. I forgot to get a picture of the full rock though :(

Last week, actually on the 10th, I went out to Utah to see Cory. He's out there for work right now for 3 weeks so I went to go see him for 10 days. It was a lot of fun and SO beautiful out there! I flew in Friday night and then we headed up to Park City for the weekend. Cory has a bunch of friends of the family out there so we hung out with them that weekend and then went up to Ogden for a couple of days because Cory had work to do up there. Tuesday I had adventure #1, because I wasn't allowed to travel with him and his co-workers in the company car I had to find my own way to Salt Lake City so I took the bus. It wasn't even nearly as scary as I thought it would be, it was actually kind of enjoyable...the bus driver even gave me free tokens to ride again during the week! I made it to the hotel all right and got checked in and decided to go out and find something to eat which led to adventure #2. We were staying just off the campus of the University of Utah so I decided I would just walk down to the Union and grab a bite to eat...bad idea. I got so lost on campus it was unbelievable, I also decided that people in Utah don't know how to give directions. After walking around for about 30 minutes I finally found the Union and got a bite to eat then started my journey back which took almost an hour to get back. I decided to stay away from campus after that. Friday me and Cory went downtown and walked around a bit and played tourist and then went back up to Park City for the weekend again to hangout with the Bakers and Lindsay and Andy again.