Life with the Two Crazy Dogs

It is the time of the year, fall semester is starting around the corner, like the first week of August.  I still have not enroll for my classes and I know I should be doing it soon.  What am I waiting for, and the answer is I am getting too comfortable with my time at home and I do not want to sacrifice my walks and doing whatever I want with my free time.  Walking the boys is taking so much of my time these days, namely Ranger who is walking soooooooooooo S-L-O-W, it actually makes me yawn coz I was bored.  It takes an hour 20 minutes to walk our regular 40 minutes route.  Then I have to walk Skinny, aka Chase.  He is fast and I really like.

So, back to enrolling for this semester, I really have to do some thing about it.  I’m thinking of “Employment Law for Business” and “Business Math” which are both accelerated courses.  That means they are consolidated to 8 weeks instead of the regular semester of 16 weeks per course.  Yes, it will be very stressful and I will feel rush the whole time.  I will have to quit my weekend job at Satay2Go and probably no walks for the boys.  Sigh, I will have to sleep on this (accelerated courses) more, it’s already stressing me out just thinking about it.

Yeehah, I’m done with school for the semester.  Eight weeks went by very quickly.  Last class was last night.  We had our final test and sorta got the final result from the instructor.  He said my final grade would be between an A or B.  I will find out when I log in to my student account this evening.  YES!!  That means I can claim tuition and text book reimbursements from the company. 

Did I retain anything from the previous eight weeks?  Honestly, not much, not much of the specifics.  I think I have more gray now than when I started this class.  Stressful because it was an accelerated course, but I throughly enjoyed it.  The instructor was good - good sense of humor he has which made it a very pleasant experience learning Physical Geology. 

Now, what am I going to do with the free time I have in my hands?  I know for sure I can spend more time on my walks; watch my movies from Blockbuster (there are 3 movies that have been sitting on the DVD player since January); Scrabulous on Facebook, and read the books I have bought months ago.

The following might happen and it only depends on my mood:  work on my scrapbook which I started a year ago, and maybe learn some tricks on trading on FOREX. 

Or, if I don’t feel like doing anything, I will just look for Nicole and we can go have dim sum!  Right, Nicole?

I survived the class last night.  I got home from work, did my usual stuff but had my dinner 45 minutes earlier than my usual time of 5:30 p.m.  I left the house at 5:20 and drove to my company in heavy traffic.  Crazy, but at least I got a front door parking, sorta.   I’m so glad this class is held at my company instead of some other big corporations in St Paul or, Woodbury coz they will be a long, long drive for me. 

Very frankly, this class has kept my interest.  The instructor, Mr Hickey teaches Geography and Geology, and he does have a great sense of humor.  I like teachers with good sense of humor, they crack us up, and keep the class alive.  What we learned on the first day?  Plate tectonic, the rock cycle and topographic maps.  There were all kinds of terminology that we had never heard of; what are the earth materials - rocks and minerals; and the major groups of rocks - igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic.  I read the first part of the introduction which didn’t really makes sense until the instructor put on a video for us in class and it better illustrated the rock formation, cycle, how the earth’s lithosphere (the solid part of the earth) is divided into rigid plates of various sizes that move over the asthenosphere (the part of the earth).  It took me a while to get these few terminology phrases into my old rusty brain, and watching the video defnitely helps.  Yeah, I’m more of a visual kinda person when it comes to learning. 

There are 28 students in our class, four from my company and the rest are “outsiders”.  The four of us coworkers taking this class are students of Inver Hill Community College ASAP students.  ASAP stands for Adult Success through Accelerated Program.  The first thing when we ASAP students hang around is “how far out are you?” or “did you take any of the competency tests?”  Competencies are earning credits from prior learning or experiences instead of enrolling for that course.  I quite like the accelerated 8-week courses but they can be very tedious and stressful, but that way I can get my credits in sooner. 

The time has come for me to get back to school life.  I still wish I can go full time in school and work part time.  Well, that’s a wish.  Maybe in the next few years I might be able to.  

Did I complete reading Chapter 1 of my text book, The Essential of Physical Geology?  Nope, I didn’t.  One more page and I would have made it, but instead I was watching CBS Comanche Moon, the pre-queal to the Lonesome Dove.   Ahhh, but then, Facebook kept whispering to me telling me I need to respond to all those requests and messages that are sitting in my notification box and inbox.   That was what I did, abandoned the show but left the TV on in the living room and visited Facebook.  I tell ya, this Facebook can be addictive.  After 1.5 hours jacking around with it, I called it a night.  The Essential of Physical Geology is still sitting pretty on the dining table with the piece of paper still sticking out from where I left off.  Oh, the PC doctor fixed my PC so I didn’t have to use DB’s laptop.

Class starts tonight at 6 p.m.  I will leave office at my regular time, 2:30, rush home, walk the boys for about 45 minutes, shower, dinner and go.  Hopefully I can get out the house by 5:15-ish the latest.  This time around classes will be held at my company.  I know I could have stayed back after work, take my shower in the shower room and have my dinner and do my internet stuff in the cafeteria, but I want to get home and do all the rushing and stressing myself.  I have done the staying back and showering crap for 2 months a year ago and I hated it.  Very “mar fan” (troublesome), plus I don’t get to walk the boys.  Looks like I cannot break away from a routine, or should I say an addiction!  Nothing beats being home where I’m comfortable.  Anyway, classes commence at 6 p.m. and runs till 9:30 p.m.   I’m hoping the instructor will keep us awake and make the class time go by quick.

Yeah, I told myself I will try to get my 2-year degree in as quickly as possible.  But after my recent vacation, I sure feel like a bum.  Working around the house on snail mode.  My luggages are still not put away with all the stuff in them all over the guest bed.  I’m a total BUM!!  However, after looking at my degree timeline, I didn’t flipped, but reality sunk in.  So, I registered for a class for spring 2008.  The class I registered for is the accelerated course of Physical Geology - study rocks!!!  I talked to my coworker who took the same class this fall which she said there is a lot of reading but not writing.  Yeehah!!  No writing, just use my brain buckets to memorize the rocks!

Spring semester starts next month, January 4, 2008 to be exact.  I thinking of enrolling for a Physical Geology class or Intro to Sociology.  But I really don’t feel up to it at all.  It must be the vacation that is making me so lazy.  These two classes are mandatory and are both 4 credits each.  I am aiming to get those 4-credit classes done with.  So, now, if I enroll, will I have enough funds to pay for tuition???  Urghhhhh!!!!!!!

Am I glad this paper is done.  This final paper needs to be 8-11 pages and should consists of 1/3 from textbook readings, 1/3 project work, 1/3 class lectures, and 1/3 video summaries.  I think I got all in.  I had a jump start on this paper on Sunday night but didn’t really get it going til Monday night.  I am, according to my colleague, a typical college student, always work on their papers at the very last minute.  For the past couple of nights I didn’t get to bed til 11 p.m. and the beautiful zits are popping all over my face.  I never had that many for the longest time.  No problem, at least I got the paper done last night, busting my butt to summarize the chapters I was suppose to read.  In other words, I’m bullshitting my way around.  I’m just glad that the instructor wanted his students to write about our work experience in the business world.  I was able to write 10.5 pages of BS last night.  Sorry, Simmie, I had to cut you off from our conversation.

What am I suppose to do tonight since all I need to do is to drop the paper off at school and come home?  Watch DVDs!!!  I have 11 movies on queue at Blockbuster online.  I have already initiated them to mail two movies last night while working on my paper.  Obviously my mind was not totally focusing on my paper.  Frankly, I lost interest in this class.  My colleague who is sorta my mentor, who I call Ms MBA, said summer classes will do that to students. 

August 1 is officially the last day of class.  That is the day we students have to go to class and get our grades.  Final papers will remain with the instructor for good as they will go to the dean of the business faculty.

Yippy-ka-yah!! Classes are almost over, and so is summer!!!

We had our team presentation last night.  What a disaster that was.  I think of all the team presentations that I have done since I started college, this was the worse team presentation ever.  That team member who has not done any of his homework yet, nor the preparation for the presentation and said he wants an “A” for this class, made our team presentation so tacky with pieces of papers falling off the board.  It was embarrassing.  I wanted to dig a deep hole and hide in there for the duration of the presentation.  If I have known he was going to put up pieces of paper on the board, I would have made up PowerPoint slides.

After the presentation, the team members were given the opportunity to critic the team and, of course, I bombard my frustrations on that team member.  The other team member did the same.  I really hope I get an “A”, and that’s all it matters, a “B” is the minimum.