I sure hope that my entry gets counted - for some reason I thought we were supposed to post our results on December 1, and today I realized it was supposed to get posted today, but I was at work and didn’t get home until after 1AM EST . . . so I’m hoping that this goes through by the deadline of 11:59PM PST!

This post is very picture heavy, so read on at your own peril !

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A simple little tip that I have found makes my life SOOOOO much easier! If you have a laptop computer and are anything like me, you take your laptop EVERYWHERE . . . to your bedroom, to your living room, on vacation, to a friend’s house - it’s all fair game. However, you probably have a desk (or desk area) that is the “home” of the laptop, where all your stuff plugs into it. And the most important thing that plugs in is the power cord.

However, it’s reeeeeeeeeally annoying to have to crawl under your desk in the unflattering and uncomfortable effort to unplug that power cord so that you can take it with you. But you have to have the power cord when you’re on the go!

Here’s my solution, and it’s so simple it sounds stupid. Buy a second power cord. They’re usually not that expensive, and the time and effort it saves you is immeasurable! Have one that is permanently located at the laptop’s “home” and one that you leave bundled up in your computer bag. Any time you go somewhere, take the one that is bundled up. When you come back home, your other cord is still plugged in and you’re ready to go.

Saving some time and still being addicted to my laptop (LOL)? Works for me!

I could sooo see the kittens doing this . . . they love to watch me move the mouse on my laptop!

So far so good on orientation. Yesterday was mostly a “hi, this is the faculty, these are your classmates, let’s eat sketchy burgers and questionable hot dogs now!”

Today was a little more productive. This morning I got my welcome packet (I feel welcomed), my textbooks (book bag heavier, wallet lighter), my ID card (with my senior year high school picture on it - yes, it is 6 years old), and my mailbox number and combination (which I will likely never use). I feel quite official now, and I’m excited that once again I can get the student discount at the grocery store - woot!

Then, this afternoon, we had a for real meeting with our program faculty members - 8 students, 2 teachers. Close and personal, eh? It was great to get to go over all the material that we had received in bits and pieces the past few weeks. We didn’t really learn a lot of new stuff, but I feel significantly less scattered now, and that’s nice. Also excited to hear that my laptop (which runs on Windows Vista, not XP) is not going to be a problem in my computer class. We’re gonna stick Office 2003 on it (I have 2007) and life will be dandy.

Still don’t COMPLETELY know my schedule as they are still working out the rotations for us (we each spend some time in marketing, development, box office, etc.), so I STILL can’t tell Starbucks what my hours are going to be. That has been more than frustrating, but I did find out enough to get by for the next week or so, so hopefully this will get resolved and my life will be complete.

On a side note, the orientation schedule has a lot of things that are not required for grad students . . . but it doesn’t really say that on the schedule. As a result, I’ve gotten a lot of free time this week (I took off from work since orientation seemed to be so involved). What am I doing with this free time? Why, goofing off with AJ and spending WAY too much time with the cats. They’re so awesome - I really want kittens of my own . . .

OK, off to bake cookies - if you’ve had my cookies, you know what you are missing. If not - trust me, you wish you did !