One door closes, another opens

Heidi took us out for dinner tonight... she likes to celebrate when she gets her refund check. So she took us and her co-worker, Hana, to the Hanohano room at the Sheraton Waikiki. It was amazing.... and expensive. We ordered two bottles of wine, we had multiple appetizers, ordered Cesar salads made at our table, plus surf and turf. It was great... they even gave us dessert. YUMMY!! And totally extravagant.

Plus.... we saw Roger from the A&E TV channel, Sell this House. It was a great night... I am stuffed!

Well today was a good day...so far. I woke up with a headache but that went away eventually. I spoke with mom and dad, they were both happy to report blizzard like conditions back in Wisconsin...times like that make me happy to be in Hawaii. I went to the stat library for about 3.5 hours today, I feel good about the research I am doing.

I decided to dye my hair today. I just want it to be the same color... my last dye job has grown out and my roots are a lot darker. As of now my hair is still wet but it looks dark... we are currently making calzones and we will probably be heading out on the town a little later.

Well tonight was the my LOST premier... ook not really but the episode that aired tonight was the once I watched part of the filming for. A few months back I had my picture taken with Matthew Fox and finally the episode aired. If you watched tonight's episode you would have seen 'Jack' walking down the dark alley in Thailand following a woman into her place of work. That was Mercury!!

On a side note... I feel better today, I gave my presentation and now i just have a bunch of home work to finish....

Is it really to much to expect someone you have worked rather closely with for the past year to remember your name? I don't think so... but last week one of my professors the Dean of the College of Communication called me Natalie, twice, during class. Then today he came into my office and asked if I was presenting a chapter in class that night, I looked at him not knowing what to say when he finally remembered that I had present my chapter last week.

I thought for a while to myself... am I being petty, thinking that the Dean should know my name and remember if I has presented the previous week? I decided no... I should be able to expect that. I sat outside his office door for 7 months and still see him on a daily basis. I guess everyone has a bad day and I don't think he noticed the name thing but golly....

His class is also making me crazy... he kept us until the very end of class tonight 8:10pm and still expects us to put in the roughly 10 hours as a TA and do a bunch of homework for him. next week we have to create a hypothetical course and make an entire syllabus plus two gift sheets and read four chapters. I am not sure who he thinks we are but he is expecting an awful lot from us.

It has been a long day and I just finished my first draft of a five page paper with power point presentation that is due for tomorrow night. I didn't even get to celebrate Mardi Gras.

Saturday morning Talsha and I caught a flight to Hilo at 7:45am. Her brother in law and nieces picked us up because we couldn't get our rental can until noon. We hung out in Hilo, had breakfast, went to BJ Penn's dojo (he is a UFC fighter from Hilo), we also went to an AKC dog show for a bit. There was a lot going on in Hilo.... we finally picked up the car and headed to Pahoa, the town Talsha is from. Her mom had curry stew ready for us then Talsha took me on a tour of the area. Alexis flew in around 6:30 and we went to pick up pizza and back to the hotel prior to meeting some of Talsha's friends for drinks.

Saturday we woke up early and went to the National Volcano Park then proceeded to drive to Kona. We stopped along the way to see Akaka Falls, some scenic lookouts, eat hot Malasadas from Tex's and finally into the Islands at Mauni Lani (the townhouse owned by Alexis' company). How cool is it they let us use this 2100+ square foot house right on a golf course. It was amazing... 2 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, 4 lani's, a plasma TV, and much more.... We really didn't want to leave the townhouse. However we napped and everyone took a bath in the luxurious bathrooms before looking at the development sight that Alexis' company is working on then we headed to Kona for dinner/drinks. We started at Kona Brewing Company and then ate at Kona Inn (never eat there... the service is BAD). We were back to the townhouse by 10:30pm.

Sunday morning we woke up...made coffee and headed down this paved trail to the shoreline. It was beautiful, we walked passed lava tubes and fish ponds. Alexis and I even slipped into the hotel pool. After the beach we went back to wash our sheets and relax a bit. We ended up leaving the resort around 1pm to drive back to Hilo for our 4:30 flight back.

It was a great weekend...

The week has went well...nothing too out of the ordinary except my trip to the state library. I actually took time off of work yesterday for my library trip. First of all, the state library has weird hours everyday of the week they close at 5pm except for Thursday when they are open until 8pm and they are only open Saturday not Sunday. So I determined in order for me to get my thesis research done I may need to take a little time off of work on Thursday afternoons, when I don't have class which is now every other week. Anyways, at the library I actually asked two different Librarians in different departments for assistance, they were very helpful. I had to re-learn how to use the Microfiche machine to review the old newspapers, interesting machine but I think it will make me motion sick.

And to end the week on a good note...it's a holiday weekend and we are off to the Big Island, Hawaii. Talsha will be our tour guide and she seems to have things set... Talsh and I leave tomorrow at 7:45am and Alexis leaves tomorrow night at 5:30pm. It should be a blast...a Big Island tour in about two days....

What did I do on my valentines Day? I went to work where I received two boxes of chocolate. I went to class then Heidi, Linda, Alexis and I ordered Bangkok Chef and watched Lost while sipping some bubbly. Heidi also brought over a decorative cake which we enjoyed very much. Overall not a bad V-Day...but not much out of the ordinary. I hope everyone had a great day!

As the weekend winds down I can look back and smile. It was a whole lot of fun, great people, great food, great time. Alexis and I went to Waikiki Friday night for the block party which consisted of 5 different stages and lots of merchandise and food booths. We walked around for a while, watched the mascots and there was a stage filming a TV show. There we watched a bit of Warren Moon and Thomas from the ravens be interviewed. We headed out after about an hour, but it was fun to check it out.

Saturday morning we woke up at 6am to start getting ready. Plans changed a bit right away before 7am...not a big deal we were able to get to the stadium and get pretty amazing parking spots for our tailgating. We even manged to get 3 of the 4 cars parked together, we would have had all three but the parking attendants weren't cooperating with us, not for lack of trying by Alexis.

By 9:30am the beers were flowing and the grill was fired up. Our group had between 11-15 people at any given time. We ate hot wings, hamburgers, hot dogs, brats, steak kabobs, turkey rolls plus an assortment of other things from potato salad to brownies. We played football and had a jolly time. By about 1:15 we decided to head into the game (yes, the game started at 1pm here). The game was pretty fun, our seats were almost at the top of the stadium but they were pretty good.

As you know the bad guys won...but the good guys seem to have put up a good fight. We were home by 6:15pm after dropping off our friends.

Today was the kickoff party for the Probowl right in downtown. The party included football players, cheerleaders and musical performances. The bad part was the rain... Talsha, Jeannie, Alexis and I went to watch the fun but got chased away as the players were coming out because the rain was so bad and 4 people can only huddle under one umbrella for so long.

After leaving the Probowl fun Talsha, Jeannie and I went to a local jewelry store that was having a big sale/party with a local radio station giving away prizes. Jeannie and I played a giant game of Jenga, which I won and received some pretty cool prizes including Step Up the movie, a local CD, and a neat little book bag.

OK I know you are wondering what the topic of my thesis is, so here goes.... The history of Public Relations in Hawaii since 1945. I will be working closely with members of the local PRSA, the professional organization for public relations. PRSA is the top of the top when it comes to professional organizations so working with them is going to be very good for me and my future contacts. I met with a couple of them today and they gave me some great information to start working with and they have offered a lot more help/assistance along the way. PRSA Hawaii is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year so my thesis will play into that in a big way. Being involved in this process is pretty cool.

Another highlight of the day.. I signed the paperwork for my pay raise since I have been there a year I got the maximum 3%... woo who!

I was on a high the rest of the day. The lecture on Standard, Ethics, and Values left me feeling great. I almost floated back to work afterwards. Leading up to the class period I was a bit nervous, but once I got into the room and started talking it was fine. There were a few silent moments when I would ask a question and no one answered right away... but once I got them talking it was great. I honestly didn't expect the experience to go so well. I loved it!

The week is over and I made it through alive. I think things will be better on Tuesday since I give my first lecture to the undergraduate class Monday and I still have to prepare for it. Thankfully, I had two different people, a fellow student and a faculty member, tell me I was good at speaking in front of classes. That makes me feel better.

As for today... Club Carnival. It was a crazy busy fun day. We set up this morning a little before 10am... our booth was nice, I don't think we won any prizes but it was nice. I wasn't able to sit at the booth as I was working today but I helped with both set up and take down. I was even able to walk around during the middle of the day and look at other booths and that's when I bumped into a gentleman that knew my name. I must admit I was startled at first but he quickly informed me who he was. His name is Larry and he is Michele's (my friend from Madison) uncle that lives here. He had read on my blog that I would be down there and thought he would try and find me. It was amazing that I happened to be down there the same time he was looking for me. He was a very nice guy, we may try and do dinner when Michele is in town in March.

The rest of the day was good... we held an MA/COM event in my building from 4:30-6pm with pizza and prizes. Eight new members signed up at the meeting, not too bad.