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Friday, December 31, 2010

Trepidation

Monday is the first day of the term.  I convinced two of my instructors to send me the syllabi and schedules for those classes and know my only thought is "how am I going to do this?"  I've put all of those assignments in my calendar, but once I get a list of all of my assignments for ALL of my classes, I might just pass out.  Deep breaths....That's what I need to remember now.  Take it one day at a time.  I see very little sleep in my future.

Friday, December 24, 2010

Christmas

It's been a non-stop bake and clean fest around here.  We've baked about 12 dozen cookies, two loaves of banana bread, half a dozen banana muffins, 3 pumpkin pies, and still have bread pudding to go, but that will be done before going to Christmas Eve service at church tonight.  All of the presents are wrapped and under the tree and the house is moderately clean, especially considering we have a house guest.  The stockings will go up tonight and the rest of the house looks great.

I have promised myself...No more overachieving for the rest of the year (yes, I know that is only a week).  I'm going to take it easy next week.  I won't even crack a book for next term. 

Here's hoping that the rest of you take it easy as well.  May you have the very merriest of Christmases and the best New Year possible.

With Love,

Lori

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Fall Term Done, Scholarships, Winter Term Preview & Other Updates

It took 4 days to get grades posted, but everything is in today.  I eeked out a 4.0 again.  I really thought I was going to get a 'B' in Speech.  I never in a million years thought I could ace that class. 

I emailed most of my instructors to get letters of recommendation for scholarships.  OIT's scholarship application is due February 1st, so I thought I'd get going on it.  I have one of them back so far, so I'm on a roll.  Hopefully I can get a bunch of scholarship money and not have so much in student loans.  It's hard because they base your need on 13 credits term and when you're taking twice that many (or more), they don't take that into consideration, so that makes things pretty tight financially.

On the homefront, it's been pretty busy.  The kids are in a musical at church so they have play practice 3 times a week last week and this week.  Brandon has a lead and a solo, Kimberly has a line and Ellie and her fellow 3-5 year olds open the play with "Away in a Manger" with gestures and everything...SOOOOOO cute.  Because the demand is lower, I am on an "on call" basis at work for the next three weeks.  If somebody needs training in something, I'll go in...Otherwise, I'm just hanging out at home.  I plan to get some sewing and decorating done since there is absolutely NO Christmas decorations up yet in my house.  Sooo weird!!  My unemployment got upped for a couple of weeks, so we are right on schedule with our landlord payments and one of my SILs sent us a very generous amount to get something for the kids for Christmas, so I'm able to get my layaway out early.  I just wish I had some Christmas spirit.  Maybe when I start wrapping things...

Lastly is Winter term.  I already have my books for OIT (26lbs worth!!!).  I have one book for my CCC classes so far.  I'm going to have to rent a book for one of my classes because it costs $212! (ouch!)  This is my schedule for Winter term:

CCC
Financial Management
Marketing
Technical Report Writing
Math-111 (College Algebra)
Electronic Culture


OIT
Intro to Management Information Systems
Intro to Relational Databases
Hardware/Software Integration


That's 30 credits in all.  I'm really excited about the Electronic Culture class.  It is a Humanities class that they only offer every couple of years, but it goes perfectly with my major, so I'm pretty psyched.  I'm going to get a bit ahead in my reading to lessen the crunch.  All of my classes are online, except for Financial Management, which is a hybrid where I go every other Wednesday evening.  I tried to get the instructor to just let me take it online, but no such luck.  Oh well, we'll see what happens!

Monday, November 29, 2010

One More Week & Thanksgiving

Well, I've made it to Week 10, the final stretch.  Unfortunately, this is when everything is due.  I have a speech and a written critique of it along with two quizzes in Speech.  I have one more programming assignment due for Visual Basic.  I have have an e-business plan and website for Business on the Internet and lastly I have to make up a quiz for Lean Management on Wednesday, which is when we're studying for the final.  The good thing is that I only have 2 finals, Visual Basic and Lean Management.

To complicate matters further, I have taken to freelancing some Admin work on Elance to help pay for Christmas.  Two of those projects are due this week.  Why, exactly do I do this to myself?

On the homefront, WE DO NOT HAVE TO MOVE!!!  We came to an agreement with the landlord and he is rescinding the 60 day notice.  Now we can move on our own time.  One less thing to worry about.  Thanks to Amanda and everyone else for your thoughts and prayers.

I am supposed to have a second interview at a software company sometime this week, and that would be a major win.  In the meantime, I got extended on my internship, so that'll hold us for a while.

The kids are great.  Kimberly lost another tooth and can now really sing "All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth."

Thanksgiving was amazing.  We had 14 total, plus some stragglers that came throughout the evening. We had a big turkey, which Kimberly named Ted and he was quite tasty.  Thanks to my friend Tommie, I was able to shop Kmart on Black Friday and put some amazing deals on layaway.

I have registered for Winter term, but I will give the details after I find out if I have that job or not.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Two Down

I completed the last of the financial accounting series tonight.  I'm glad to have another class done.  The only things I have left to do this term are a final business plan and website for Business on the Internet, Two programming and 1 reading assignment for Visual Basic,  Two speeches and corresponding written critiques for Speech along with 2 more quizzes.  This is besides the basic assignments for Lean Management.  Oh, and I have to write a "Lessons Learned" report and give a presentation for my capstone class.  All of this didn't seem like much until I wrote it all down.  Now I'm tired.

I've had some frustrating things happen with school and outside of school this week.  First, I found out that the community college I attend (CCC) will not be offering the second Visual Basic class this year which is frustrating because if I had known that, I would have taken some electives fro my Bachelor's degree instead of the first VB course.  Secondly, for some reason, I did not do well on my 2nd Speech Quiz.  I took it once and got a 60, which completely freaked me out.  So I emailed the instructor, who reset the quiz.  I read over the chapter and PowerPoints 3 times and I completed the study guide and I still got a 72.  I have emailed the instructor again, so we'll see what happens.

On a personal note, we are having issues with our living situation.  We have lived here for over 4 years (we moved in 5 days before Ellie was born).  We rent a house that has been divided into a duplex, though not completely.  There are no separate utilities, and up until about 4 months ago, there were doors that went from their unit into ours.  We had issues with the next door neighbor's roommates smoking.  I sent letter after letter but nothing was done.  In addition, we had a meeting with the landlord about a year ago because there were many items that needed to be done around the house.  However, nothing was ever done.  About a month ago, we received a notice that he had filed for bankruptcy and and we were listed as a creditor (because he owes us the last months rent and our deposit).  I called the bankruptcy court and they said we were not to contact our landlord at all unless it is an emergency regarding the house.   Now, I know that he is not going to keep the property.  He owes way too much money on it and the other properties he owns.  He called and spoke to hubby and hubby explained to him that because of the items that hadn't been fixed and because he is filing for bankruptcy, we were using our last month's rent for October and would pay the difference between our deposit and our rent for November, which we did.  This may not have been the best way to go about it, but I wasn't going to keep paying rent on a place which I knew was going to be foreclosed on.  We have since received a 60 day notice and, as of yesterday, an eviction notice.  So, we have to go to court on Friday, the 19th and we'll see what happens with that.

We've started packing, and, if we are able to stay until then, we have to be out by January 7th, which happens to be the first week of Winter term.   Ooh fun!!

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Motivation

I am finding it very difficult to get motivated this week.  Maybe it was popcorn that took all of the life out of me, but I'm pretty wiped!  I have Lean Management today and I haven't read any of the chapters and I definitely do not want to do any of the work for Speech, though I'm not sure why.  The next speech assignment is to write a critique about my last speech (maybe THAT's my problem).  It's due by Sunday, so maybe I'll work on it this weekend.

From a sales standpoint, popcorn went great.  Sales were up 50% from last year.  However, the sale end was much more stressful than I think it needed to be.  On group returned over $3k to me LAST MINUTE.  I had communicated the deadlines over and over and OVER again, but it didn't make a difference.  There are three groups that still haven't turned their money in.  I'll personally be glad when it's all done.

I aced my Visual Basic midterm.  That class is the shining light in the rest of my chaos.  Is it odd that I would be happy writing code all day?

On the personal side of things...Halloween was awesome.  The kids had a great time.  Ellie was a ballerina, Kimberly was Hannah Montana and Brandon was Brandon Roy of the Trailblazers.  I managed to NOT get pictures, which was a bummer.  They went to two churches and then around town and racked up the goodies!!

Well, I better get back to work.  I haven't seen any comments yet, but I do see that I've had visitors.  Welcome.  Stay awhile and drop me a line.  I'd LOVE to hear from you!

Monday, October 18, 2010

Updates (Popcorn, Toe, School, etc.)

This year's popcorn sale has exceeded all expectations.  Right now, we have over $52,000 in popcorn distributed to the individual units.  If these numbers hold, we will sell 50% more than last year.  I did not think we'd do that well.  Brandon has yet to sell much, but he hasn't been in front of the stores yet.

The toe is great.  The bone has completely healed and I was even up to wearing shoes this week.  No more ugly boot.  YAY!!

School is going fine.  The Financial Accounting II instructor had difficulty believing I had finished that class in two weeks.  She asked me if I was some kind of "whiz kid."  I said, no, but I had been accused of being an overachiever.  I missed my Lean Management class on Wednesday because I was soooo sick.  Nothing left of it but a cough now.  Now I have to make up a quiz this week.  I'm not behind on anything yet.  So far, so good.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

1 Class Down, 6 to Go! & Toe

So, I was up until 5am this morning, but I got it done.  I completed my Financial Accounting II class.  I should explain how this is done.  These Accounting classes are run through an online program called My Accounting Lab.  Basically, you read through the chapter, complete the exercises online, take the quizzes and tests, and boom, you're done.  The course was 7 chapters long.  However, since I've already taken these classes when I received my Accounting Clerk Certificate, it (and the first class) were mostly review.

Anyway, it's done.  I wish the other 6 could be done this quickly.  I'll probably have the Decision Making with Accounting Info class done within two weeks.  We'll see.

Still running A's, though I haven't gotten my grades for my first speech and my first programming assignment for Visual Basic (can I tell you how much I LOVE that class!).

The other thing I wanted to talk about is my toe.  I broke the little toe on my right foot severely about a month ago running into the dining room table.  It's broken diagonally and into two pieces (I even overachieve toe breaking).  It's still really swollen and looks funky.  I go back to the podiatrist tomorrow.  If it's not healing right, he's going to reset it (ie, re-break it) and put screws in it.  Wish me luck!

Sunday, October 3, 2010

First Week of Fall Term

Well, the first week of this term is in the books.  How did I get out of writing papers this term?  Amazing.  Well, I'm a week ahead in my e-business on the internet and I only have three more chapters of work to complete in my Financial Accounting II class.  That should be done this week.  I've already complete most of the major deliverables for my Capstone class.  Now it's just a matter of providing weekly updates and doing my final presentation.

The most fun came on Thursday, when I got to write my first code in my Visual Basic Class.

Anyway, so far, so good.  I'll check in again next week.  I'm hoping for some comments, so please make some!

Friday, September 24, 2010

Post #1

Hello out there in the Blogosphere, welcome to my Blog.  I'm glad you found me!  As you can see from the title, this is my first post on my very first blog. 

Perhaps I should introduce myself and tell you why I started this blog.  My name is Lori.  I am married to David and have 4 great kids, Michael-18, Brandon-11 (yesterday!), Kimberly-6, and Ellie-4.  I should tell you up front, that I am fairly religious.  I feel that my strengths and my abilities come straight from God and that I cannot accomplish anything without Him.  I am currently a student at two different colleges, Clackamas Community College and Oregon Institute of Technology.  I am pursuing both an AAS in Project Management and a BS in Information Technology.  I have always been an overachiever and it shows in my schoolwork.  I currently have a 4.0 GPA and am DESPERATE to keep it.  Yes, I know that there are other grades, and, yes, I know that this is the kind of thing that burns college students out, and yes, I know that employers don't always like to see a 4.0 on a resume.  I don't know, I just can't help it.   Anyway, that is why I started this blog.  I want to share the joys and challenges of balancing school life and family life.

Fall term begins on Monday and, between the two schools I will be carrying 28 credits.  My classes this term are as follows:

CCC
BA-212 Financial Accounting II
BA-213 Decision Making w/Accounting Info
BA-268 Applied Project Demonstration (Capstone Class for Project Management)
CS-133VB  Programming with Visual Basic 2008 I
SP-111 Public Speaking

OIT
Lean Management I
Business on the Internet.

I am going to be INSANELY busy this term.  For my capstone class, I am running the annual popcorn sale for our local Boy Scout/Cub Scout District.  This encompasses the coordination of 17 units (troops/packs) and over 200 boys.

I hope to hear from you as to how I can make this blog better.  Positive and negative feedback are welcome!

I'll post more next week after I start my classes.