Archive for the ‘Panama City Beach’ Category

Its been a busy time

Sunday, August 26th, 2007

Over a week ago on August 15 it was time for me to head back to UCF in Orlando from my home in Panama City Beach.  I was getting excited about moving back, starting a new year, and moving into my apartment, but first I had to wrap up things back home.  For starters, I had to pack everything up and get it into my car; while throughly prepared for I still left home without a few things.  I was in a bit of a rush, as I had planned on the day before to be my last day of work at my internship, however, around midday it was becomming clear that I needed to go into work for atleast a few hours on the following day to wrap things up.  I just had to finish up what I was working on and I didnt like the idea of dumping it on someone else.  So I went in that day and I planned to be out by noon, but I soon just told myself 3:00.  Well after wrapping everything up I didnt leave until 3:30, and I still had to finish packing up at home.  Well on the way home I stopped to say bye to my mom at work, then proceeded to finish the packing.  However, that took longer than expected and my mom was home before I was out of town.  I think I finally left home at 5:30 or something like that.  Still, I had to meet up with a friend in town and at this point I figured I should grab dinner.  So after all that I wasnt on the road until 6:15 or so.  The drive itself was rather uneventful, except for almost running out of gas on the Turnpike; arriving at the Hampton Inn near UCF around 12:30 or so.

I got up the next morning a little later than I had been used to at the time and headed over to campus around 10:00AM.  I figured I could check in early and I could, so there was no problem there.  Moving in was rather easy, especially since I was the first one in my apartment.  Of course when I unlocked my bedroom I found that it was arranged as I had hoped, so I had to get that all straightened out before I could set anything up.  However, as I unpacked I realised I was short on shelf space, so over the weekend I picked up a $14 shelf at Target.  Later in the day one of my roomates moved in, but did not stay as he was semi-local.  The other two moved in over the weekend with the last one moving in on Sunday.

After moving in I just started to readjust back to campus life, and on Friday found myself walking around campus and eventually bumping into someone from my high school who just graduated.  I spent the afternoon showing him around campus and meeting his roomates.  Then there was the buying textbooks deal, which was quite expensive this semester, but I guess if you want to learn you have to pay up.  Also, had to pick up a friend from Orlando International as he had not found a replacement car for the one he sold.  Surprisingly, we did not have to wait around at luggage claim for his four pieces…

The first week of classes was a bit mixed up if I were to say so.  I swaped from my 8:30AM Physics II class to the 10:30AM, which I had originally tried to get into, and coincidently my old roomate was also signed up for.  I also dropped German, because I wanted to save a few bucks on textbooks, but after (finally) working out my plan for the next 3 years I realised I should take another class, Statics, as this will be my last “easy” semester.  So that meant another expensive book I had to buy.  I went to that class for the first time on Wednesday and for the Discussion class, the TA never showed up, but the Lecture seemed easy enough for now.

As for other classes I am taking Intro to Chemistry which has been quite easy so far, C Programming, which hasnt been very difficult and Differential Equations, which I know will get harder, but right now its a review of Calculus III and isnt that bad.

I saw The Invasion on Friday night, which was ok, it is just that the ending could have just been done much better.  Still I was entertained for an hour and half at 1:00AM, so I dont have much to complain about.  As for the rest of the weekend I was running around all over the place and finally made it to the World’s Largest/World’s Most Unique McDonald’s here in Orlando.  For some reason it just didnt feel much like a McDonald’s, more like a cross breed of McDonald’s, Chuck-e-Cheese, and a non fast food establishment.  I have no plan to return anytime soon, but atleast I can say I have been there.

Now, I have this upcomming week to get through which will be equally or more busy than this past week.  There’s classes and homework and of course on Friday I have to run from UCF right after my Differential Equations class to the airport in order to catch a flight to Atlanta, where I have a very short connection before continuing on to Moline, Il for the labor day weekend.  Should there be any weather on that Friday afternoon I can be assured that I will misconnect in Atlanta.  Still with all of that, it should be a rather fun week, and I am looking forward to this upcomming weekend very much.

I will upload pictures of my new apartment sometime tomorrow and will post a link to them here….

T-Minus 4.5 Weeks and Counting

Sunday, July 15th, 2007

I have a slightly more than one month left before I head back to Orlando and UCF.  It’s almost hard to believe that at this point I have been home for more two and a half months.  Sure I have been keeping busy working at the theatre solely for the first two months, and now doing my internship, but time just flies by so quickly.  I really do wish there was more time, but then I am also excited to be heading back to UCF as well.

I think it started to hit that going back was getting close was when my housing bill was posted last week.  Speaking of housing that should be interesting to see how that turns out.  I am going to be living on campus again, but instead of a traditional dorm I am going to be in an apartment.  So it will mean that I will have my room, but instead of being in contact with just one other person primarily, I will be sharing all the living space with three others.  Since I don’t know these others and what you can find on Facebook isn’t always 100% true, I have no idea what this next year will bring.  At least if things don’t work out all the way with my new roommates, at least I have my own room to retreat to…

There is stuff to finish up for UCF for the fall semester, such as finalizing my schedule since I need to swap some classes, but some of the things have to wait until I get back down there.

My two jobs have been going pretty good.  I am being kept busy at my internship and I wish I could say the theatre is keeping my busy, but this weekend I am only scheduled on Sunday.  Yes the day off is nice, but I could use the extra money (that was the reason I stayed at the theatre). 

In other news, I finally decided where I was going to put my Eagle Scout certificate and medal frame on my wall.  I think the spot I choose looks great and looks a lot better than what I had there.  Here’s a picture of what it looks like now:

Eagle Scout Frame on Wall

I moved my license plates over, and the small picture I took on the Isle of Capri in Italy from where the Eagle Scout frame is to where my team photo from Beach League basketball in 6th grade was.  Since that was 8 years ago, I think its time to take it down, and someday I will find another place to put it.  Now I just need to get the wooden Eagle Scout plaque my Dad got me for making Eagle, and a few photographs up on my wall.  Hopefully I can decide on everything before I make it back to Orlando.  That and I need to start figuring out what will be on my wall in my apartment in Orlando (such as posters)…

 

Its about time for a new post….

Saturday, June 23rd, 2007

Ok, so it has been roughly two months since my last post on here, which is really bad.  I had been going good since I launched this blog, but I do not know why I haven’t posted in so long.  Maybe it is because up until now nothing exciting has taken place.  I have been working at the brand-new Grand Theatre since May 18th as an Usher.  Really I am nothing more than a janitor (clean floors, spills, bathrooms, etc).  The first two weeks were great, I was able to get 45+ hours a week.  Then came the third week where I was dropped (along with the whole usher staff) to 11.75 hours.  I started to explore my options.  I placed a few job applications at local businesses, but heard nothing back.  Then the fourth week came and I was down to 11 hours.  It was then when I decided to take a chance.

I starting looking around and found an opening for a “Quality Assurance Intern” with the local office of ARINC.  It looked easy enough from the job description as I would be essentially working with Microsoft Office apps and proofreading.  The next week came and I was down to 10 hours that week at the theatre.  I was really hoping ARINC would call me back, and on one morning I woke up and decided I would apply with UPS for a package handler position.  I was running out of options.

It was at that moment that I got a phone call from the human resources manager at the local ARINC office, who told me that they had an Internship that would be more engineering based and offered me an interview.  This was last week.  I went in for my interview, got a tour of the facility and was told that I would probably hear something back soon.  This week on Wednesday I got the phone call saying that they were signing off on my offer letter and that I should get it shortly.  On Friday the FedEx guy showed up with an envelope.  At first I didn’t think it was for me, but it was and inside was a folder with the offer letter and some paperwork to fill out.  I wasted no time.  I made some calls to various ARINC HR people and headed out the door.  I went by the office to drop off the paperwork then headed into town for a pre-employment drug test.  All of that went by quickly.  If there are no hiccups (which there shouldn’t be) I will start within a week.

Afterwards, I stopped by a friend’s house and we went Geocaching over at St. Andrew’s State Park.  Managed to find two caches; one of which had a $1 lotto scratch off, which I won $1 from!  There was a third we tried to find twice, but we just couldn’t get it.  I doubt I will be back there anytime soon, since it cost $5 to get in.

Hopefully, this will not be the last post before I head back to UCF.  I am sure I can think of something to write about between now and then………