These past few days have been some of the best of the summer and nothing out of the ordinary occurred which makes it just that much better!

Going home for my sister’s graduation was awesome. I love living in Buffalo and being on my own but that trip reminded me about how much I really miss being at home, these weekend trips just aren’t cutting it. I’m looking forward to trying to find time to spend more than 48 hours in Clifton Park. It was a long day and a lot of driving but it was worth it! Luckily we had an easy day at work on Friday! The OA’s got to have a cookout lunch with Dennis Black, UB’s Vice President of Student Affairs, and a really nice guy. He’ll be around Orientations for anyone who may be heading to UB in the near future for one of those. And then we went bowling as a group, it was a lot of fun because, of course, none of us were STELLER but it was nice to try!

Then this weekend I got to catch up with two different friends who were in town visiting. One of them I will see in the fall as she is joining the Admissions family as a STAR and a tour guide. The other was one of the girls who I was sad to see leave at the end of last year because she is heading on to bigger and better things in law school. She’s only in Cleveland so she’ll be a fun road trip every once and a while but it’ll be weird not having her here in the fall. Also, the weather was gorgeous this weekend so my friend and I spent a good amount of time on Saturday playing different sports outside!

It was such a good summer weekend! But now it’s time to head to bed, got a long few days of work ahead of me. Orientations start in just a week so it’s crunch time to make sure everything is ready!

Tomorrow morning around 5 am I’m going to hop in the car and start that lovely five hour drive down the oh-so-scenic *sarcasm* New York State Thruway to spend the day with my family. When I got my Orientation Aide job I had to really work to get June 26th off, as it is part of our mandatory training session and I’m definitely missing a good chunk of things tomorrow. The reason I fought so hard to get this random day off and am spending about 10 hours in a car in just one day? My little sister is graduating from high school.

Now I’m sure tonight, as she sleeps, she’ll have about five million different feelings running through her head, as I can remember I did on the night before my graduation day. Your entire family is focused on you, it’s one of the only times that both sets of my grandparents are at my house at the same time, which can only make a person excited. At the same time this is it. Tomorrow will mark the end of her high school career and in just a few short months, as a lot of high school graduates out there will be, she’ll pack up the car and head off to college. After tomorrow nothing will be the same and as exciting as that may be it can also be a little scary. Times when you are home are now just visits on vacations or in between semesters, decisions will start becoming more and more your responsibility, and in many people’s eyes you will become looked upon as an adult more with each passing day. And I don’t want to say this to freak new graduates out, it’s all part of growing up. Tomorrow will mark another stepping stone in my sister’s life, a celebration of her success and her future.

Now as for me, her older sister, it’s hard to believe that she’s even graduating, let alone is getting ready to join me out here in Buffalo in the fall. It seems like just yesterday we were catching the chicken pox together, terrorizing my new baby brother or comforting each other when people were tragically taken from our lives. But I guess we all have to grow up some time and I wouldn’t miss watching her walk across that stage tomorrow for anything.

I’m a big fan of lists. I make grocery lists, lists of things I need to get done, lists of things I need…all sorts of stuff like that. So earlier in the summer a few friends and I sat down and made our lists of things we wanted to do/see in and around Buffalo this summer. Each of ours is different but they all have a lot of overlap as well. My list is loaded with a ton of stuff I want to do so I’ll probably be talking about this all summer. So one of the things that was on all of our lists was to try this restaurant on Main Street called Amy’s Place. A lot of people at the university rave about it and it’s won all these awards from different magazines and stuff so this past week we decided to check it out.

Well if any of you ever come to Buffalo, GO TO AMY’S PLACE. I could sit here and talk about it all I wanted and it still wouldn’t do it any justice. It’s just a little hole in the wall place but the food is just awesome. I’m totally pumped that as of next semester I’m just going to be a hop, skip and a jump from it on South Campus. Tradition is anytime my Dad comes up to Buffalo I always make him take me to the Olive Garden but I gotta tell ya, I’m definitely going to make him try this place out, I think he’ll really like it.

I should really turn in, tomorrow starts an intense week of training for Orientation stuff. The only day we get off in the next ten days is Sunday so I better grab some sleep while I can!

These past few days I got a chance to step out of Buffalo and head to the traditional team bonding retreat for the Orientation Aides. We went to a place in Bristol Hills, New York by Rochester and it couldn’t have been a creepier place. There were spiders EVERYWHERE and the showers were revolting. Not to mention after being so nice in western New York for so long (I mean it IS the end of June) it dipped back into the low sixties this past week, going into the fifties and the FORTIES during the night. Needless to say, it was not the Ritz Carlton and it had the potential to be a really crappy trip if it hadn’t been for all of the other OA’s.

Before this week we all had only really met once, at a lunch back in the middle of last semester; a lunch I was late for because of prior commitments. So we really hadn’t gotten a feel for each other and I definitely had apprehensions about all of us working so closely together and if we would be able to stand each other for the demanding schedule that is expected of us. But I have never seen a group of 24 young adults click so well, so fast. Even just the first day during breaks we had no problem sitting down and playing card games together, or even just sitting around talking about different stuff, trying to get to know each other better. A group of that size could have its tendency to form little clicks that sit together at meals and go off during down time together, not us. We all seem to be so comfortable with each other. It made me really excited about the rest of the summer, so any new students scheduled for orientations in the coming months, get excited, you’ve got a great staff here for you.

Now I should probably hit the sack. Even though we got along great we still couldn’t make the cold weather go away, or make the beds more comfortable and I need to catch up on some lost sleep!

Happy Father’s Day to all those Dads out there!! I hope everyone told their father how much they love them today, I know I did!

Growing up the only males in my house were my dad and my brother, so they were often overshadowed by the amount of estrogen my mom, my two sisters and I brought through the door. So this summer when I moved in with two guys, I was no longer doing the overshadowing, instead I was being overshadowed. Now, I have never thought of myself as a girlie girl. I have the tendency to let my room get, how you may say, a TAD unorganized when my life gets busy. And until this summer the extent of my cooking skills was toast, even that got burnt sometimes. Now I’m not saying that my roommates expected me to be Susie Homemaker all of a sudden, they’re great guys. But when I started wiping up the kitchen after it was left dirty, or leaving extra pasta in the fridge with a note that says “Up for Grabs” I think that they kind of let me take that role of being the caretaker of the house. Well it certainly has been an experience living without my female counterparts for the first time. Just little things like not caring if there are soda cans stacking up in the living room, or thinking that if you just ignore the trash it’ll take itself out. Now like I said they’re both really good guys but you can definitely see the difference in living with girls than living with guys.

Oh well, it’ll be interesting to see what they do when I move back into the dorms tomorrow to start Orientation stuff!!

If you’re from the Capital Region you have at one time or another visited Saratoga Springs. And for anyone who isn’t from that area or hasn’t had the opportunity to see Saratoga, it’s this great artsy town with a great main drag with some of the cutest shops around. Well in Buffalo we have our version of it, Elmwood. It is an entire street filled with stores, outdoor cafes, coffee & ice cream shops and adorable houses. Last night a friend and I got coffee at a great local chain called Spot Coffee (cheaper and SO much better than Starbucks) and sat outside for about three hours just chatting about almost anything you could think of.

The reason I mention last night is just because I think it’s really important to have those moments, especially with good friends. The two of us just leisurely walked up and down the streets sipping on our coffees (iced of course because it was nice and warm) and letting our minds wander to different topics, every once and a while mentioning what we were thinking about. It was an awesome relaxing night and those are the times when you kind of look around and are grateful for the people you have surrounded yourself with and the place that you are at in your life. Let’s just hope there’s still time for some of those moments once life gets crazy again!

What a weekend! These past few days I have spent with twenty 10 to 14 year old and fifteen 5 to 9 year old girls. I volunteered to spend my weekend away at Cradle Beach Camp with kids who are infected and affected with HIV and AIDS. And gosh, what an eye opener. I approached this opportunity with very little expectations. I knew it would be an experience but I never thought it would open my eyes so wide.

If you can volunteer for it, I’ve done it. Soup kitchens, confidential listening lines, board of directors for non-profits, animal shelters, I have quite a long list under my belt so I have seen a lot. But this weekend reminded me of how lucky I am. These kids were so excited for everything from an extra sleeve of cookies to bring home to just a few minutes of one on one attention. Some of them it’ll be the only chance they get to get out of the city each year. We spent the weekend doing arts and crafts, digging holes on the beach and decorating cookies. It was some of the best times that I have had in a while. Like I said before, every time I turned and saw the smiling faces of the kids, or the squeals of laughter as they threw glitter at each other, or the one on one conversations they were dying to have with us, the “grown ups”, I was reminded of how lucky I was to have all of that and more growing up. I had a Mom that put her kids first every minute of every day no matter how far we pushed her, a Dad who even after long weeks in the office still found time to coach our soccer games every Saturday morning.

The days were long and exhausting this past weekend but I wouldn’t take back a minute of it. It was sad to say goodbye to the kids until next year but I hope I keep with me all they reminded me of until we see each other again. And now it’s time to catch up on some of that lost sleep…

Ugh! I was so looking forward to going to the zoo this week! But of course due to the thunderstorms and dreary weather that has come over Buffalo we postponed those plans for a later date. Instead yesterday was spent catching up with some friends that I hadn’t seen since school ended. It was so nice to see them again since we had gotten especially close towards the end of the year but had lost touch when finals hit and everyone got really busy moving out of the dorms and heading home for some family time. A few of them actually moved into a new house down by South campus, not far from where I’m staying for the summer and let me tell you, this house is so nice. It’s a perfect college house for four girls. It was really nice to see it, I’m really happy for them.

Other than that I’ve started to pack for camp this weekend, hopefully the weather will hold out for the kids. I’ve started to get really excited about it! Today we got our cabin assignments and the schedule for the weekend. I got placed in a cabin with the 10 to 13 year old girls. I can’t wait to get on the bus with all of them and start on what should be an awesome weekend!

The time has finally come! The day single girls everywhere have been waiting for! The Sex & the City movie came out on Friday and as much as I would have loved to be in the front row of the first showing we waited to see it until Saturday afternoon because one of my friends had an exam Saturday morning for a summer class she is taking. Needless to say I was in love with every minute of the movie. It was hysterical, made me cry and was full of so many things I didn’t expect! Now I won’t go giving any of it away because I was really careful about staying away from spoilers but I will just say it was worth the money to go see it; and I don’t say that often. But I do recommend it to anyone who was thinking about going to check it out!!!