Uh! Tis been a long time since I have picked up a volleyball and played. I use to play and high school and loved every minute of the game but just decided it wasn’t for me. But tonight was the first game of our intramural volleyball league and it was a blast! It’s nice after a stressful day to be able to just kind of let loose with some friends and laugh at one another. But why was my day stressful you ask? Well, it has nothing to do with school.

Let me just put it out there that I hate cars. Don’t know anything about them, don’t wanna know anything about them. However, this morning I went into the local Chevy dealership to have my car inspected. Routine, right? I think not. I ended up spending four hours and almost $300 there before I got to walk out having missed a class and was late for work. It was a good time let me tell ya. Turns out I needed two new tires, some re-call thing and an oil change. Not one of which I understand nor know why I needed, it’s just what they tell me.

Now does this rant have anything to do with college or my academics? Absolutely not. However, it is a part of living on your own for the first time. For some it’s the whole laundry thing that’s hard to get use to, for others it’s trying to eat healthy while having to feed themselves for the first time, for me, it’s dealing with my little Colbolt. Well now he’s running just grand…better be after $300.

…whoever you think it should! I know better than to impose my political opinions on other people so I’m going to let all of you make your own decisions about who you think did the better job during the first Presidential debate last night between Senator Obama and Senator McCain. I will say however, growing up I heard everyone talking about voting. I knew my parents did it every once and a while for the school district’s budget or for our local government. I knew that people often talked about how many people don’t vote or don’t stay informed and I wasn’t sure that I really believed it because everyone in my life seemed to know what they were talking about.

Well, since I have gotten to college, the age where we are suppose to be caring about the decisions being made because they will be impacting us the most, a surprising number people are not educated on current events. I have a wide variety of friends, people who are passionate about their opinions, whichever side they may be on; friends who know what’s going on but would rather just not talk about it over dinner or while we’re hanging out, and then people in my life who barley have any idea who’s running let alone what each candidate stands for. I’m not sure how I feel about any point of the spectrum. Is it okay to get so passionate about politics that friendships suffer over it? Is it sad that good friends shy away from talking about current events over dinner because it’s just too touchy a subject? Or the worst of all, is it ignorant to be a citizen of this country, to have the privilege to vote and not educate yourself on the decision that your making?

However you feel about the situation time is running out and everyone who is eligible to vote should at least register, leave that chance open in case you do decide at the last minute that you want to have a say in who is going to run our country for the next four years. Luckily for us as students there have been various places and times all over campus where we can stop, fill out a voter registration card, and the club/organization will send it out for us, making it as easy as taking money out of the ATM ((and a little less painless)).

So I guess my question would be, is it better to have someone vote based on the few things they know or to have someone not vote at all?

So I’m not quite sure why I haven’t been around this week. It wasn’t like it was an exceptionally busy week. Actually, it wasn’t even exciting of a week.

On Thursday I had a Battle of the Sexes late night program in the residence halls. It ended up that no one really ended up coming to play the game but it was a really cool idea and I think I might try to do it again, maybe just change a couple of things. There were a bunch of questions that girls wish guys knew and some things that guys wish girls knew. The people that did come and stayed to play a little bit of the game actually did surprisingly well!

This week I also gave a presentation in my UB 496 class on a lesson plan I had created for a UB 101 class. UB 101 is a class that you can take as a freshman that helps you through the transition from high school to college. It is an opportunity to learn about all of the services that the university offers. Doing that reminded me on why I decided that I didn’t want to be a teacher. Creating lesson plans and organizing all of that stuff just is not interesting to me, even though I would love to be in a classroom! Oh well, better I realize that sooner rather than later!

One of my good friends birthday is tomorrow so I’m off to flex my baking muscles (let’s hope it goes well!!!)

The first few weeks of school are probably some of the craziest of the semester, especially during the fall. With everyone coming back from the summer, adjusting to your new place of residence and suddenly being called a “junior” as opposed to a “sophomore” can provide some hectic moments.

Luckily for me those times are slowing down which means that life is returning to normal, whatever that is. I’ve gotten use to my new schedule and actually am really beginning to enjoy this semester.

On Saturday a fellow RA and I put on an ultimate Frisbee tournament with our two floors completing for the win. Well, it ended up being disgusting out with down-pouring rain. One would think that that would have put an end to our program but rain or shine everyone piled out of Michael Hall in their bare-feet and went slipping and sliding around the lawn outside the residence hall. It was an awesome time, disgusting, but awesome!! Let’s just say now I have a decent amount of muddy laundry I should probably get to.

Well I know it’s been a few days but I have finally come out of mourning after the news of Tom Brady’s season ending injury was announced on Monday. I, like many Patriots fans, was glued to the computer watching the live stream of Bill Belichick’s press conference that revealed Brady’s need to have knee surgery after being injured in the first quarter of the season opener against the Kansas City Chiefs. It’s been a rough couple of days but in true fan fashion, this is when your team needs you the most, so you don’t turn your back! In other brighter news, the Buffalo Bills had an awesome game this past weekend. It’ll definitely be a good time to watch them every Sunday!

On Saturday night we had our end of the summer Orientation Aide banquet in Lockawana. It was really nice to get everyone back together after being apart for a couple of weeks. And the Orientation Aides split the cost of a plane ticket for one of our bosses who is from Atlanta to fly up and be able to celebrate the summer with us, it was awesome to see her too. Looking back on the summer I was surprised with how much I came away from the experience with. I walked into expecting very little, not knowing how I was going to get along with my co-workers or how the orientations themselves were going to go. But I have met some of the most amazing people and become incredibly close to several of them, whom I never would have even interacted with had it not been for this awesome experience. It was one of the best summers I’ve ever had and although I will not miss the 17 hour days four times a week, I will miss being able to interact with the rest of my co-workers every day. We have become a family and that is hard to do when you take 22 strangers and make them work in such close courters.

UH! Anyone who has paid some attention to my blogs over the past year is well aware that I am a HUGE football fan! I love watching the game and football season is pretty much some of my favorite times all year. So needless to say I’m a little more than excited that today is the kickoff day for the NFL 2008-2009 season!!! I have waited many months to be able to sit down every Sunday and watch Tom Brady and the rest of my Patriot boys do their work. So today a friend and I are going to head to Buffalo Wild Wings today {a local restaurant/sports bar that has like 5 million games playing all at the same time} because both the Patriots game and the Jets {her team} game are being covered by CBS and we’re not sure which one will be shown here in Buffalo, and we don’t want to be taking ANY chances!

Yesterday, the UB Bulls headed down to Pittsburgh to play Pitt in football and actually did really well! They were only down by one at the end of the third quarter and ended up losing by just ten points. It must have been dis-heartening for the few hundred students that got bused down there to watch the game but at the same time is an awesome demonstration on how well are team is doing! I watched an ESPN coverage of it {like a recap} and the ESPN commentators were talking about what a great job our quarterback, Drew Willy, has been doing. That’s pretty cool!

I should hit the books for a little bit more before I head off to watch the games though!! ***GO PATS***

Why does it figure that we wait all summer for some nice weather and it comes just as we’re starting classes!?

Well this past Labor Day some friends and I put the awesome weather to good use and had a nice pool day! One of our friends is from the area so we headed over to her parents house for some fun in the sun! We went in the pool, had an awesome cookout and played a few games of volleyball. One of the more entertaining things that we did was we played a game called KanJam. Now if you are not a native Western New Yorker you may have never heard of this game. What it consists of is two teams of two throwing a Frisbee back and forth to try and get it to either hit or go in a cylinder-like container. It sounds confusing/weird, I know, because that’s what I thought when I first saw it but let me tell ya, it’s a good time. Especially if you get people like me who can’t play AT all. Well, that’s a lie. I am horrible Frisbee thrower (mine typically ended up hitting the house or landing on the roof) but I have perfected the art of running after the Frisbee and hitting it at the Kan. I’ve provided some action shots so that maybe you can begin to get a visual on the experience.

Now I should hit the sack, my first program all by myself is tomorrow! Wish me luck! :-/