Bacchus in Anaheim, CA

Pictures: (1) Me and Darren at dinner on Friday night. (2) The fabulous Joel Goldman with the crazy tarot card reader, same dinner. (3) Darren with the belly dancer. (4) Inside the lobby of the Hyatt Regency in Anaheim, CA. (5) Same hotel, different view. (6) Darren, TJ, and me in the Disney store, turning the turtles. (7) TJ, Shawn Decker, and Darren at the House of Blues in a moment of madness.

Last weekend (November 8) I attended the Bacchus and Gamma General Assembly in Anaheim, CA. I went with Darren from CAMPUSPEAK, primarily as an attempt to kind of see what's out there, meet some people, make a few connections, and help out however I was needed. It was a blast.

First of all, flying anywhere out of Denver is beautiful. As we headed west, I could look down and see ski slops and mountains and ski resorts... it was gorgeous. TJ was on the same flight we were so we were able to travel as a unit, the three of us, and per usual, TJ was exceptional entertainment.

The Hyatt Regency, where the conference was held, was gorgeous. Beautiful hotel, lots of excited students all of the place. There was so much to do, so many great speakers and interesting programs to attend. From CAMPUSPEAK, Shawn Decker (great guy and author of "My Pet Virus", check it out, stat!), Ross Szabo (amazing mental health speaker, Director of Youth Outreach for the National Mental Health Awareness Campaign, has a lot of valuable information!), Erin Weed (founder and author of Girls Fight Back, kicking off Stayin' Alive on Spring Break!, a safety program about spring break adventures, kick ass girl, and a rockin Alpha Phi), Christine Hassler (author of Twenty Something Twenty Everything: A Quarter-Life Women's Guide to Balance and Direction, an amazing writer and coach), Elaine Penn (east coast girl who has been speaking for a quite a while about all sorts of stuff, but specializes in leadership, athletes, and a plethora of material! very cool chick with a great singing voice and an ability to captivate an audience!), Joel Goldman (who previously traveled with TJ Sullivan doing an extremely impactful program called "Friendship in the Age of AIDS" and now does"Sex Under the Influence", a program educating students about the importance of makingg safe decisions and the impacts they can have on your life, super cool dude!) and Chad Crittenden (former Survivor superstar with a rockin story about "discovering the will to survive", beating the odds, overcoming adversity, motivation! super great guy) were in attendance. David Hellstrom, a speaker who talks a lot about alcohol, was there too but unfortunately I never got to meet him. Oh, and of course, our very own TJ Sullivan who is one of my favorite poeple- great sense of humor and knows his shit! Did an awesome presentation about the Apathy Myth, something I really wish I had heard when I was a student.

Anyways, so lots of programs we attended, lots of chatting with students about their campuses and their goals and hopes for their communities. HUGE props to Bacchus for presenting students with SO MUCH relevant, important information. And bigger props to those students for wanting change and progress. Best of luck to them!

Thursday night I got to venture into Downtown Disney with Shawn Decker, TJ, and Darren for dinner. First of all, that was a beautiful place! Being a Disney virgin, I pretty much walked around with my mouth hanging open, in awe of the lights and colors and beautiful scenery! We decided to hit up the House of Blues for dinner, where it so happened that Lisa Marie Presley was performing and Kevin Federline (the former Mr. Brittany Spears) was performing a few days later. (Let me tell you that TJ had a blast trying to fenagle a K.Fed tshirt out of our waitress, to no avail.) Anyways, it was a great dinner with some super fun people. We then took a stroll around to some of the shops just to check stuff out. It was a great night. The weather in Anaheim was beautiful; it was warm enough to eat outside that night! Loved it.

Friday night we had a group to go out with which was awesome. It was me, TJ, Darren, Joel, Ross and his awesome girlfriend Heidi, Erin and her husband, and Christine. Good times, great converation, and super cool environment. The highlight would have been when the belly dancer selected Darren as her partner, and he was dragged up there with her to do some quality dancing. (See pictures.) It was a very fun night. :)

Anyways, all that aside, it was really cool to get to see so many of our speakers and let me tell you that every single one of them rocked. If you're looking for a speaker of any kind, get on the Campuspeak website and check them out. There is a lot of really important material that they bring to the table. And to make matters better, they are totally great people. Really. Check them out. Now. Stop what you're doing and look up www.campuspeak.com.

Thank you.

So the only bummer was when we flew back into Denver on Sunday, not only were the Redskins getting spanked but we left short sleeve weather and returned to Denver in snow. NOT cool. Very funny, God. Very funny.

Boulder, CO

Pictures: (1) View one of the Alpha Phi house at CU. It was some sort of father-daughter day so I was thrilled to see a rousing game of pong going on in the front yard. The girls were very sweet and welcoming and the house was gorgeous! In this pictures you can see the moat! (2) View two of the Alpha Phi house. Better than you since 1872! :) (3) This is a view from one of the student study areas that happens to be on a deck area off of one of the buildings. There's a mountain... right there! Love it! (4) This is a buildling on CU's campus. You can see the flags that I mention my blog on the lawn! (5) A view of Boulder from the lookout. The red roofs you see are primarkily CU. (6) Mountains from the top lookout point we visited! Standing on a flat, rocky area overlooking the mountains and valley. Beautiful! (7) Me and Brady with a terrifying dropoff behind us. :)

And so it has been weeks since my last post. I am horrible at keeping on top of this, primarily due to the fact that I am currently in the midst of not one, not two, not three, but FOUR employment endeavors. Furthermore, we decided we were sick of having flaky internet in the townhouse, so we disconnected it. So now we have no internet. It totally sucks, because generally I would only update this blog after midnight on a daily basis, but clearly I don't always feel like going to the nearest internet- the office- at that time of night. So I fall behind. Apologies!

I do have stories and pictures to update, but first, here are basics:

I decided to continue my internship with CAMPUSPEAK through July. I'm pretty excited about it, a little more time to continue interactions with fabulous people and maybe meet some more campus pros and the like. Good times.

As a result, I do not beleive I will be able to make it home for Christmas. Bummer, I know. I haven't not gone home for Christmas since..ummm... EVER. This will be my first Christmas away. What a blower. But unfortunately, airfare is obnoxiously steep this close to the holidays, and furthermore, I really can't afford to miss much work. So here I am. Blower. Maybe I will get home for a week or so in the spring- I don't know. We'll see.

Part time jobs, I am still juggling J.Crew for the time being, and I was hired at Kaplan Test and Assessment as a Student Advisor, which starts tomorrow. I am doing some work on my free time for a friend of TJ's who runs her own business and needs a little support. I was offered a potential position last night with the mechanical bull company that works at Buck Wild's and The Stampede. I am seriously considering this primarily because it would be SUCH a fun way to make money. Sit around, wear a cowboy hat, look cute, and get people to ride the bull. No complaints!

And for the purpose to this specific post... our trip to Boulder. A few weeks ago Darren and Laura took me and Brady up to Boulder for the day to look around. It happened that it was the same day CU played Kansas (I think?) so there were students everywhere, drinking and partying. It's such a cool town- it seriously lays right at the base of this cluster of mountains, so it's really weird to look next to you and see this huge mountain in the middle of the town. (That was a very not-eloquent sentence.) CU is a very cool school with a beautiful campus. They have so much awesome Student Services type stuff- there is a bowling alley on campus!! It rocks! The campus is gorgeous with a very cool quad area. On this particular weekend, there was a demonstration on the quad for which white flags were placed on the grounds to represent the number Iraqis who were killed in the war, and red flags to represent the number of American soldiers killed. It was a very eye-opening visual, and it was refreshing to see a campus where the students are so aware and involved. Anyways, Darren and Laura took us up to this awesome lookout point (see pictures) and we chilled up there for a while. It was absolutely breath-taking. It's cool to see something like that and gain a little perspective on how small, indeed, we are.

So we did that, and then they drove us around to the Greek houses. We went into Brady's house (Zeta Beta Tau) and of course, the Alpha Phi house. ZBT was a pretty cool house with an awesome deck area. The inside was a little startling, but I guess it was to be expected from a fraternity house. (I could tell I have aged and am no longer accustomed to this lifestyle...haha.) The Alpha Phi house was GORGEOUS. It was absolutely amazing, it seriously looks l ike a castle! There is a moat around it, which is unbelievable, and the inside is beautiful. Their chapter room is everything a chapter room should be, complete with beautiful furniture, charters, and all sorts of meaningful chapter history items, as opposed to ours back home which resembles a dirty storage unit of some sort. :( Even more interestingly, these women have idea how great they have it! It was like they couldn't get their minds around the fact that my sorority house was a slight rung above a dorm. And we don't have a moat, or hardwood floors, or a foyer that rivals that of my parents' house. I would love for them to appreciate it as much as they can, because not everyone has such a situation.

After this, we went and walked around the campus a little. Beautiful place, students who are proud to be Buffs. It was awesome.

Then we ate at a little hole-in-the-wall place downtown where students were partying and watching the game, and then we went downtown to the super cool mall area (that I can't remember the name of.) We found a super cool bookstore (and were thrilled to see our buddy Shawn Decker's new book there, "My Pet Virus". It you haven't seen it, definitely pick it up NOW and read! It's a great read, very funny, and very i ntimate look at growing up in rural HIV. Highly, HIGHLY recommended.) It really was an awesome day. :)

I love Boulder and could totally see myself working there or going to grad school at CU. We will see. :) Hope you're all doing well, love and miss everyone!