Retrospects of Summer 2009

I have had many requests to finally update this blog. Due to a summer of mostly unemployment I have perfected the art of procrastination even more than I thought possible. It takes quite a lot of effort to procrastinate little things like updating a blog. I stretched my abilities and have succeeded. Feel free to send congratulation cards.
This past summer Jared and I have had a lot of adventures. As time tends to, this past summer flew. Here is a brief recap of the highlights. The 27th of July we celebrated our 7 month anniversary. I can't even imagine my life without Jared by my side. He truly is my best friend. For all of you who don't really know him, just know he is the best husband anyone can ask for. He does so many little things everyday just to make me smile. I could dedicate this whole blog entry to glorifying everything he does and everything he is. That entry I will save for another five months for our 1 year anniversary. Back to the story of our summer adventures.
During the whole summer Jared has able to get plenty of hours working as a bus driver for the city bus. (He looks dead sexy in his uniform.) This job is always a stable form of entertainment for us. The endless amounts of drunks, crazies, and hippies Flagstaff is home to makes for an interesting job. On occasion I find myself on the bus Jared is driving just for the pure entertainment. Our summer adventures revolved around his somewhat stable work schedule. We are grateful he is able to bring home some bacon.
The summer started off for me with the great opportunity of me teaching a public speaking lab to freshmen involved in the STAR program here at NAU. These students were mainly first generation/low income/minority college students. I had 40 cute little newly graduated high school students who knew nothing of college.This lab went on for the whole month of June. I had four different labs which I taught twice a week. In these labs we covered all of the basics of public speaking, college skills, life skills and while we did this ate a lot of tootsie rolls. It has a great experience to act as an instructor and teach. I have a new respect for my instructors. Maybe this upcoming semester I will treat them a little different.
Come July I had been looking for another job for the rest of the summer and to continue on for the fall. I had snagged a job driving school buses for Flagstaff Unified School District (FUSD). I was so excited to have gotten this job. They even promised to work around my schedule both for the summer and my school schedule in the fall. The economy in Flagstaff makes it quite hard for a college student to make any money and I was so grateful to have gotten a job. Off the record, there are a lot of positions for lawyers, Michelle C. but nothing else. The three days before my lab ended I received a phone call from the training department for FUSD transportation. They told me training started the next morning at 7:00am and to be there. They confirmed they would work around my schedule for the last two days of my lab. The next morning I showed up to training bright and early and sat in the stuffy classroom for a couple hours before heading to my lab. As I left the instructor told me I could make up what I missed the next day. During that day in the middle of lab I received a voice message telling me not to bother coming into training the next day for they decided that they didn't want to work around my schedule anymore. I was hindering the progress of the whole training program. I called the head HR lady to confirm that this tragedy was really occurring. She confirmed that the head boss had made this final decision and I was FIRED!! I had never been fired from any job before. This shocked me completely. The training department had all summer to complete training. Why start training then, when one of the four people training had commitments for TWO more days.
I am still quite bitter about this scenario. At the moment I wish I had a punching bag. This whole ordeal left me unemployed with no hopes of any job working around my school schedule. Now I had tons of free time to complete a huge to-do list which, as of now is not nearly complete. Though I did successfully complete on online sociology class with a 98%.
Throughout the summer both of our families were able to make the trip to Flagstaff. It was fun impressing them with my domestic abilities in the kitchen. The air-mattress on which they slept hardly fit in our ghetto one-bedroom apartment. We took them to the local attractions Flagstaff has to offer like the Grand Canyon, Sedona, museums, ski-lifts, pine trees, and many other things. It was nice to be able to show them the amazing city in which we reside.
After all of those visits, my lab, and miles driving behind a city bus Jared and I then decided to escape the reality of life and head up to Arches National Park. We stopped by his family's house in Santaquin, UT for a couple days prior to Arches to celebrate his birthday. Free food is always good but his dad's four-wheeler is always a huge incentive for a visit. After lounging around his parent's house we left for Arches. We chose the hottest day of the year to hike around the shadeless beauty of Arches. Delicate Arch at sunset is a sight to behold. After the day of hiking and dehydration we gobbled down some ice-cream before heading up a random canyon to camp. At 10:00pm it had finally cooled down to 78 degrees and we were happy. We collapsed in our luxurious tent. The next morning we headed back to Flagstaff looking forward to the 85 degree weather.
Upon coming back from this mini vacation I felt redetermined to look for a job. I had some connections from Jared's boss at the local NAU campus shuttle. I decided to put my energies getting that job. I submitted my application, knowing I was over-qualified and waited. I finally got phone call and went in for a interview. It went as smooth as possible with my incredible interviewing skills. They called me back in the following Monday to fill out information for a background check. They told me when that clears they will call my by the end of this week. It is now 2:26 pm Friday afternoon. Every time my phone rings/vibrates I jump with anticipation. Jared, my loving husband, knows this and is going out of his way to call me as much as possible today. If I do get this job I will have amazing benefits, practically free tuition, and a solid job. We will be able to afford name brand mac n' cheese!! Cross your fingers for me. It would be a blessing.
That is the summer in a short novel. There is many more things to write but I fear this is quite long. If you do read this and have a blog leave me a comment with your blob website. I am diving in strong to the blogging world.