I-HAUL member for a day

Hello again. The first thought that came to mind was that since I'm on summer break, I haven't had a lot to blog about. On the other hand, my blog was definitely a daily update on graduation preparations.

The biggest thing I did today was help one of my co-workers move out of the building. She was able to fit everything in one last carload, so my main 'helper tasks' were getting boxes down to her car and some spot-check painting. The fact that we have so much white paint just sitting in our building does make me less worried about taking some of the paint off my wall with a poster (accidentally, of course). I had a momentary thought about what it'll be like to move out of this apartment (especially since my friend's apartment is identical to mine), but the main focus was getting my friend on the road because she was getting WiFi installed today and didn't want to miss that.

About a year ago, I was helping a different co-worker move to St Joe, which is a relatively short drive from here. I took a larger role in the "moving helper" then because that friend had a lot of stuff and it was for her and her husband. I'm glad that I was able to help out last year and today because the two co-workers that I helped really shaped my experience here and I learned a lot from them both. Lugging boxes places was a way of saying thank you (and you know, just being nice in general, but I did purposefully volunteer to help each of them out).

To be honest, my afternoon and evening were pretty bland. I just kind of stuck around the apartment. I did do some laundry and dishes, so yay for housekeeping. Of course, there's definitely more to do, but as long as I'm cleaning more dishes and clothes than I'm dirtying in a day, I'm making progress!

The highlight of the night was Nerdfigther-related. So, the past couple of weeks, I've been trying to get more involved in the Nerdfighter community on Facebook. The past week has been focused on a small side-group of about 300 people that was apparently founded around being single, but is just a general hangout spot that's not focused on forming relationships. Even though the group is 300 people total, the group of people who are actively making posts and having conversations is notably smaller. One thing that the group does is spontaneous Google Hangouts, which are basically video conference calls. I tried it out a couple days ago, but then tonight, I ended up spending a couple of hours with a handful of other Nerdfighters. It was really fun. Of course, with it being people in front of a webcam, there was a lot of dead air when we were surfing the Internet. On the other hand, there were some nice conversations and there are some pretty cool people. Since I've only been in the group for a week and it was my second hangout, plenty of the conversation was introductions. I did end up explaining the Academy a few times and I'm pretty sure I didn't babble too much.

With me being in summer mode, I definitely feel like I can get involved with this community. Even though it's online and the people I was talking to are from Atlanta, California, Australia, and Norway, it's nice to have that feeling of community again. Of course, there's the challenge of maintaining that during the school year, but I'll deal with that in a couple months.

TC

With the online chatting in mind, I'm going to claim today as part of Effective Communications Month. I do need to get back in the habit of planning out a holiday rather than backtracking and finding something that fits. It's on my list for tomorrow. Here's hoping it happens.

Alright, I should get to bed. The schedule is shifting earlier, but it's not there yet. Good night. DFTBA!