An appreciation for camp stoves and fire places

This is me standing by one of my trees.

For those of you who are not familiar with where Fayetteville lies on the map, it lies exactly to the north of the places that basically never get winter weather and directly to the south of the places that often get winter weather. In translation, whenever some winter precipitation falls in Northwest Arkansas, let's just say people get excited. Usually this excitement is somewhat over exaggerated and those of you from the north would find it to be somewhat annoying.

This week Northwest Arkansas received winter weather. Not the fun white powder snow everyone wants, but the rain/icy rain that freezes to everything it touches. The 5 o'clock news last night (which I got to watch because for some reason my house got electricity back even though none of the businesses close by had electricity) called this storm "Ice Storm 2009." This has proven to be rather correct and descriptive but dull. I think it looks more like a tree terrorist has become raged and attacked every tree in the area.

Last night on the news the weather report showed the ice accumulation totals for the entire northwest area. Sitting right on the map where my house would be was the highest amount at 1.5". The news described this level as "devastation." I don't know if I classify this as devastation, but there are a few cars with trees on them, some houses with trees on them, several downed powerlines, and the majority of the area is without electricity. I do know, however, that this storm has succeeded in closing down the University of Arkansas for 4 days!!!

As we have had no school and no power for a few days I have really not worked on any homework, but have cleaned my house, built a fire, cooked random things on the campstove, put on all my ski gear and took my dog on a walk, sat, and tried to read a book (when it was light outside).

Well, now that I have electricity and the sun is shining I am going to go try to get some work accomplished. I will likely go in to work at Land O' Lakes if they have also re-gained power. Imagine being a vendor for Walmart and having no power for a few days. I bet things are going to be a little crazy back at the office.

Attached are some pictures so you can check out "Ice Storm 2009."

This is my neighbor's tree. Basically every bradford pear in the neighborhood looks exactly like this one. Do not plant bradford pears where you might have an ice storm one day.

This is a nearby street to my house. You can't see very well, but there are several trees on the road and on the houses.

loving that today is the middle of the weekend, not the end

Usually Sunday is bittersweet because it is a weekend day, but the last weekend day. Not this weekend! MLK day is tomorrow, so no school!!! I will be going in to work tomorrow, but no big deal.
As far as what I have on my agenda for classwork...
This weekend I will be working on a case assignment for our Strategic Management class, navigating through SAP for Enterprise Systems, and beginning research on sustainability and global logistics for my Global Logistics class.
Currently I am very glad I took an extra class last semester because with only three major classes this semester I now have more time for work and for doing other things (this is why I actually went to the gym multiple days this week :)).

Well, today is a beautiful day in Fayetteville, so I am heading out to enjoy it!

Back in the daily grind

The first two days of our last semester have now come and gone.
This semester my earliest class starts at 9:30. On Mondays and Wednesdays I don't begin until 11:00!! As of Sunday night, my plan was to go to the gym monday morning and get some erands completed before class. What actually happened: I slept in, got my stuff ready, and went right to class :) I did go to the gym after I left Land O' Lakes though! Today I had two classes, worked on some work at my house, returned to the gym, and then headed to Bible study.

After leaving the gym...my thoughts on Fayetteville: My favorite part: I know people everywhere! My least favorite part: I know people everywhere! (Long story I'm not getting in to)

Hopefully tomorrow morning I'll do a better job of getting up and being productive before class!
I'm excited about tomorrow evening because I'm going to a cookout for one of my friend's birthdays! Hopefully after getting back into my workout routine I'll be able to move, but I'm not counting on it! I'm already sore!

Break's almost over and orientation has begun

After spending last week working hard not to be useless, spending this week helping out with orientation is helping me ease back into school mode. I'm a mentor for the MBA program, meaning I've been appointed to help answer the questions of new students and assist with their orientation. The idea behind this program is that as a mentor we can better relate to the situations new students are coming from and we can answer their questions honestly.

Working orientation has been a real good time this week. Not only has it been a good time meeting all the new students, but it has also stimulated some walks down memory lane with my classmates (these stories are too long or inappropriate to be discussed in detail).

The first day of orientation is mostly the typical boring house cleaning duties, but then that night the new students have an overnight retreat at a local camp which allows them to get to know eachother. Tuesday morning is what I would consider to be the most fun of the days of orientation where the new students play leadership/strategy/icebreaker games. I was so fortunate to be scheduled outside on the basketball court :)!

Today the new class spent the day working on a business case and preparing a presentation for tomorrow. As a mentor I was off today (which left me plenty of time to work all day, boo!). Tomorrow the students will present their case solutions and get a little taste of some friendly MBA competition.

Friday the mentors will also have the day off as the new class has a retail immersion day. This is a cool day and includes touring some great retailers and even a Walmart distribution center, which is very impressive.

This weekend I am going to visit my best friend so I can catch up with her and see her new house. I'm so excited because it will be a great way soak up the last weekend with no looming homework :)

Christmas break is so close I can almost smell it!

With only 2 more days of regular classes until we start finals, my attention span is fading fast.
Luckily we have plenty to keep us busy.
I feel the need to keep you involved with what is going on in our classes:

One brightside to the economic downturn going on is that it provides us with lots to discuss in class. This morning in our retail finance class we reviewed current articles on retailers and discussed what problems they are facing, what led to this current state, what could retailers do to make sure they will survive times like this. In this class we also recently just turned in the final part to our retailer site evaluation project where we were able to utilize the Gadberry Group's household data for locations.

In accounting we are working on our last group project before our final next week. For our assignment we are evaluating Lowe's financial statements.

Our Leadership/management final is Monday! whoo hoo! One class will be done!

Currently as I type, I am in tlog strategies clas looking at a total cost analysis for intermodal transportation.

Ok...well speaking of being in class...I'm going to go back to trying to pay attention.

An end to a busy week!

I haven't taken the time to post in a couple of weeks, so I thought I might give an explaination and catch you up.
A week ago Thursday was the kick off to the FedEx International Graduate Logistics Case Competition. This competition brings 12 of the top logistics programs together from around the world to compete right here in Fayetteville. It's a great networking opportunity with fellow students and employers. Executives and representatives from companies such as Unilever, ABF Freight, FedEx, Walmart, General Mills, Transplace, and more attend this event.
For the first time in 12 years of the competition, our team from the Walton College placed in the top 3!
So, anyway, I was at that event all the way thru late Saturday night with one day left to prepare for the school week which included one project, a presentation, a paper, and a test being due! Needless to say I am so happy it's Friday and that next week is Thanksgiving!!!

Well, now I'm off to celebrate! Have a good weekend!

Birthday TLOG celebrations

Horray!! It's Thursday!! This is very exciting for several reasons...
To begin with it is not only my birthday, but Nhan's (Classmate), Fran's (my sister-in-law), and Emily's (a friend). What can I say, November 6th is a big day! To make it bigger...Fran (mentioned above) has a baby due today! The little one hasn't showed up yet, maybe too much pressure, I don't know. :)

So today in class we have a guest speaker. Burton Weiss and others from USA Truck came in to talk about the strategies they are implementing in order to move from a "good" to a "great" company.