Monday, August 27, 2007

Two Paragraphs

I pose a question to the internet....

Would you turn this in to your professor?

The assignment: Write two paragraphs telling me who you are and why you are here (statistics class).

What I wrote:

My name is Alex Stigall. I’m a senior studying Recreation with an emphasis in Outdoor Leadership and Education, with a recently added minor in Psychology. I transferred to Western about a year and a half ago from Red Rocks Community College in Lakewood, CO. This past spring I was elected President of the Student Government Association and am getting tired of being called ‘el presidente’. Shortly after the election I was talking to a friend who said ”Congratulations, you are now an overachiever!” Upon hearing this my mother laughed, probably due to the fact that the idea of me as an overachiever is not something she is familiar with. My friends say that I live on stress; I concede that I tend to produce quality work when I am under a deadline. Therefore, I am also a procrastinator.

This is my second attempt at taking statistics. The first attempt was a year ago and a spectacular failure simply in the fact that I did not dedicate the necessary time and energy to learning the subject matter. I’m in this class to not only help repair the significant dent my failing grade made in my overall GPA, but also to prove (mostly to myself) that I can and should succeed in this challenge. Things I’m looking for in this class include challenge, the opportunity to struggle before help is automatically given, and if it’s possible to include learning from many different styles that would be dandy.

__________________________________________________________________

Seriously people, I need you to comment on this one. Please.

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Nothing Quite Like It...

There is nothing like community theatre.




The opportunity to watch members of the community get up on stage, assume a character and tell you a story. Amazing. Even if the production is horrible and they butcher the story, you still have to give those individuals applause for just getting up there and participating.

Fortunately yesterday the story was not butchered, the singing did not bring tears to my eyes, the jokes were delivered excellently and the entire experience was a great one. S and I wandered up to Crested Butte to watch the CBMT's (Crested Butte Mountain Theatre) production of Reefer Madness-The Musical. This is the first time that I had watched or heard of Reefer Madness and it is great! We were laughing the entire time. Mary Lane-one of the main characters has an amazing set of pipes and sang not only exceedingly well, but strong also.

I think part of the awesomeness that is community theatre is the fact that the players don't take themselves overly-seriously. It's refreshing to read actor bio's that contain hilarious comments and even some inside jokes. Some of my favorite lines from the bios:

"After eight years with CBMT, Megan has succumbed to the traditional, pointless nudity that makes the theatre what it is today."

"...He started with Suess, smapled some Shakespeare, dared to wear dresses, and now appears as his biggest character stretch of all. The Big J, the holiest of hosts, the Stranger from the Manger, the hardest working man in the afterlife."

"It has been Natasha's lifelong dream to drop out of college and try her hand as a porn star. Unfortunately, she recently graduated from WSC..."

So yeah. Links to hopefully be installed soon.

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Speeches and Ties and Students Oh My!

I'm back!

Back in Gunnison. Back at school. Back in the swing of things, kinda... getting there anyway. Yesterday was almost the definition of jumping in with both feet. I gave two speeches and worked at the front desk answering the same six questions for a thousand different people. It was a good time. :)

This President thing is kind of interesting. People a lot of the time assume that I have assumed power like some kind of a dictator and am able to allocate thousands of dollars anywhere I choose at any point in time. I can't. I probably wouldn't anyway. Also, everybody seems to know me. I know that I stood up at all the orientations and introduced myself, and I knew to anticipate a fishbowl type of effect, but someone I have never met before just walked up to me and said "I heard you play rugby". That's really crazy. They know me, I don't know how, but they do. It's disconcerting.

Very few people really care to understand. It's kind of suprising. They have these completely crazy and wrong assumptions but don't care to know how things really work, even if it is very simple. It's like they want to have these baseless assumptions so that they can bitch about things they don't understand and don't want to change. I don't get it. Maybe I'm just a dork like that.

Presidency does have it's perks though. I recieved a very very fancy invitation in the mail to the grand opening of the Borick Building, the new business building on campus. It's a very, very nice building. Anyway, this grand opening is going to be quite the party. It looks super formal from the invitation. I'll try to get pictures up from it.

Going to a play/musical tonight. Reefer madness. Should be awesome.

Peace, Love and cool business attire to you all.

Thursday, August 9, 2007

Good Friends Go the Extra Two Hundred Miles...

So... We needed a present for Mich's birthday. We had the perfect present in mind. Looked all over Colorado (the western slope anyway) for it. Nowhere to be found. Solution: Utah. Good news, we did find the present. We also went on an awesome stream hike and got invited to a great party. Good times.









Friday, August 3, 2007

Groceries vs. Switchbacks. Only the durable survive.



If I really had any sense, I would think through these things more. I would arrange groceries so that they do not roll around the back seat and shift so much that one has to remove select items from the front seat before opening the back doors so that items do not get destroyed when/if you open the door.

So. With this lesson in mind I proudly present: Guidelines for managing groceries and switchbacks.

P.S.- I've decided that switchbacks are really some engineers way of saying "hey Mom! Look what I can do!"

1. Put heavy, stable things on bottom. Stable is key here. Watermelons may be heavy, but unless they are surrounded by other items they are not stable in any way shape or form.

2. If items slide during the switchback turn, they probably aren't going to slide back even if you do take the next switchback a little bit faster.

3. Pulling over is not an option. Even if you think the pies fell against the door the only allowable option is to attempt to not have melons roll onto them for the rest of the drive.

Yeah buddy. Red Mtn. Pass. I wouldn't want to do it in the winter.