Pete Sampras, Friggin' Mia Hamm and Nolan Ryan

I have no excuses. Heck, my excuses have no excuses, not even of the "Dad, I missed the last bus so I HAVE to stay over" variety. 3 months and 11 days since I last wrote and 22 days since either of us put up a blog entry. Ugh.

So what have I been up to since I last wrote?

• Finished my first semester at Willamette, getting a B+ in Marketing and an A in Finance. Not a bad start, even with the obligatory MBA grade inflation. A fair amount of sleep deprivation was involved but I survived.
  
• The same day of my last day of class, I lost a fight with Mia Hamm. No, not the retired now mother of twins. Instead with her plaque at the Nike campus. I was helping someone pick up papers they'd dropped and as I rose up, I caught the corner of the plaque. The employee asked if I was ok (I just thought I'd gotten my bell rung) and then I headed off to the car to go to my last night of class. On my way to the car I put my hand up to my head and got a handful of blood. Thankfully I had a towel in the car and was able to stop the bleeding. With that taken care of I elected to go the class. Of course it started bleeding again during dinner but I was able to again get it stopped and make it through the class (much to the amazement of my classmates who thought I should go to the emergency room). By the end of the evening though even I was convinced I should go to the hospital. As a result...
• Got the pleasure of sitting in the hospital ER for 4 hours until I finally got a bed (where my sleep-deprived self took a nap until the doctor showed up) and in the end 4 stitches in my noggin. Despite the doctor's diagnosis that the gash would heal, I've got a pretty good chunk still out of my hair. Another reason to keep the buzz cut...
• Spent WAY too much time obsessing over my fantasy baseball team. Yes, I'm a giant dork. But I'm a "currently in the money" dork :-)
• I ended my first contract job with Nike. I enjoyed the position in that it gave me an opportunity to see the company first hand, understand the Nike culture and work with an interesting group. I even put on a very successful Bike Drive with the Community Cycling Center. Unfortunately my group had a head count open up for which my boss already had someone lined up. As a result, the tasks I was in charge of diminished and upon mutual agreement, my position actually finished May 30th. This was by no means an ideal ending to the position, but it did make me a "Free Agent" right at the beginning of Nike's new fiscal year (June 1). Pete Sampras, you were a gentle entree into the madness of the swoosh.
  
• I watched my best friend from college get married. Foltzie, who over the years has evolved from a mismatched sock-wearing geek to a Jack Spade bag-carrying metrosexual geek got married in Seattle to his long-time girlfriend Jessica. Becca and I had a great time getting to catch up with my friends, the Foltz family and enjoy a beautiful weekend in Seattle. We even got in a spot of bowling with the Bride & Groom. Can't put a value on that :-)
• I'm now 8 weeks into semester two at Willamette. This semester it is Accounting and Statistics. In addition to being two very labor-intensive classes and being taught in summer, they are both classes where the professor is talking AT you. This leads to minimal interaction in class, which makes the four hours go SLOWLY. I'm doing well in both and I feel like I'm learning a lot in Stats but overall this semester has been a much bigger grind than last semester. Hopefully we'll get something light like HR next semester.
• The job front is picking back up again. During my last day at Nike in May I met with the Sr. Marketing Manager for Digital Commerce (think Nikestore.com). We had a great conversation and I stayed in touch. Just over two weeks ago I got an email from someone in their Marketing Analytics department. A few meetings and good impressions later, I've got another contract position. This time I'm going to be a Marketing Analyst for Digital Commerce. This will be a great combination of my online experience plus my quantitative strengths. Needless to say I'm excited. The sticking point now is the paperwork between Nike and Kelly Services, the temp company I'm working with. We're now at over a week of waiting for the papers to be finalized. Once that happens though I'm back on campus. The contract is funded through the summer though its likely that it will extend from there. I'm just thrilled to have another chance out there and see if this particular team is a better fit (it should be). And yes, I'm working in the Nolan Ryan building.
  

So there you go. As you can tell, I've been a WEE bit busy. So much so that I haven't even been able to read a book since February (of the non-textbook category). So I apologize for not writing sooner. I'll try to add my thoughts a little more often again. As long as I have accounting class, I have a place for uninterrupted writing...

BD

(The picture is sometime last semester. The danger of procrastinating with the MacBook camera...)