Winter Break

One of the absolute highlights of the school year is the time that you get to do nothing over winter break...but that wasn't the case this winter and I am going to tell you all about it from two different angles.

Winter Break SUCKS!

• Winter Break kicked off with me getting back my Managerial Finance final; I got a 79/120 on it.
• Rented a car for a trip 70 miles away; cars aren't cheap to rent.
• Flew across the country with a 7 month old. It would have been easier to have people come to us.
• After a day of traveling we got to bed at about 3am our old time.
• Never made it to Leavenworth for the lighting ceremony.
• Did a 3 1/4 hour drive to my parents house in 6 hours with snow covered road 80% of the way and Braedon crying for a couple of the hours.
• Lacie got sick watching Avator because of the 3D technology.
• GPS Lady, now nicknamed Maddy, lied to us about the time it took to get to Kyle and Bre's house and then sent us down a nasty dirt road.
• Did the 3 1/4 hour drive back to my in-laws in 5 hours due to crazy roads AGAIN!
• Rented another car to drive myself to the airport to fly to SF.
• Flew to SF to meet with TONS of companies.
• Rented another car while in SF...FYI, hybrids have about 2/3 the trunk space of the same non-hybrid car.
• Had to keep a straight face at an alumni dinner while talking to a guy that is the CEO of a sex toy internet store.
• Flew back to Seattle late and had to rent another car.
• Hung out at a dive karoake bar in Renton so that I could pick up my wife.
• Drove 1 hour each way to pick up classmates from the airport.
• Taxi passenger opened their car door into my rental car causing significant damage...traded the rental for a new one.
• Met with more companies in Seattle for hours on end.
• Parked on the street so as to save some money on parking but didn't notice that the parking was illegal from 3pm-7pm, got a ticket and was getting towed when I came out of the building...tried to save 6 bucks in parking only to spend 90 dollars on parking ticket and tow charges.
• Sat in traffic for hour and a half because of delay due to towing.
• Flew across the country with baby again.
• Rented sixth rental car of the winter break and drove 1.5 hours back to Ithaca.

Winter Break was exhausting but worth it!

• MBA classes are all curved so although I got a 79/120 on my final, I still got an A- in a class that I struggled with.
• I get corporate rates for rental cars and I negotiate even better deals than the corporate rates.
• We had an empty seat next to us for both legs of the flight so Braedon got to sit in his car seat and slept most of the way.
• Braedon fell right into the west coast schedule without a missed beat.
• We didn't make it to Leavenworth before Christmas but we did make it after Christmas and had a good time.
• The drives to and from Kennewick were long but they were beautiful and we got to see some exciting accidents (one of which we witnessed when a guy spun off the road and broke a light pole into the freeway).
• I really enjoyed Avatar.
• We had a great time hang with Kyle and Bre despite getting screwed up by Maddy.
• Learned a great deal about the SF tech companies, met great people, and really just had a valuable trip.
• When I got hit by the Taxi door I was in a rental which means that it didn't matter because my insurance won't get hit (it was their fault), my car won't have an accident on it, I was already at the airport so it was easy to swap out the rental.
• I had great visits to Seattle based companies and am much closer to having an internship.
• I was able to get half of the towing charges waived...still sucked but what can you do.
• We had an empty seat on the long leg of the flight back to Ithaca.

Bottom line: Despite the exhausting pace and craziness of our winter break, it was all worth it...but we are definitely doing a cruise over 1/2 of winter break next year so that we can actually have a break.