the past year in photos

 So I know it’s been a while since my last post. And when I say a while, I mean almost a full year. In that time, a lot has happened in my life and the lives of my friends. While I am no longer in Spain, that doesn’t mean the adventures haven’t continued. Yes, there have been less weekend getaways to exotic cities. And there are less frequent cultural blunders to report. In an attempt to sum up this past year for those out there I don’t get to talk to as regularly as I’d like, I’ll now take you through a year in pictures.

After getting back from Spain, my first adventure was a family road trip to northern Ohio, where we went to Cedar Point and the great city of Cleveland. In Cleveland, we toured the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Timothy admired the clear Lake Erie.

While I enjoy time with my family, I had to move out of the house. I moved in to a nice two-bedroom apartment with one of my best friends and former fraternity brothers, Nelson. Even though we’ve had our fair share of water leaks while living here in Camden Prospect Park, it’s been a great place to live.

In August, I began my first year of graduate school in sport administration. While I had planned on attending George Washington in DC, the University of Louisville offered me a last-minute graduate assistantship that was too good to pass up. My first exciting grad school journey took me to Lexington to be a mystery shopper at a UK football game with 3 new grad school friends. We were basically customer service spies, but got some cool perks like on-field access, where I met Tayshaun Prince.

The next graduate school adventure was actually for class, at the World Equestrian Games at the Kentucky Horse Park. For an event management class, we worked for Gameday Management to help operate bus transportation for people coming to WEG. While I spent most of my time working with the volunteers in the bus mall, we were able to spend some of our downtime exploring the Horse Park and seeing some of the Games.

As it was an election year, Louisville had some exciting visitors in 2010. One of those was my hero Bill Clinton, who visited the UofL campus to show support for Jack Conway. Conway ended up losing, but I won by getting to hear Clinton give an excellent speech (per usual).

While it may have been exciting to live in DC and attend graduate school, I quickly saw the numerous perks of UofL and was reassured I made the right choice. One of those was touring the new $220 million KFC Yum! Center in downtown Louisville. It’s an amazing arena, built specifically for UofL basketball. Timothy and I took a tour of it with my friend Michelle before the arena opened.

To keep the tradition alive, I had to throw a tacky Christmas party. In December, I put in the tackiest sweater vest/turtleneck I could find, shaved the no-shave November beard into an awesome mustache, and hosted a tacky Christmas party to coincide with the UofL soccer team’s national semifinal match. My dog Archie tried to ruin the party by eating a whole tray of brownies while I went on a quick beer run, but it was a big success. Here is a picture with my three best grad school friends and me: Per, Kristina, and Emily. Kristina left us in the spring to move her adventure to Colorado, but we had some good times.

Christmas break was the time for weddings. First, my fraternity brother and my brother’s former roommate Ryan got married to another good friend Sarah in Morehead in December. It was a great chance to see many college friends I hadn’t seen in a while and celebrate with Ryan and Sarah. Then in January, we did it all over again for my brother’s wedding to Mandy. I was definitely “that guy” at the wedding, as can be seen in the picture of me enjoying the dance floor.

Another Christmas break adventure was the new New Year’s Eve tradition at the Bush household in Frankfort. It was a great time ringing in 2011 with my closest friends, even more special as my great friends Tyler and Sara had just gotten engaged. So happy for the two of them. Here they are posing with the Halloween funfetti cake I made for them, which tasted a lot better than it looked.

The spring semester started off with a big UofL sport administration victory. Myself and three other grad students competed in the National Sports Forum Case Cup against 8 other teams from top national sport admin college programs. We were given a challenge, which in this case was to come up with a marketing campaign for the Ali Center, and had to present our solution 24 hours later. It was a long 24 hours, complete with a 5 am Kinko’s run, but our team worked really hard. We managed to make it to the final two, then just squeaked by the University of Oregon to bring home the NSF Case Cup.

As if I hadn’t had enough of Mid-South Conference athletics while running at Georgetown, I went back to the MSC to do my internship this spring. I was able to organize the men’s and women’s basketball tournament, as well as the track and field tournament. Both were extremely successful, and gave me the chance to work with some great people.

Along with organizing running events, I was able to participate in a few along the way. After completing the grueling P90X workout, my fitness reached new levels as I competed in the Louisville Triple Crown of Running. I was able to set PRs in all 3 races (17:12 in 5K, 36:46 in 10K, and 1:03:07 in the 10-miler) to come in 24th out of 2100 runners. This was just the stepping stone to my third marathon, which I will run in Cleveland on May 15 (just a week away!). My goal is to run under 3:10:00 to qualify for Boston.

Now that the semester has drawn to a close, I’m excited for a little relaxation this summer. There’ll be time in between summer school for some more adventures, along with celebrations (including one’s for new engagements of four of my best friends: Ryan and Jesse, and Jordan and Layne). But first, I’m working the 2011 Senior PGA Championships at Valhalla. It takes place May 24-29, but our operations team has already started working out on the course. It’s my first foray into golf, so we’ll see how it goes.