I wanna go back to Ohio State to old Columbus town

I wanna go back to Ohio State to old Columbus town
To the stadium to hear the band - by far the finest in the land
I wanna go back to Ohio State to old Columbus town
I wanna go back - I gotta go back - to O-HI-O!
Ohio, Ohio
The hills send back the cry (O-H)
We're here to do or die (I-O)
Ohio, Ohio
We'll win the game or know the reason why
And when we win the game, we'll buy a keg of booze
And we'll drink to old Ohio til we wobble in our shoes!
Ohio, Ohio
We'll win the game or know the reason why

My first time back on campus since I moved - first time back to Columbus too. And just as the song says - I wanted desperately to go back to Ohio State, to old Columbus town. It was time. Kyle and I spent an afternoon walking across campus and relaxing by Mirror Lake.

It was like being a tourist in your own hometown. Kyle and I got Jeni's Ice Cream and took it down to North Bank Park - one of my favorite views of Columbus.

And of course a stop at Schmidt's for a cream puff was necessary. And since Sarah and Harry made fun of me for taking a picture of my cream puff and not my friends, I made sure we got a group shot at Schmidt's. I miss the cream puffs, but not as much as I miss my friends.

Kyle's first OSU game at the Shoe and my first game as an alumna. Not exactly a nail-biter, it was a 49-0 victory over Purdue. By the fourth quarter, we were more interested in watching the Northwestern - Michigan State score than we were the live game in front of us. But it was nevertheless a lot of fun.

Mom and dad threw a tailgate for the game, so I got to hang out with the 'rents and of course Tuck!

Isn't he the cutest little pomapoo?

And there's nothing like celebrating a victory and a great weekend back home than a night with the best friend drinking to old Ohio til we wobble in our shoes. :D

I miss autumn

Went to DC for a PR conference.

It made me realize how much I miss seasons. Not that I don't love 70 degree weather all year round because obviously it is pretty awesome to still be in t-shirts and flip flops when it is frosty back home, but it is also hard to realize time is passing because the weather doesn't fluctuate.

It'd actually be most ideal if I could have a week of crisp, autumn air with vibrant orange and red falling leaves. Then I'd be ok with going back to 70 degrees. And snow on Christmas of course. It is hard to get in the spirit of Christmas when it still feels like summer vacation.

Loved this tree overlooking the tidal basin on my walk over to the FDR.


The FDR is by far my favorite memorial. I think it is because of the waterfalls. And maybe the cute little pooch. Not that I pick my favorite memorials based on how cute the dog is... but it certainly influences my opinion.



I like the World War II memorial too. Even though it doesn't have dogs.



I miss DC. I can't help but smile walking down M street or through Dupont Circle. Can't wait to go back.

Callin' Baton Rouge

I have a continuous soundtrack that plays within my own head... and when I visit Louisiana all I can think of is Garth Brook's Callin' Baton Rouge.

"A replay of last night's events roll through my mind -
except a scene or two erased by sweet red wine...

Operator won't you put me on through,
I gotta send my love down to Baton Rouge."

My most recent visit, I went to my first LSU game. Kyle, his roommates, and I went to see the band parade before the game - and got stuck behind quite a few rows of people so the visibility was pretty much nil. It turns out sometimes the stars do align, and we happened to be standing along the path where Mike the tiger breaks through. Got to see him up close and personal. Rawr.


Sat in the student section of Death Valley... I always thought having an assigned seat like I did in the Shoe was ideal, but I must say the open admission seating was pretty cool because you could sit wherever you want and with whoever you want at every game. Which means I wouldn't have had to have sat beside Mr. Needs Deodorant all of junior year.

Must say it is the only time I've ever worn a dress to a football game. At OSU, I made fun of the girls who came in dresses. In Ohio that means one of two things: either you haven't gone home from last night at the bar or you are going to the game to pick up a man and have no idea what a touchdown is. Kind of like the girls who go to college for their MRS degree, they go to a football game for a date. But, when in Rome, do as the Romans do, and in the south, the girls don't wear jerseys, they wear dresses. It was fun, but harder to jump up and down and cheer without flashing everyone.



The band spelled out LSU. No "i" to dot, unfortunately. Made me long for Script Ohio.



A good game against West Virginia. :D Potentially my first of many games at Death Valley.

New Adventure #3: Please leave your carryon in the overhead bin, we're deboarding at 13,000 feet

I think skydiving is one of those adventures that is either definitely on your bucket list or definitely not. Someone asked me, "Why would you jump out of a perfectly good plane?"

My answer to that is... I'm apparently just thrill and adventure seeking.
I took the skydiving class at Ohio State and we talked about the biology of risk. And we took a BBC quiz on how "sensation seeking" we were. There were several different categories we could fall in (ie: we seek sensations because we are bored, because we are disinhibited, or in my case, because I just want the experience.) Take the quiz to see where you'll fall:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/sensation/

My results: Thrill and Adventure Seeking - You score 10 out of 10
Sensation seeking is a personality trait expressed in behaviour as a tendency to seek varied, novel, complex and intense sensations and experiences and to take physical risks for the sake of having such experiences. These experiences could take the form of extreme adventure activities such as scuba diving, snowboarding and mountain climbing.

Or of course, jumping out of a plane.

So that's why I decided to go sky diving - and probably why I made a resolution to do 10 new things in 2010 in the first place.

I think I see it as a calculated risk. More than likely, my parachute will open - or if that fails, my backup parachute likely will - and my tandem instructor will get me safely to the ground. Otherwise, maybe it is just my time to go.

My grandmother always gets nervous when my mom or I fly on planes (let alone jump out of them), and my mom always says that - if it is my time to go. My grandma responds, "But what if it is the pilot's time to go?"

In this case, I'd better hope it isn't the guy who is strapped to my back's time to go.

Chrissy and I went together down to Start Skydiving in Lebanon, Ohio. We had to decide who was jumping out first, so we did the very scientific and rationale method of rock, paper, scissors, which only works, by the way, if one of you picks something other than scissors.

I think we played four or five rounds before one of us finally picked rock or paper. We eventually determined that I had to jump out first. I think that means I lost.

On the plane ride up, since we were the only two going, the pilot made a swoop that made us float and feel like we were "defying gravity." Pretty fun. Our photographers also wanted to have a fashion shoot. "Thumbs up"

"Pose like a tiger"

I don't think I realized until we truly got up in the air the true ramifications of what was going to happen. When you are looking down at the tiny little houses - as you do in all plane rides - except this one you know that you are going to be getting off the plane when those houses still look tiny. And when they opened the door to let us out... Wow. It was probably a good thing that I did go first because if I saw Chrissy out the door, I'm not sure I'd have wanted to join her.

But out we go at 13,000 feet - and my first shock is not even how high up we are or the fact that we are falling to the ground. It was breathtaking - literally and figuratively. Yes the landscape was beautiful and I was in awe, but the 120+ made it physically very difficult to take in air. But after the initial shock, it was just enjoying the ride.

I got to fall through some clouds!

For some reason this shot makes me feel like a teradactyl.

The camera man and I held hands and spun around in the air.

We are getting ready to pull the cord!

And there we are - parachuting. I think that was my favorite part of it actually - after we opened the parachute and we could very calmly float around the air. I got to steer and spin and look around at all the scenery. So much fun.


Want to see my dive? (And some embarrassing interviews by my camera man on the ground and in the plane?) Check out my video: http://www.lifepursuitvideo.com/asppublic/Video45036.aspx?VF=35867
Just enter my e-mail address, colleen.maleski@gmail.com, and your zip code.

New Adventure #2: First time in the back of a cop car.... Mardi Gras in New Orleans

I've been terrible at keeping up with current adventures - let alone previous ones... but I have to make sure to document all 10 2010 adventures I've accomplished for my New Year's Resolution.

My first adventure was snowboarding... my second was a trip to New Orleans - for Mardi Gras... or to be completely accurate - the weekend of Mardi Gras, not actually Fat Tuesday.

A Phi Sigma Pi roadtrip with Caitlin and Em... a trip I normally wouldn't tell my parents I was taking, but it was in February and we wanted a vehicle that would be able to handle in the snow, so I had to ask my dad to borrow a Chevy Blazer. Thank goodness we did. That weekend it snowed in 49 out of the 50 states - only Hawaii didn't have any. Our drive down wasn't bad, but it was strange to be driving in Mississippi with a white dusting of snow on the ground. We had just driven all night and were starving and we kept hearing on the radio how stores and restaurants might be shutting down for the "blizzard" (which was a flurry at best in Ohio terms). That is - if there were any restaurants. We decided we were hungry and should start looking for restaurants. 40 minutes later we saw a sign: Cracker Barrel - 26 miles. Legitimately the only restaurant along the highway. We couldn't have been more thankful to get there - and to see it hadn't closed due to the snow. They then served my milk in a huge frosted mug that I would liken to a beer stein. First time I've ever drank milk in a beer stein. I think appropriate for a trip to Mardi Gras.



We stayed with our PSP hosts, Emily, Kyle and Greg, in Baton Rouge. Saw the first ever Cane's. Going to be completely honest - had no idea it started at LSU. Luckily, they convinced us to eat at Chimes - because although I love Texas Toast, I can get that on High Street in Columbus. Em and I shared an alligator appetizer - grilled and blackened. I'm going to be honest - pretty delish. The next morning, we rode a bus down to New Orleans (about an hour away) for a day - and night - in the city. Our first stop, appropriately, was Pat O'Briens for a Hurricane, yes at 10 a.m.


The patio at Pat O's was decked out Saints. We were in New Orleans only a few days after the Saints Super Bowl win so it was a pretty amped up time to be in the city.

We tried to see a little bit of the city before it turned into a hot mess. The St. Louis Cathedral...

...and Jackson Square - which was unfortunately, but understandably, closed off so the drunken tourists wouldn't trash the beautiful park there. It was a quaint scene.. with the Cathedral in the background, the horse-drawn carriages. Kind of felt like it should be the set of a Disney movie - oh wait... Princess and the Frog. :)

Saw the Mississippi River. And yes I am wearing Ohio State beads... and out of the 60 beads I caught - not earned - while in New Orleans, it was the only set I bought because I desperately wanted them.

Honestly, I think this was the biggest misconception I had about Mardi Gras in New Orleans. I thought you could only "earn" beads, and I quickly learned that a) They throw out a TON in parades and if you smile and wave and look cute they might throw you the extra special ones even without flashing them, b) There is a valid barter system on the streets. If you have something that someone else wants and it is a reasonably equal trade, you can probably again get what you want without any boobs involved. It might take a little longer, but I much prefer it.

Honestly, my goal was to make sure I had beads from both of the parades I went to - Tucks and Isis... and I accomplished that.

We finished the night with two hand grenades from Tropical Isle - each. Or we tried, but I think we all failed to even finish one.

The next day - our 30 hour journey home. It should have been about a 14 hour drive, but... we had some delays. For example, running out of gas in Northern Mississippi. We had been switching drivers and apparently no one noticed that our gas gauge had been stuck on a quarter for the last - 5 hours and who knows how many miles. We are on the side of a deserted dark highway in a snowstorm, and pretty sure we are about to die when strange men pull over and want us to roll down our windows (we might be dumb enough to not put gas in our car, but we aren't that stupid). There's something to be said about Southern hospitality though. We call a cop - who when he asks where we are, I can completely honestly say I have no idea and he laughs at me... but when he came out and found us he put us in the back of his cop car, drives home - yes to his house - and gets his gas can. He empties his own gas out of it into our car and follows us to the next exit to make sure we make it safely and can get filled up.

So my friends read a Facebook status that says I'm in the back of a cop car during my weekend at Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

After we get back on the road - and enjoy a lecture from my father "you should never let it get down to a quarter tank anyway" - it takes us another day and a half to get home. We crash at Caitlin's brother's in Tennessee for a few hours of sleep (and because we couldn't see more than a few inches ahead of us) before battling the snow covered again in the morning. It was the day that 71 was shut down north of Columbus for a 30+ car pileup. But we finally made it home.... we were exhausted and smelled rank. (The streets were so full of filth by the end of the night and smelled so disgusting that all of our suitcases and clothes, and eventually the car, smelled too - I can't even imagine it after Fat Tuesday itself). But it was so nice to be home.

It's a small world after all.

I went to Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass. for training for work. Pretty cool to see the stadium where the Patriots play and hang out in the little Easton-style bars, restaurants, and shops that surround the stadium. (Also found a Saucony shoe store at nearby outlets, and I was sad I just bought new tennis shoes. I considered buying a second pair just because they were unbelievably cheap and it is IMPOSSIBLE to find any selection of Saucony brand sneakers in any normal shoe store anywhere).

On the first day, there was a lot of meet and greet among the employees there for training, and I learned it truly is a small world. An engineer overheard me saying that I was from Ohio and he told me he was too. I asked him where he was from, and he said, "A little town just north of I-70, you've probably never heard of it." I said, "Try me." He was from Newcomerstown. In a company of 75,000 employees, 150 employees there for training, I found the one person from "my hometown" - or close enough...Tuscarawas County. Four Ohio State fans did an O-H-I-O shot!

I had the opportunity to hang out with my lovely Communications ladies! Such a fun week!

At the hotel bar, we each tried a neon, very girly martini. I asked the bartender to make a special drink for me. It was a slight derivation on the classic Crowleski, a drink created by my best friend and me (admittedly modeled off of a Mongolian BBQ mixed drink - hey, I give credit where credit is due). The classic is blue curacao, vodka, lime mix and a splash of pomegranate. He used pomegranate vodka with the lime and blue curacao, and it was just as delish. The ladies dubbed it as the "pomegranate blues." (Definitely try this out). So excited for our next work excursion to New York when we'll all be back together again. Love these girls. :)