THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE END
The way I see it, this weekend, the last in November, heralds the end of the fall semester. This week I will be busily engaged with my end of term activities. I have much to complete and study before I can leave Edmonton for the year. I need now, more than ever, absolute focus and dedication to completing the task that lays ahead. Even more so, I see the opportunity to redeem flagging grades, and achieve what I had always hoped for last year -- namely, a solid 3.0 average. Granted, that isn't all that impressive, but I view it as a strong start. I didn't accomplish a whole lot this weekend, but I got a few things done. I am thankful to say that I finally squeezed in time for a haircut, and I picked up a few groceries. I at least now have milk in my room, which is now actually quite clean. More tomorrow, but I shall leave with this picture from Gloucester.
LAZY FRIDAY NIGHT
While most Fridays around here are entirely non-eventful, I actually believe I accomplished a few things today. While I believe that my room is still a disaster, I did manage to get that long needed haircut, go out to the Plant for dinner, and listen to a little of Bing Crosby's Christmas stuff. I also managed to perform with at least a little success my French presentation and the subsequent class discussion. Since I went to Boston last weekend, I now have much to complete for classes on Monday. I think I may wind upin the library all day tomorrow. It would seem that Christmas traditions are falling by the wayside as I grow older. As the extended families grow and evolve, individuals increasingly go their own way as the ole methods no longer suit. I find it a bit disappointing, but accept it as the way the world is. But if the world has to change, I don't see why it can't change a bit in my favor. For instance, I wouldn't mind seeing us have Christmas in the Bahamas. There's nothing wrong with replacing the evergreen with a palm. Plus, there's the added bonus of seeing Christmas bikinis... Or we could add rum to the eggnog; there's nothing like spicing up the holidays. The comment system on here is unfortunately going to have to change a little bit. I havge been getting comment spammed like crazy lately, so I will now have to approve each first post. After that, posts you make will show up immediately. This is the only way I can keep spammers at bay. I encourage everyone to get a TypeKey ID for posting. It will make things a bit easier for me to manage. My sleeping has been a bit out of wack lately, as I feel tired all the time, so I think I am going to hit the sack a bit earlier than normal tonight...
LOBSTER AND CHOWDA: BEST WEEKEND EVER
I can't say how awesome it has been to fly to Boston, Mass. for a weekend in New England. There is nothing like leaving the absolutely landlocked Edmonton, Alberta to go to a place like Gloucester, the oldest seaport in North America. As I learned today, it was founded in 1623. It aslo has a fantastic collectin of little shops winding up a one-way street. The weather was far from idyllic, but we managed to make the best of it. MY flight into Boston went quite well, though I was delayed above Minneapolis for a while due to heavy cloud cover and low visibility on the ground. Otherwise, I relaxed for most of the flight, content to chat with neighbors and thumb through a tattered Sky Mall catalogue. It was hard to throttle back the euphoria. I spent the last few days at a house in Lancaster, MA where I am currently typing this out on my Mom's notebook. Everybody else has hit the sack, as they are planning on leaving at 6:30 AM. It is 13 some odd hours back to Michigan from here. I guess I can understand the desire to get an early start, though I am reluctant to see the end of the weekend come up so fast. From here on out, I have a heavy amount of studying to do. I don't think I can afford to leave the library. I am hoping to see a bit more in the morning, as my flight doesn't take place until 6 in the evening. My hosts have been fantastic, and I have appreciated their efforts, though they cleaned me out in poker tonight. I had best get to bed before I have to wake up in the morning completely exhausted.
END OF THE LONG WEEKEND
"Oh, I am fortune's fool!" --From Romeo and Juliet (III, i, 141) It's extremely difficult to shake that feeling at times. Sometimes I want to shake my fists at God when I have one of those days where everything goes wrong. Romeo utters that famous line after realizing that he's just killed Tybalt after the Prince had outlawed any more fighting between the Montague's and Capulet's. That instantaneous moment of realization, followed by the above utterance, must be a universal feeling. Homer, of Simpsons fame, put it in a less eloquent way, "D'oh!" I experienced a rather acute attack of this feeling when I lost the keys to my U-Lock, and actually, when my hard drive died with all of my flash drives. Luckily, the drive was warrantied, and somebody turned the keys into main Lister today. Sometimes when your world is falling apart, it is hard to see that you are only shaking a bit, not falling off a mountain. It is hard to see the whole picture when you're in the midst of it. I pretty much wasted most of my four day weekend. I had a good time, but I didn't accomplish very much of my agenda. I finished a few things, which is better than nothing, I suppose, but I am not all that impressed with myself. I have a French test tomorrow morning that I really hope I am ready for. Likewise, I have quite a few projects due at the end of the week, so I suppose if I can give up the computer for a while, I can actually get my paper typed and my French project finished. Still hoping my ticket voucher gets to Minneapolis in Canada Post's stated time. If it doesn't, no Boston for me.
I'M SICK
I took off on Friday for Granum to spend the weekend. It went well, and I got to see everybody that I had wanted to see. I traveled down in a 2-door 1990 Pontiac Sunfire, but it had a terrific audio deck, and the company was great as well. Coming back was kinda sketchy as there was a lot of fog and ice, but we made it back alright. While down there, I basically visited all of my relatives for a bit and went to church, along with a fair bit of studying. I have a lot of work to do, even though midterms are over with. I went to bed last night thinking that my throat was awfully sore, and when I woke up, the irritant had metastasized into a full blown cold. I was all congested, and I generally felt terrible. I picked up a box of Sudafed, came back to my dorm, and crashed. I feel slightly better now, but I am hoping to go to bed in the next half hour or so to see what a lot of sleep can do to the illness. We'll see, more tomorrow.
THE END AND THE BEGINNING
Thankfully, I have finally finished midterm week on the first day of a brand new month. This does not mean that my work is over, though I acted like it today, it just means a shifting in work, gearing towards finals. The classes now have partly changed focus, most dramatically in anatomy and semiotics. I have my work cut out for me if I wish to even hope for better grades than last year. I am planning on doing a significant number of math problems per night to work on my speed. I am watching the election tomorrow with baited breath. I have been disenfranchised in the Michigan; they didn't send me my absentee ballot in time, but I am still watching the outcome. This one is a nailbiter, but I am hoping GWB prevails. That wouldn't make a lot of people around here very happy, but I can't stomache Kerry. I don't agree with everything the incumbent has done, but I think he is still better than the challenger.
A POLEMIC
Well, this time I promise not to make this one, but I swear, unless the readership goes up a bit around here, I'll throw one out just to rile everyone up. I am hoping for some comments at some point here. The site is set up so that if your email client or web browser is fairly recent, you can syndicate this site with RSS or Atom. Those services allow you to see when there is a new post without even going to my website. They will show up in your email client or in your modern browser. I strongly recommend the use of either Opera or Firefox for your daily web browser, and both support this kind of syndication. My math midterm went badly. There really isn't a nicer way I can put that. I found the problems to be easy enough, and yet, I simply couldn't complete them fast enough. All I can say is that I hope the curve is gracious. I am still hoping for improved grades over last year, and so far, I believe I am somewhat successful, but I have a long ways to go. I have attached the audio portion of tonight's post here. Please note that you must have a player capable of handling Real Audio files. Programs are available for Linux, Mac, and Linux here.
IN THE THICK OF IT
So far, I have my semiotics midterm in my posession, completed two others, and have two more midterms to go. I am concerned that I won't have the grades that I am looking for, but I am going to go hard with what I have and see where I land. I plan on waking up fairly early tomorrow to study for psych in the evening. As soon as I get back from that, I will do araft of math problems, and hope that I am ready for that midterm at 9 AM. The best news of all is that my semiotics prof gave us a few extra days to do the midterm, allowing me to focus on the more immediate ones. I was working on my computer today, and it was really acting up, so I was planning on doing some diagnostics. I never got around to that because the computer froze and I was unable to reliably reboot it. I tried a few things, but after try to repair XP, and getting a fail, I decided to test the hard drive. I moved it over to my cheap ECS motherboard with S.M.A.R.T. and verified that the drive had indeed died with all of my data... The drive was only 5 months old. You should always do weekly backups, I got lucky because I had just burned my stuff to two DVD's to save space. Anyway, the drive was definitely under warranty, so I should get a replacement in a few days. The other machine I have is out of comission compiling KDE. I am on my notebook. What a life.
ANATOMY MIDTERM
Ahhhhh!!!! I see the writing on the wall, and it doesn't look good. After taking a good look at the anatomy practice midterm, it seems painfully obvious that the prof wants us to know a fantastic amount of detail. I am unfortunately not quite there yet. I plan on going to bed in about 3 minutes, and waking up tomorrow, doing my lab, and then studying like a fiend. I am hoping to pass this with a decent grade. THat is going to require a miracle at this point. Lot's of other stuff going on right now too, but I am too tired to go into it now. 'night.
RHAPSODY
A mildly busy Sunday. I didn't achieve all of what I had hoped to get done, but I believe that was somewhat offset by the fact that I had no math homework this week. I spent a good portion of today studying and cleaning, but I goofed off a fair bit too. Luckily, I spent about 6 hours in the library yesterday preparing for anatomy. I don't think I am ready for that one yet, but hopefully after a few hours tomorrow, I will be. One of the biggest wastes of time this year is the incredible invention of Rhapsody. I love that program, er, service. It's basically 800,000 tracks that you can listen to on demand. You have to be online to use it, but at the university, that is not a problem. I have listened to a ton of CD's now, and what doesn't help matters any, is that if I think of a song, I can play it. I spent today listening to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Weird Al, Kenny G, and Sting, among others. I listened to a new, rather different album the other day, "There Will be a Light" by Ben Harper and The Blind Boys of Alabama. Interesting mix. Crazy week of four midterms, so... Peace out.