ready?

Buy, trim, wrap, pack, chat,

Drive, snow, cook, eat, check, recheck,

You ready for this?

Well, Christmas is now two days away.  Titan is here for the holidays, and the tree finally got put up at home yesterday.  We had our family Christmas this morning.  I feel like my Christmas has been a little overshadowed by my efforts to prepare for Japan (speaking of which, my hair's purpleish now--http://picasaweb.google.com/VASavage/PurplePains#--I guess that bleach blonde + purple + purple + purple = brown with purple streaks?), so I'm trying to make up for it by being really spirited.  Cookies!  Elves!  Reindeer antlers! 

It's been good.  The roads are in awful condition, though.  It's a white Christmas!  The drive from Indianapolis to Joliet, which is normally ~3 hours, took 6-7 hours.  I think I topped out at 50, and that wasn't for very long.  Titan, Venus, and I saw 15 wrecks between Indy and mile marker 201 (normally about an hour away).  People got a little too crazy, and it was wicked slick.  We made it alright, though.  Just waiting for Mom and Dad to get in later tonight.  They left a few hours after us, and it seems like their going is even slower.

Japan plans are almost here!  I'm nervous that I've forgotten something in Columbus or Bloomington, but I've repacked my bag so many times I don't know how I could have.  I guess we'll find out for sure in THREE DAYS.  <3!

finals

A big test for all

The marbles?  Wait, who thought this

Was a good idea?

Yeah, I can't say I'm a huge fan of the idea of finals.  I haven't had any yet; mine are all today and tomorrow.  It's less than thrilling to think about sitting in a room for two hours and agonizing over the fact that those two hours contribute 40% of my grade.  Seriously, it's an awful idea.

On the plus side, finals week means that there's lots of free time (no homework or classes!) to make sure I see everyone before I shove off.  ^_____^

And Christmas shopping.  Ohhhh... that.

that time of year

It's that time of year,
When Christmas spirit pours from
Everywhere. And how!

It's been pretty amusing to watch the transformation in stores. Some started Christmas in October, and it seems like prices are getting slashed in anticipation of the holiday season even more rapidly this year, probably due to the fact that consumer spending is expected to drop dramatically. I just read an article in the New York Times about Saks Fifth Avenue and how they're cutting some of their prices up to 80% already. Amazing.

I haven't actually done any Christmas shopping yet, myself, but it's looking like a pretty easy season. The internet now offers more gifts than ever, and I have some extra time to spend making creative gifts (i.e. spending less money). :)

I was pretty excited today; I busted out my Jack Skellington earmuffs for the first time this season and got lots of compliments on them. :D Winter is a fun season to dress for, haha. I'm also excited because I was talking to one of the guys from Dresden who was on the CC team, and he has promised to send me a Christmas care package with more chocolate. What he wants in exchange is... barbecue sauce?

Classes are winding down, which is nice. One of my profs has canceled all his lectures for next week, and I had two classes with him, so that frees up my schedule a lot. I also won't be (I don't think) teaching the lab that I generally teach, since there won't be any new work to do. The only nagging thing for me now is calculus. It seems like that work never ends. I can't say that I'm terribly excited about Calc IV next semester, but we'll see how it goes. Hopefully we'll be learning a lot more; I feel like this term I didn't pick up a lot of new material from 311. Meh.

Oh, did you hear that "meh" was added to the dictionary? It's a very recent thing. I was pretty excited. :3

Anyway, that's about all for the moment. I have calculus to do!