Hmm... I don't remember the last time I posted...
So yeah, back in school already. X_X
I don't know if I wrote about Thanksgiving, but that was nice, and then finals week was miserable because I had to stay until Thursday morning, one of the longest delays I'd had in quite some time. But I made good grades in everything, even scraping a B+ in Accounting.
I came home, unpacked and then hurled myself into my Princess Garnet cosplay project. Almost every day I would wake up early, eat breakfast, and go into my lair, the office/sewing room, never to be seen except when I would emerge for lunch and dinner. I made a lot of "tests" for the more difficult parts on cheap fabric, working out all the kinks in my patterns and etc. (With the help of a sewing book, I've made great progress in learning how to make my own patterns/change patterns effectively!) Because of this, once I made the garments with the fabric I intended to use for the actual costume, I didn't have nearly the same amount of trouble having to make last-minute alterations, but the number of hours worked on the entire thing was probably about the same or more in the end. It was nice, though, not to run such a high risk of ruining my good fabric and having to buy more. I did, however, have to take multiple trips out to different stores to find very specific patterns and notions--finding the right belt buckles and buttons were surprisingly difficult in particular. (And then the van crapped out on us again, so there were days I couldn't work on something just because we didn't have a working vehicle at our disposal, ugh.) My last night at home, last Saturday, I stayed up until 3AM packing all my stuff and working on the last "I absolutely have to machine-stich this" parts of the outfit, and then on Sunday I quickly formed and baked the polymer clay component of the pendant I had to make, just finishing with enough time to eat lunch and do some supplies shopping before I had to leave for school again. I felt an exhausted, adrenaline-laced sort of pride that I managed to finish several months' worth of work in one month, but it was a brutal way to spend the last decent-sized vacation of my life.
The only thing is, somewhere around Christmas Eve, I realized I'd barely had time to really hang out with my family, and by then, it was too late. I felt bad for my mom in particular, because not only had she been looking forward to spending more time with me, I had made a huge mess of her sewing room and the dining room with all my materials and rejected pattern pieces and such strewn about everywhere. And even on the actual holiday days, while I helped with the cooking and we all had cocktails and nice dinners together and everything, I was still thinking about the work I still had to do. For the first time in years, I chose not to participate in choir for Christmas, not only because I didn't want to take time to go to practice, I was also feeling decidedly anti-social. It was bizarre and more than a little depressing to be in the congregation for Christmas Eve Mass, like I'd let something pass me by. Also, because of all my work, New Year's came and went like any other day. With all this uncertainty about what's going to happen after I graduate, I can't say I feel particularly hopeful at this point in time for things to get better, to be honest. I'm worried that any decent job opportunities I get are going to take me very far away from home, which is the last direction I want to go right now.
When I did take breaks, though, we generally had a good time together. Mom and Phillip and I did go out to brunch/lunch a good number of times, and we all saw True Grit and Tron. (I also got Mom to see Tangled with me, which she really liked.) And for the first time in a while, Phillip actually woke up around the same time as I did Christmas morning, and we took a nice, long time opening our presents together. The only practical thing I got was socks, and the rest was fun stuff. I got a lot of books, especially classics, in paperback, so with that and my "let's re-read HP 1 through 7 back to back!" project, I'll have plenty to read for the next few months. I was a little sad not to get any of the movies on my list, but I fixed that for myself later, and besides, Phillip and I had bought movies for the parents that we also liked, so we had fun watching those. (Anyone remember For Richer or Poorer, or Krippendorf's Tribe? Those are two of our most-quoted old favorites, which for some reason we never owned, so I fixed that this year.)
I also took a nice, long break from the Internet, and even the computer in general. While that meant I spent unfortunately very little time doing any writing, it was also very freeing not to even turn the thing on for days at a time. Because the computer wasn't on, and I wasn't in my room most of the day, I didn't think to go up there and idly surf youtube or tv tropes, or whatever, and so, I was free to do something more productive with my time. It reminded me of my middle school and high school days, when I was able to focus on one thing at a time, and get things done faster. I could never have finished this sewing project had I had my laptop by my side. So, I'm going to try to keep that up, and maybe not leave the computer off, since at school I never know when something important might come up, but, I think I'll try to do my homework away from my desk, and maybe I won't be as tempted to take a break before it's finished.
I feel bad for losing touch with friends over that time, but I'll catch up this week.
So this quarter, I have an acting class, two business classes, and one credit of Japanese. The acting class began yesterday, and it's a nice mix of learning about acting and discussing plays, as well as doing a little acting ourselves. It's nice for someone like me with no acting experience to start at the bottom like this, and luckily, all my classmates are non-theatre majors as well, so I don't feel too out of place. My business classes are Tuesdays and Thursdays, back to back, and I'm a little worried about how I'm going to have time for lunch and get to both on time, but it's better than having dead time in between where there's not enough time to go home, but too much to just sit and wait somewhere. Japanese hasn't been scheduled yet, but if I'm lucky, it'll be on Monday or Thursday, and then I'll have Fridays off! Fingers crossed!