Prior to midterms
Next week will be the first round of exams in my classes -- specifically, in physics and calculus. I also have another quiz in C Programming (my second one) and I have my first take-home quiz due for Ethics (which doesn't really fit into the stress of "midterms," since I got to take it home and work on it for a week but...)
I'm stressed out in the back of my mind really. But not about the exams. I'm worried about the other commitments I have and I'm wondering how I'm going to make them all work out in the end. For instance, I have 10 hours I need to commit to NIST... and I have my first meeting for the VA Writing Workshop on Monday... and I have a butt-ton of reading to do for the Black Sun project... and regular reading to do for Ethics plus every other class... and I'm meeting with Alex during the time I usually do calculus homework, meaning I'll have to catch up on that at home along with everything else... and I really want to spend quality time with Lucas while it's still warm outside enough to go on walks in the evenings or bikerides even.
This next week will be the hardest to shift everything into, what with midterms. I can hardly believe it'll be week 5 already. The semester is just flying by and I feel like I'm really just struggling to keep up with it. Not in a bad way, but in a Jenga-like way, where each day that goes by removes one more block from my college career.
Of course, I spent most of today, my Saturday, messing around on the internet and playing with my phone settings. I feel like I waste most of the free time that's available to me, especially now that we've got internet set up in the house and I can waste it all doing absolutely nothing valuable with my time, all the while worrying in the back of my head how I'm going to make everything fit.
As for regular life update: I love Lucas incredibly. We really just fit together, from waking up in the morning to going to sleep at night. Not in the "we mirror each other's movements exactly," but in the "we work." I wake up earlier, and go to sleep earlier; he does the opposite, of course; our time together is usually just some of the most relaxed phases I've ever been in with another person. I feel almost like I'm just with an extension of myself with him, that I can just be whoever I am and not worry about what he's going to think. We're not always going to agree, but we're never mean to each other and we won't ever be at the rate we're going.
Yesterday evening, I had an appointment with my Lasik doctor for my year-after follow-up. We fought traffic for about 45 minutes to get into Denver, waited for about ten minutes for him to see me, and then after the -3 minute exam the doctor assured me my eyes were looking healthy as ever and I was getting 15/20 vision. We left the office less than 20 minutes after we got there and drove over to the nearby music store to waste some time and allow the end-of-day rush-hour traffic to die out. After hanging around for awhile, we finally started heading home. It felt a little awkward for some reason, like we were being too quiet, but I had nothing to say. When we got home, Lucas made some delicious sandwiches for dinner and we watched a few episodes of the Daily Show, President Obama's speech about the American Jobs Act, and then I fell asleep while Lucas watched the Banksy film "Exit Through the Gift Shop." That was pretty early even, probably just a little before 10pm; at some point in the night, I woke up and Lucas was still awake, downstairs on his computer.
This morning, I got up a little after 7:30am and did a bunch of wake-up things, from showering to cleaning the bathroom/kitchen to even practicing some calculus before he woke up sometime after 10. I made up some good breakfast (crepes and eggs), we tussled around a bit, then I wasted a few hours on my computer messing up my iphone settings. At about 2:30pm, we headed out to meet up with Jessica for some Young Adult service project thing. She'd emailed a pdf file about it and the first thing I read was an address for a church house in Golden. That turned out to be the "if inclement weather" meeting place and we had to drive another 20 minutes after that to get to a park on Lookout Mountain. We showed up and the only people there were Jessica with one young man and one older man. It was chilly but not too bad with the sunshine. While we waited for the other young adults to show up, Lucas and I drove over to the other side of the mountain where Buffalo Bill's grave is and which has one of the most terrific views of Denver that I can imagine.
When we got back to the group, it had multiplied to a pretty large bunch. We were making blankets to send off to the troops. The weather started to look pretty dismal and it changed from being a reasonably warm afternoon to absolutely frigid within about an hour. Rain started pouring down from dark blue/grey clouds, thunder echoed violently through the cliffs and valleys, and the wind cut through all the layers I had on me. Whenever Jessica came by, I hounded her about moving the activity to a church building to get out of the cold. Finally, at about 6pm, the announcement came that they were going to do just that. Lucas and I had managed to completely finish one blanket on our own and then we were assigned to cutting duties, successfully cutting out two more blankets before everything started getting packed up. We grabbed a few hot dogs, helped Jessica load everything up in the transport vans, and then took off to that same meetinghouse we went to originally.
Which, of course, turned out to be the wrong spot again. Jessica showed up after us and called one of her friends who told her that they'd changed the meetinghouse to somewhere else again. By then, it was 7pm and when Jessica asked if we'd still want to follow her to this new meeting place, I threw in the towel and told her we were heading home, back to Boulder.
On the way home, the clouds were phenomenal. There were layers and layers that melded into each other and twisted into individual shapes. The pinks and purples and blues of the sunset made it all seem like an impressionist painting rather than nature. The highlighting gold brilliance of the end-of-day sun was just the perfect contrast, calling out long shadows to shade the mountains as we drove back home.
Since then, I've messed around on the computer again and practiced up my Rosetta Stone, which I haven't worked on since January! I have some reviews to go to tomorrow, and then all the fitting of the next week. I'm officially happy and tired and perfectly content.
I'm stressed out in the back of my mind really. But not about the exams. I'm worried about the other commitments I have and I'm wondering how I'm going to make them all work out in the end. For instance, I have 10 hours I need to commit to NIST... and I have my first meeting for the VA Writing Workshop on Monday... and I have a butt-ton of reading to do for the Black Sun project... and regular reading to do for Ethics plus every other class... and I'm meeting with Alex during the time I usually do calculus homework, meaning I'll have to catch up on that at home along with everything else... and I really want to spend quality time with Lucas while it's still warm outside enough to go on walks in the evenings or bikerides even.
This next week will be the hardest to shift everything into, what with midterms. I can hardly believe it'll be week 5 already. The semester is just flying by and I feel like I'm really just struggling to keep up with it. Not in a bad way, but in a Jenga-like way, where each day that goes by removes one more block from my college career.
Of course, I spent most of today, my Saturday, messing around on the internet and playing with my phone settings. I feel like I waste most of the free time that's available to me, especially now that we've got internet set up in the house and I can waste it all doing absolutely nothing valuable with my time, all the while worrying in the back of my head how I'm going to make everything fit.
As for regular life update: I love Lucas incredibly. We really just fit together, from waking up in the morning to going to sleep at night. Not in the "we mirror each other's movements exactly," but in the "we work." I wake up earlier, and go to sleep earlier; he does the opposite, of course; our time together is usually just some of the most relaxed phases I've ever been in with another person. I feel almost like I'm just with an extension of myself with him, that I can just be whoever I am and not worry about what he's going to think. We're not always going to agree, but we're never mean to each other and we won't ever be at the rate we're going.
Yesterday evening, I had an appointment with my Lasik doctor for my year-after follow-up. We fought traffic for about 45 minutes to get into Denver, waited for about ten minutes for him to see me, and then after the -3 minute exam the doctor assured me my eyes were looking healthy as ever and I was getting 15/20 vision. We left the office less than 20 minutes after we got there and drove over to the nearby music store to waste some time and allow the end-of-day rush-hour traffic to die out. After hanging around for awhile, we finally started heading home. It felt a little awkward for some reason, like we were being too quiet, but I had nothing to say. When we got home, Lucas made some delicious sandwiches for dinner and we watched a few episodes of the Daily Show, President Obama's speech about the American Jobs Act, and then I fell asleep while Lucas watched the Banksy film "Exit Through the Gift Shop." That was pretty early even, probably just a little before 10pm; at some point in the night, I woke up and Lucas was still awake, downstairs on his computer.
This morning, I got up a little after 7:30am and did a bunch of wake-up things, from showering to cleaning the bathroom/kitchen to even practicing some calculus before he woke up sometime after 10. I made up some good breakfast (crepes and eggs), we tussled around a bit, then I wasted a few hours on my computer messing up my iphone settings. At about 2:30pm, we headed out to meet up with Jessica for some Young Adult service project thing. She'd emailed a pdf file about it and the first thing I read was an address for a church house in Golden. That turned out to be the "if inclement weather" meeting place and we had to drive another 20 minutes after that to get to a park on Lookout Mountain. We showed up and the only people there were Jessica with one young man and one older man. It was chilly but not too bad with the sunshine. While we waited for the other young adults to show up, Lucas and I drove over to the other side of the mountain where Buffalo Bill's grave is and which has one of the most terrific views of Denver that I can imagine.
When we got back to the group, it had multiplied to a pretty large bunch. We were making blankets to send off to the troops. The weather started to look pretty dismal and it changed from being a reasonably warm afternoon to absolutely frigid within about an hour. Rain started pouring down from dark blue/grey clouds, thunder echoed violently through the cliffs and valleys, and the wind cut through all the layers I had on me. Whenever Jessica came by, I hounded her about moving the activity to a church building to get out of the cold. Finally, at about 6pm, the announcement came that they were going to do just that. Lucas and I had managed to completely finish one blanket on our own and then we were assigned to cutting duties, successfully cutting out two more blankets before everything started getting packed up. We grabbed a few hot dogs, helped Jessica load everything up in the transport vans, and then took off to that same meetinghouse we went to originally.
Which, of course, turned out to be the wrong spot again. Jessica showed up after us and called one of her friends who told her that they'd changed the meetinghouse to somewhere else again. By then, it was 7pm and when Jessica asked if we'd still want to follow her to this new meeting place, I threw in the towel and told her we were heading home, back to Boulder.
On the way home, the clouds were phenomenal. There were layers and layers that melded into each other and twisted into individual shapes. The pinks and purples and blues of the sunset made it all seem like an impressionist painting rather than nature. The highlighting gold brilliance of the end-of-day sun was just the perfect contrast, calling out long shadows to shade the mountains as we drove back home.
Since then, I've messed around on the computer again and practiced up my Rosetta Stone, which I haven't worked on since January! I have some reviews to go to tomorrow, and then all the fitting of the next week. I'm officially happy and tired and perfectly content.