a wonderful break at home.

I made it home! Amazingly. And just in time for Christmas dinner. As in fifteen minutes after I walked through the front door, my family sat down for our Christmas dinner. Not a whole lot of time to build up to that event. But at least I made it.

Thankfully I was able to make it out of the midwest on Saturday and I only had a short delay in Minneapolis. So my family graciously waited a few extra hours for me so that our early celebration wouldn't include an empty seat.

However, less than 24 hours after arriving home, I packed back up (actually I just dumped out all the dirty clothes and scrambled for enough clean ones) and headed north for a few days.

Now I'm finally home for a while, complete with the walk-thru bedroom covered in clothing, suitcases, and bright pink flowers. And I have decided to not do anything that I don't want to...except work of course...which I do kind of want to do considering I get paid. But everything else: is made of catching up on the hours and hours of not sleeping and spending lots of time with the siblings.

Oh and this weekend? the beach of course. where else?

a flight?

Its 12:21. What was I supposed to be doing now? packing like crazy so that I could get out of here on time to get something to eat before I got on the plane for a long night of flying home.
What am I doing? absolutely nothing but only for a short time before I start doing absolutely nothing for the rest of the day...maybe tomorrow too.

Why oh dear Denver? Why do you have to enter a blizzard the day before I go home for Christmas? But yes I am thankful I'm not one of the 5 thousand people who gets to sleep in the Denver airport for Christmas weekend. Or any other airport for that matter.

Instead it looks like I'm going to go home with my roommate and take the place of her sister and brother-in-law who are of course also not flying home today. And I get to do some laundry and watch some movies and make about 100 phone calls.

Somehow I am still in a good mood. Actually I've spent most of the day wondering where my energy and happiness is coming from. I should be like my poor neighbors who are practically unable to do anything from stress, lack of sleep, and anxiety; but instead of making me freak out, all of those things have made me enjoy every crazy moment of the day.

Well almost every moment. There were a few that weren't so enjoyable:
8:10 am: I roll over reach for my alarm clock, read the time, close my eyes. Check the time again. still 8:10. I wait a moment for it all to sink in. My exam started at 8...as in 10 min ago. I start asking random questions as to the validity of the time on my alarm clock.
Finally I jump out of bed, check the clock on my computer, yes it is now 8:15. I practically have to drag my sleeping friend out of the next bed so that she doesn't completely miss her exam too. How does this sort of thing always happen to us?

Oh yeah, maybe because we weren't studying last night like we were supposed to but instead were probably keeping the whole building awake with water fights and dancing and other random behavior.

I did make it to the classroom and I actually finished the exam with time to spare, thanks to the gracious professor, who pretended to ignore the sleep lines all over my face.

My next exam only took 15 minutes. So now time stretches out infinitely in front of me.

And I'm seriously beginning to wonder if I'll get home by Christmas. Good thing there are so many movie marathons that I've been hoping to get through. And my wonderful roommate would thankfully rather spend her time here in the dorm watching countless movies than at home doing nothing.

Okay I think my energy is beginning to flow towards exhaustion. I think I'll go get started on those movies.

basically....Christmas.

Since its 52 degrees today (as opposed to the 2 degrees that it was earlier this week), my roommate and I decided to go ice skating.
Now when her dad called and said that he had gone out on the pond and dug through the 6 inch-think ice, I was pretty excited. You see, I've had this lifelong dream to skate on a pond and suddenly there was hope of fulfilling it. Especially since at home we a) don't have ice and b) don't have skates.
So even though it has been a bitterly cold week and I still have another project left to finish before I can really settle into dead week, I've been able to spend a little time enjoying some of the nicer parts of winter in Iowa. (also includes putting up Christmas lights in our dorm...which we might just have to leave up all year long).

Only a few more classes, several exams, one very large Lit project, and only a couple hours of sleep left until break!

um...sleep?

my brain functions are at an all time low....just finished my (hopefully) last research paper of the year. that is, if I'm no forgetting one. still have a list of projects to finish before I can even think about exams...but just 6 more days of class. whoever decided to extend the semester until practically Christmas eve was insane. but tonite I'm going to bed early...maybe even eleven! but probably not. ok. I need a grilled cheese.