Back at School

Wind chills below zero shouldn't be allowed.  At least when there's little-to-no insulation in your room.  Ugh.  I have a space heater, but it can only do so much against single-digit temps and negative wind chills.  Thankfully the snow is pretty! :)  Unfortunately my bike sat out in it for the past month, and is still covered now.  I guess I'll be doing a bit of greasing in a few days.

Missed Calls Can Change Games

So the Titans lost yesterday.  They turned the ball over way too many times, but still, they should have held it together and won.  Unfortunately, one of the game-changers was a missed delay-of-game call.  I understand that there is a little delay that happens when the back judge looks from the play clock to the ball, but still.  This was about a 2.5 second delay AFTER the play clock expired.  And yes, if the Titans had been taking care of the football and that, it wouldn't have mattered.  But the fact is that it did.  If the Ravens had been flagged with that penalty, Flacco wouldn't have made that huge completion that down.  They would've been 5 yards and 1 down farther away from Stover's field goal range.   Who knows, maybe the score would be different!?!

see:

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20090110/SPORTS01/90110025/1027

Epiphany

Epiphany.  The time of the wise men's visit to the Christ child.  The last day of Christmas.  Time to put away my Christmas watch.  We're taking down the Christmas tree and packing away the decorations.  I'll be sad to see the lights go away.  They've been a wonderful reminder of the hope we still can have despite these gray days.

New Year's Eve 2008

So it's almost 2009.  It's hard to believe 2008 is done and I'll be graduating from college this coming May.

We had a good Christmas, small and simple.  I missed seeing my extended family, but it was absolutely wonderful to be at home with just the four of us - no dealing with idiosyncracies, no family feuds.  There were not nearly as many gifts under the tree as there have been in the past, but that was okay.  We enjoyed the rest and relaxation of spending a day at home in our pajamas.

Christmas evening we celebrated my 22nd birthday.  Again, uneventful but good.  Josh made me a delicious cake and he cooked the random variety of foods I requested.

End of Semester

Classes are finished.  Finally.  I'm one final, one grad school application, one paper, and one brief meeting away from winter break.  Two weeks (plus more I hope) of freedom from 67-page theses and demanding professors.  Granted, I do have to read and do some work over the break, but that doesn't seem nearly so awful compared to what I've done in the last 1.5 weeks.  I just hope my GPA reflects the ridiculous amount of work and stress I've been through.

I think I've done well this semester.  It's hard to believe it's my last fall semester as an undergraduate.  I just hope I'll have some fall semesters as a graduate student.  I won't know for a few months, though.  I'm planning on finishing up the last 6 applications over break.  The applications themselves aren't so bad.  It's the application fees and ETS's score-reporting fees that are killing me.  Oh well, college students are supposed to be poor, right?

I feel like I've been on a rollercoaster this semester, both academically and emotionally.  There were several times I didn't think I'd make it.  Yet here I am.

We've already had several days of snow here, though nothing too deep.  I'm kinda sad I'll be going away from the snow on Thursday, but I'd much rather see Max & Sugar!  Plus, there are times when Indiana is a bit too far north for my liking.  At least in Kentucky no one makes fun of the way I talk! :)