February

Well, my classes for spring semester officially begin next week. I can't wait! I love school. This semester is mostly fun classes, which will be fun but unfortunate... as I somehow overlooked the fact that I hadn't finished all my general ed classes yet... oops. I managed to find one of the classes I need, and I might try to add another next week. Trying to add will be nearly impossible I'm sure; when the economy gets bad, community colleges get flooded with students. I have five classes right now, and am taking a class that will hopefully complete the requirements for my AA. The classes I've got are poetry writing, fiction writing, sculpture, philosophy, and a self defense/martial arts class (lol! How's that for getting out of my element???). The only class I'm a little worried about is that last one... I've been working on my knees, so hopefully they'll hold up for me. I heard the instructor is really tough. I love a challenge - but so far all the challenges I've relished are mental. Physical... well, that's just not as much my element XD

I finished my restaurant management class, did well in that. It was kind of interesting, I learned some interesting things that I will probably never use unless I work in a restaurant. Oh well. It was nice to have something to do over the winter session.

We have a mini river running through our front yard. When it rains, all the water comes from our neighbor's yard and down our driveway to go down the enormous drain at the end of our driveway. It's not bad right now since it's stopped raining for the moment, but when it was pouring we had our own little mini rapids. Our driveway is paying for it, but at least it's not pooling up in our sheep pen like it did last year. That was crazy! My poor chickens were floating around in their coop on a wooden pallet. There was two to three feet of water, and it was beginning to get into the barn. My dad had to take a sledgehammer and knock out a section of the brick wall, because the whole brick wall on that side of the property was beginning to go down. Fortunately we had already given away our sheep at that time, so they didn't have to swim around in there.

I love the rain, even though it wreaks havoc on our poor waterlogged property. I love the smell of rain, although I've found that here in California, the 'smell of rain' is usually the smell of rain on the cement or pavement. My favorite rain smell is when it's raining in the desert... that smells amazing. By the way, this is very random, but besides the rain my three favorite smells are new tires, fresh play-do, and really old books. Ha ha. Yes, I smell books. Old books smell like mystery. New books smell like money.

Last night a random cat was on my windowsill, meowing. Rascal was in my room on my dresser, trying to look out. When it kept meowing, Rascal jumped on the floor and went to the corner of the room and wouldn't come back until it left. He waited ten minutes, then went back on the dresser and peeked through the blinds. My cat is antisocial. He doesn't like other cats. Even when I had other cats, he would get really mad at them. I had one cat, Jack, who absolutely loved Rascal and would follow him everwhere, purring and rubbing on him, but Rascal would pin his ears back, whip his tail around, and glare.

I finished the book I was reading, Pulpit Crimes by (I think) James White. It was really good. It was intense, but intense is good as long as it's in line with scripture! It talked about the most common problems of the church today; easy-believism, entertaining rather than teaching, and making the bible more 'user-friendly'. This year I've made it my goal to read a bunch of Christian books, and I've already finished two. I think I'm going to read something by C.S. Lewis next. I LOVE almost everything he writes, he's one of my favorite authors of all time. He can get a little weird at times, a little too mystical; but as long as you know that going into his books you'll be ok. Reading it takes me back to my Inklings and Foundations days :)

Yesterday we went out for a family day. It was fun. We went to Olive Garden for lunch, which was good as usual. I love their soup, salad and breadsticks. I think after we went through there they might not offer the 'all you can eat' of the soup/salad/breadsticks. Especially after my brother was done eating XD I always get the feeling that we get more than our money's worth out of all you can eat buffets, we just eat a lot... lol.

We watched some movies too, got some from RedBox. Now, I am not a fan of most cartoony or animated movies, I generally do not appreciate kid's movies (they make me sick with all their 'believe in yourself' and happy-happy-happy stuff, I can only take so much of that LOL), but Kung-Fu Panda was pretty funny, all things considered. It was really clean too, which was surprising. It was just so... random and crazy. I guess that was why I appreciated it!

I need to clean my room. It's not that bad, but my room could always use cleaning, whether it's my closet or my dresser or whatever. I want to re-do my room, I was thinking of painting it. I already started working on curtains and stuff, but my closet... oh man. I always think I might end up needing to use something. I really need to push up my sleeves and get to work. As the reality that I am leaving in about six months to a dorm is beginning to dawn, I realize I need to get rid of a lot of junk that I have. Also, I really really want wood floors, I hate carpet. We'll see how that goes... I just want my room to be somewhere I'd actually want to come home to. Right now it's just... messy. I laughed out loud when I was looking at the Master's questionnaire for matching you up with a roommate, one of the questions was "are you creatively disorganized?" Hah. Um, YES.

So, that's a little of what's been going on lately. Not a whole lot.

Oh, yeah. I also cut off a good chunk of my hair. Nothing too drastic, but when your hair is so long that it starts to wrap around your neck and choke you at night, you know it's time for a hair cut ;) It was down to the small of my back. I do miss it now, I'm gonna grow it out again, but not that long. Fortunately I was able to donate the hair I cut, so it made me feel a little better XD It's now a little longer than shoulder length (yes, that's short for me!)... also, it is now red. Not really red, not clown-red or anything; more like a dark red-brown or burgundy or something. It's just the 28-wash kind, and it's already a lot duller than it was even though I just dyed it a week ago. I like it. I think I might stick with it for a while. I don't like to do permanent dyes though, I don't want to fry my hair.

My gums are almost completely healed from having my wisdom teeth extracted. Overall it wasn't that bad, it was frustrating though. Day three after the operation was the worst; I REALLY wanted pizza, but it just wasn't going to happen. I had soup and ice cream and jello, but that really only works for so long before you never want to eat any of that stuff again. It's my sister's turn next, and I want to take a video when she comes out and is all loopy :D

That's all for now.... :)

- Me