Friday, October 24, 2008

halloween preparations

the midterm didn't go so well. it was supposed to be a 75 minute test, but after 90 minutes, no one in the room had even budged. there were two problems. i didn't finish the second. several people turned in extra sheets of paper. the derivations were long and not something any of us do regularly in our research. i was pretty upset upon leaving the test, and to make matters worse, 30 minutes after the in-class exam, the take-home portion of the exam went out. ugh. its due on monday, but i have it pretty much done now. i think i'm going to turn it in tomorrow just so i can have a day to relax this weekend.

fortunately, this week saw my training go up. by the end of my run tomorrow morning, i'll have logged 60 miles this week. my legs actually feel pretty good. its less than 2 months to go before dallas...which also means less than 2 months to go before my semester ends.

i ran into a friend from the summer ride today. she too is swamped with work this semester. we were laughing about counting down days until its over. i suppose this isn't the best way to go about one's semester, but what can you do. i had a meeting with my advisor yesterday and as there do not seem to be classes offered which would be particularly useful for me, he thought it might be good for me to just not take classes. so it appears that i will be signed up for the department seminar and 8 units of research credit.

thoughts of traveling are dancing through my head as a result of the possibility of a classless term. i know of a group going to hike camino de santiago in spain in the spring (for a week) and dropped someone an email to find out more about it.

mostly when i think about this past summer now, my initial thought is always, what in the world happened? and my answer to myself is, i don't know and then for while afterwards i tend to feel like a freshly healed wound was just re-opened (as i currently actually have such a wound from testing out new running gear last weekend, i can assure you that it is on my top ten list of things i don't really want to keep experiencing). i think what makes it most difficult is the not knowing. i don't even know where to start trying. i think the weirdest thing too is that i invested so much time and energy into making that trip happen that i didn't have time for much else. when i arrived back in austin, i suddenly didn't have the person i was closest to, and i felt like i was starting again from ground zero, despite having supposedly lived here for the better part of a year. i'm not sure i've really even had time to process that either because of the jump right back into school! one step at a time i suppose!

in the meantime, i have more important (?) things to worry about: pumpkin carving and halloween costumes. the carving festivites are supposed to commence early next week after dinner one night with my housemates. the artist in the house has even started coaching us about drawing our design the day before or earlier in the day and then coming back to it to make sure we like it before fully committing (sheesh!). honestly, i'll probably dive right in anyways. several of us are working on matching costumes. mine may in part be influenced by my hair. i'm off to try a friend's hairdresser and see if she can do something for my rather spikey do!

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