Visiting time is coming to an end

I have 2 days left to get all my visiting in with Jesse. We haven't done much at all. Wooo hooo! The whole family has stayed in the living room most of the time and we read the Wall Street Journal, and point out good articles to each other. We have about 3 weeks worth we've been saving for this, so we have quite a few papers to go through. As soon as we leave, my mom will get rid of them and start saving for the next visit.

All the mornings and evenings, everyone gets together and plays Uno Attack or Ultimate Scrabble. My mom likes to watch us play more than she likes playing, so she keeps us well supplied with celery and hot chocolate, and tea and snacks.... It's WONDERFUL.

Jesse, Dad, and I did cut wood Saturday morning. Near the end of the woodcutting, everyone got inventive and tried different ways of cutting wood. My favorite alternate method was to put the axe behind my back, arch waaaaay back, until the axe head would almost reach the heels of my feet, and then swing forward with as much force as my arms and stomach could handle... I thought it was very effective, but as I found out later, my stomach muscles couldn't quite handle the strain. I had trouble sitting to get out of bed Sunday morning. I'm sure Jesse felt the same way, but neither of us will admit to it. :-)

It's time!

Jesse is coming here today! Even as I type, he should be driving here. He's going to come directly up to my apartment and then we'll all go back home together. "All" includes my mom too. HP finally sent the pieces we need to send the computer back, and she's driving up here to bring the computer while I try to find all the booklets that came with the computer.

As a parting note: Mom remembers hearing the chorus to "Seasons in the sun".

Oldies forever

I was listening to oldies music today, and I loved this one song that had a beautiful chorus.

We had joy we had fun,
We had seasons in the sun

A great sentiment. A toast to fun in the sun! (Not that it is EVER sunny during winter in W. PA)

I'm home!

The family Christmas gathering is over, and everyone has gone back to their homes. It was a little sparse this year, as more of the children grow up, some of them move away and don't usually make it back until a few days before Christmas. Depending how the schedule works out, we usually have more family come, but this year the gathering needed to be held earlier than normal.

So for everyone who didn’t come… have a happy year, and I’ll see you when you do come down!

Unfortunately, my brother couldn’t attend today either. :-( But I don’t despair! :-) I just have to wait one more week before I embarrass him by doing more pushups and curls than he can! AND I’ll tell everyone the results… if I do more :-P On more serious matters, it seems as though the Lord is leading and helping Jesse along with a strong, clear hand.. He is out of a job now. The rest of his work time is just using up his vacation time (3-4 days), so he won't be going back into the office. One of the guys had over a month of vacation time coming, so a little after my boss announced the layoffs, he took a vacation of more than a month! Jesse had one job interview, and he expects to get the job hands down… but even if he doesn’t, Jesse seems to be happy to put in resumes and do job interviews and wait for the Lord to pick out a job. Kudos for Jesse!

My apartment’s first floor is looking more like an office now. We have a NICE printer, tables set up, office chairs assembled, floor mats placed, a internet hub in place, and everything arranged as we think it will be long term. Now, we’re waiting for our computers to arrive, our monitors to be set up, and finals to be over (Not me personally, but the other two hires are looking forward to it. :-) )

I know I’ve been using the smiley faces heavily. They make a blog look so much more laid back, and since I’m home I thought they would be fitting. :-D

"Moving" along - ironic isn't it.

Tonight I head back home and spend the weekend with family. Our family's Christmas gathering is this Saturday, and there are always a lot of relatives attending. This weekend, we'll probably have another pool competition ( which I'll undoubtedly get eliminated in the first round again ), spread stories over the lunch and dinner tables, play in the snow, and swap some gifts and memento's back and forth. I am definitely looking forward to Saturday - I should also mention Saturday is my birthday!! I probably won't be getting any presents, but I know I'll be getting an extra helping, or two.... or three... of vanilla ice cream!

I've paid for and completed the sign up for classes next semester. I'm looking forward to both classes: Hebrew II and OOPLs (pronounced ooples). If you don't know what ooples is, then you can be classified as the sane part of the world. :-) I will give you a hint: it is a programming term.

I still need to see what the sign language club is doing next semester, but I think I won't have much time after work and school for extra-curricular activities, although fencing seems to be an intriguing option. I have to ask myself though, “When I move somewhere else, what good will fencing be?” I think the benefit of knowing some fencing is similar to the benefit of base-jumping. It doesn’t serve much practical purpose, but it is cool!

More Mania!

The apartment is two stories and a basement tall, with a pretty good heater. There is one flaw with the heating system... hot air rises! :-) While I was working in my bedroom, that was great. I just turned the heat all the way down and enjoyed the comfort of my bedroom. Now that the office equipment has arrived, I work on the first floor which is a little bit chilly for my taste. But don't worry Jesse! I have more layers of clothes on than usual.

There is also a decent internet connection in the house: 100 kB/s. While not roaring fast, it does save time when browsing the internet. What saves the most time is the fact that I don't need to drive into the college and use the library connection anymore.

For things other than the apartment I should mention that I now have a Grove City college library card! From what I can gather from the codes on the card, I am the 43rd Grove City resident to get a card, and according to their binary numbering system, they only have room for 64 community library cards.

And for a final tidbit of information: I have (or will soon, whenever I can fax the receipt) send my new computer back to get a refund. The day I got the computer back from the second repair, I turn it on... and it doesn't start up. It was the same old error, and it still wasn't fixed after two tries. I call HP to attempt to get a refund but I never managed to ask for it. As soon as I described my problem to the first person, she patched me through to a second. After I explained my problem to the second person, he patched me through to a case manager, who offered a new computer or a refund. I'm guessing they don't like a computer/customer who takes advantage of the repair policy and uses it a lot. :-D

Dan has moved into the apartment, I'm going home for this weekend for a Christmas party, and I'm going to add another year onto my age!

Apartment Mania

I have moved into my apartment! What made the move in final was getting an internet connection. Now, I don't have any practical reason for going home. :-( I guess I have to face up to the truth and just use the excuse, "I'm homesick!". :-)

But what about the apartment? It's smaller than my bedroom at home ( which wasn't large ), with almost no closet. It is only a 20 minute leisurely walk from the college, but in the winter, it's a shorter walk. All I need to do now is to sit in my room and to program. All the activities that I'm interested in joining won't start until next year, so things will be slow for a while.

And for you mom, "I'm homesick!".

'tis good to be back

After a two week break, blogging feels like a luxury. Oddly enough, even though I know I'll enjoy it when I sit down to blog, I don't look forward to blogging at all. It must be some twist of my nature to not look forward to something I'll enjoy, because blogging isn't the only area I procrastinate.

But enough about procrastination. I did have a somewhat valid excuse: I couldn't access the internet for a week. The phone lines had a lot of static, and it messed up the internet access. It is getting late and I'm rambling, so I'll limit my ramblings so I can get to bed soon. Thanksgiving week was wonderful.

My brother Jesse, his girlfriend Charlessa, and Nephew Jermemiah came to visit us for the weekend. It was a great Thanksgiving weekend. While Jesse was here, he caught me up on all the developments at work, and we chopped and loaded five or six loads of wood. We've had branches fall down, one onto our horse trailer (not a pretty sight) and one onto a shed and flatbed trailer. These braches weren't small either. I'm guessing a minimum of 7 feet around at their base, and they didn't get much smaller until close to the top. The main base of the tree is at least 10 feet around. I should mesure that! The small branches alone made an ash pile close to 2 feet tall when, and stayed hot enough to melt over an inch of snow 5 days later. Dad has spent several full days cutting the branches, and another two or three full days will be required to just chop and load and unload the rest of the tree. When Jesse and I were chopping wood, we worked for almost 2 hours (he had worked longer before I got out there), and I think we only split about half of one branch. The main base of the tree is too large for our chainsaw to cut, but the branches show an age over 130.

But the main fun was visiting with Jesse again. Jeremiah made his presence known the full time, and Margaret took advantage of his presense to play endlessly!!!! I don't think I could have lasted a quarter of the time she did. I think she likes being an Aunt. :-) We spent Thanksgiving day with family nearby and Charlessa met a little more of the clan.

As I said earlier - it was a great Thanksgiving week. Even bigger happenings have happened since then (I'm moving this week), but I'll leave that for another blog.