Home Again, Home Again

At last the semester is finally totally done! I finished the last half of my Meteo 3 exam grading a bit after noon on Friday, at which point I was finally free of all my responsibilities for the semester. I would normally have mentioned some of the funnier answers I saw on the exams, but I was trying so hard just to get them done as quickly as possible that I can’t really remember too many of them, sigh. At any rate, after grabbing some lunch with Kerrie & Amber, we managed to convince Amy to come out with us too, and take some pictures on the snow-and-ice covered Lion Shrine. Man that sculpture was cold to sit on…
In the afternoon I did a little bit more Christmas shopping, and then I went to the Sports Cafe for a good chunk of the evening with Daniel, Frame, Vic, Chris, Petters & Steph, where we managed to win 1st place for the second consecutive week in trivia, woot! Another $25 gift certificate for wings comin up next trivia night, that’ll be nice. And yeah, that totally wasn’t Jack either, as Frame & Daniel can attest, boo to that.
Kate came up from DC late Friday night for a visit, that was fun. Saturday I showed her around campus and downtown, I think she really enjoyed the chance to get out of the rat race in DC and experience a small-town/college-town atmosphere for a day. In the afternoon we also went to see “King Kong,” which was pretty good. I thought it was perhaps a bit on the long side (just over 3 hours), and a bit overdone at times, but it was still good. After the first 45 minutes or so, the tension hardly let up for the whole rest of the film, and the action was mostly relentless. It was actually almost exhausting in that respect. Sooo many dinosaurs, enormous insects and other monstrous creatures, parts of it felt like “Jurassic Park” almost. After the movie she went back to DC, and I finally started getting ready and packing for going home.
I had to get up really early to finish getting ready and whatnot, I wasn’t exactly thrilled when I heard my alarm at 5am. But anyway, I picked Daniel up a little before 7, and by 10 or so we were at the airport west of Pittsburgh. I gave Daniel the Christmas present I’d picked up for him, the book “How to Talk Minnesotan,” I figured he’d appreciate that, especially since his “all ya’ll” and other vocabulary has started creeping into my speech, it just slips out every now and then, rolls off the tongue, much to the dismay of some of my friends back in the midwest, hehe. I told him I expected him to study the book and be using a little of the Minnesota lingo by the end of break, we’ll see if that happens. 🙂 Anyway, while we were grabbing an early, overpriced lunch in the airport, at the table next to us there were two parents, a grandma, and a little 4-year old boy. The little boy was being a bit of a brat and making a fuss about wanting the toy that came with the meal right away, at which point the dad got up and started chasing the kid around the table. After giving the kid a good wallop, then the dad was practically shouting at the kid, “If you’re gonna challenge me, you better be prepared to back it up!!” and all sorts of ridiculous stuff like that. That whole episode was a bit uncomfortable to be around, Daniel & I were just trying to look the other way while all that was goin on, though we did have a chuckle about it after they left. At any rate, my flight left at noon, but Daniel’s didn’t depart until 4:30. But that’ll all even out when we come back on the 5th, I’ll have to wait about 6 hours before his flight will arrive in Pittsburgh. That’ll be time for books and people-watching, to be sure. I just hope at least one of us will remember where we parked my car two and a half weeks from now…
Upon landing in Minneapolis (it was a cool 5 degrees out, a nice welcome home) my parents & I drove out to Hutchinson to attend my niece Gabriella’s dance recital. She’s only 4 and a half, but she danced pretty well. Some of the even younger kids were inadvertently funny up on stage too, some of them just kinda doing whatever they wanted, whether it was dancing or not, it was cute. 🙂 After that we drove back to Aaron & Eve’s for a bit of supper, and then proceeded to head home to Cumberland. Needless to say, I was a bit exhausted from all the travelling by the end of the day. Waking up really early, three hours driving, almost three hours sitting on a plane, and then sitting in a car for another almost five hours. I was very glad to get home and go to sleep.
Today (Monday) was nice and relaxing. Absolutely nothing to do, it felt great. It was so nice just to be able to sit down and read a book for awhile, and even fall asleep for a bit in the afternoon out on the sun porch. More of the same will probably be scheduled for tomorrow, I can’t wait. It’s nice being home again.