Break’s Over

Well, that’s that. Thanksgiving break is over, and now it’s time to get back to work, as classes start up again tomorrow morning. The last few days I’ve spent largely relaxing, interspersed with a bit of homework and studying. I’m gonna miss these care-free days during the next couple weeks, what with the final exam in Fluid Dynamics coming up on Wednesday morning, hard Rad Tran assignments due the next two Fridays (along with other exam and assignment corrections to do during then), and at least one 501 assignment (though that one’s mostly on a skew T-log P diagram, so it shouldn’t be hard, just tedious) thrown in for good measure. But at least there won’t be any more GFD after the final on Wednesday, it’ll be nice to have that out of the way, so that we can concentrate on the other two classes at the end. Now I just need to work up some motivation to study for GFD…
Last night I got around to creating and uploading a few more photo albums to my Photos page. The ones I just uploaded are in the Gustavus section, and from January 2005. I’m gonna get caught up, slowly but surely, and probably making huge strides over Christmas break, but I may end up getting a few more up there before break, we’ll see. Earlier in the month I also finished uploading the last half of my New Zealand photo albums, so those are all online now too, including the ones from my visits to “Lord of the Rings” film sites like Edoras, Rivendell & Hobbiton. Check ’em out!
This morning Daniel joined me at church again, for this the first Sunday in Advent. With it still being the holiday weekend, attendance was a bit more sparse than usual, but it was still a good service and sermon as usual. After church we finally decided that it was time to buy our plane tickets home for Christmas break, since they seem to be going up in price every couple days or so. Since it’s significantly cheaper for both of us to fly out of Pittsburgh than State College, we decided to leave and come back on the same day, that way we can split the cost of both gas from driving to/from Pitt, and long-term parking at the Pitt airport for a couple weeks. So I’ll be flying into Minneapolis early afternoon on Sunday, December 18th, and then flying back to Pittsburgh early in the morning on Thursday, January 5th, leaving me a good two and a half weeks of being in the midwest to see family and friends. Hopefully I’ll be busy doing a bunch of that, though not having my car during that stretch might be a bit trying. Somehow I’ll survive without the “green school bus,” as a couple of my friends call it.
I’ve run across some more interesting news stories in the last week that many of you might find amusing. Who knew that being a pastor was such a dangerous job? I’m pretty sure my dad never got slugged while giving a sermon like this pastor from Tulsa did. I guess that was a message with an impact! Then there are some Canadians who clearly don’t have enough to do. Either that or they’ve gone bonkers in the long, dark winter nights up there, because a former Defence Minister is asking Canadian Parliament to hold hearings on “Exopolitics” — political relations with extra-terrestrials — because he’s convinced the USA and the Bush Administration is about to start an intergalactic war. Ummm, yeah… And watch out Carl, thieves in Baltimore are stealing lamp posts. That’s right, they’re sawing down 30-foot street lamp posts and selling them for scrap metal, likely to feed their drug habits. And there have been at least 130 of these conspicuous lamp posts stolen in the last few weeks. Some even in broad daylight on busy streets. No wonder Baltimore’s such a crime-ridden city, the police can’t even figure out who’s stealing these lamp posts right under their noses!
Well, that’s all for me today. Time for bed. Why can’t break be longer?