Middle of February, Long Update Time

Well it has been a hell of a week. Let’s see where to begin? How bout I go all the way back to Sunday, that seems appropriate since that’s where my week went downhill. Well it was bound to happen this week, but my sleep deprivation and crappy work did not start until Sunday. So Sunday our Tuesday afternoon midterm becomes a take-home assigned Monday afternoon and due in class on Thursday. It looked like a harder HW set with just as many problems and the same type, but the turned out to be pretty hard (well one of them)…but that’s getting ahead of myself.
In retrospect, let’s go back to Saturday. Kelley and I had a disagreement (it was not really a fight) over how I might not be able to come down tonight (Thursday) and Friday due to volunteering and work. So I was not in the best of spirits when Mom showed up, but it was cool for her to finally see the apartment I’ve been living in since AUGUST! She was astounded at how large my room was…it really is huge. And it’s the biggest room I will ever have for sure. But that’s OK because I have a lot of crap to fill space. Wow I cannot stay on track. Anyways, Mom came up and we went out to BD’s Mongolian BBQ but they were very busy so we decided to grab some Wendy’s before the hockey game and eat out afterwards. We won the game and swept BGSU, so that was cool. It was a very good game though, perhaps the best one I’ve seen at least for edge of your seat finish. We came back and Mom slept on the futon. I offered the bed, she refused. Oh well. While I’m thinking of it, I want to mention how awesome the sports teams are for winter quarter at OSU. Our women’s basketball team has been #2 in the nation for a long time and is one LSU loss away from the top for the first time ever. Our men’s basketball team has taken a disappointing season (postseason ban, thanks Jim O’Brien) and turned it into a proving grounds that Thad Matta our new coach can turn the team around. It is the same guys as last year but we are playing so much better. We are 7-5 after beating Indiana on Tuesday and we have 4th in the conference currently…a far cry from last season’s horrible 9th place finish and embarrassing losing record. I will see my first basketball game of the year hopefully in our last game of the season against #1 national powerhouse Illinois. I hope we ruin their undefeated season, that would be so sweet. Our hockey team is one point back or tied for the conference lead with Michigan, and that is amazing. We will be getting at worst the second seed in our 12 team conference tournament so we have a great shot to play Michigan for the title which we wrested from them last year. Go Bucks!
Sunday Sunday Sunday! I woke up very early thanks to a call from my irritating friend, the man, the legend, back in black, Akil Romeo Steele. Yes his name is real. Yes his first name rhymes with his last. And yes he goes by Romeo. Anyways, he calls me at 5:50, an hour before I intend to leave to tell me he will be meeting us at Cleveland instead of riding with us. Thanks. So we all get to Cleveland. It was fun, but none of us made top 8 and Chris and I should have. (This next sentence is for me and can be ignored my non-Magic dorks out there). So after going to the Columbus PTQ and having the following results (L to RDW 0-2, W vs. WW 2-0, L to Affinity 1-2, L vs. Goblins 1-2, W vs. RDW 2-0) and the Friday Night Magic this week where I met some good new friends (W vs. Goblins 2-1, W vs. RDW 2-1, L vs. Teen Titans 0-2, L vs. Teen Titans 0-2, W vs. Enchantress 2-0)…I was feeling pretty confident about my old Elf deck. Here’s how it went in a nutshell: (L vs. G/W Aggro-Cataclysm 1-2, W vs. Rock 2-0, W vs. Affinity 2-0, W vs. Reanimator 2-0, D vs. Rock 1-1-1, W vs. Enchantress 2-1, D vs. Tog 1-1-0). The last round I was up a game and had the match until the opponent won in extra turns to make it a draw. A similar thing happened to Chris in a win and get into top 8 match. In my case it was a mistake of not tapping down a swamp. Me and my opponent came in 13th and 14th which was not top 12 where the prizes were. How lucky. He was a real jerk at the end of the meatch and is badmouthing me on the Magic websites for slow playing him which I did not really do. Oh well. (End Magic Rant…sorry much more than one sentence!)
So off to the week. It all starts with a Monday I do not remember much. But I know there was a lot of wank wank going on at the last minute to throw together another progress report and presentation for our senior design project. Berens gave this one and it was ok. I should do better the next two weeks, but we’ll see. Then it was off to Lancaster to Valentine’s Day dinner with Kelley at Olive Garden. We had a 2 hour wait, but I showed up a lot sooner than Kelley so I got to start studying for my NE power plant midterm then. The dinner was fantastic and I got a bunch of new DVD’s, so I cannot complain. It was a nice break from the hustle bustle that was only beginning. I got back and studied until 1 AM then passed out. I wake up and take the midterm at 8 AM. It did not go very well, at least by my standards. I really could have messed up this flow diagram or I might have gotten it all right. I do know a few things I did miss and those add up quickly on this test. After that test I did some more work and started working on my take home midterm. I got the first three problems done and started working on the fourth one but could not figure it out. This took many hours. Then I had to start studying for my ME midterm Wednesday morning. I did as much as I could, but I really did not spend much time on this one. So I wake up the next day at 7:22 AM. Class is 7:30 and is about a 12 minute trip from leaving the apartment to walking into class. I run upstairs, wake up my roommate and tell him to move his butt. Then we get out and rush to class. 10 minutes late, but the professor did not start the test until 3 minutes before we walked in. Nobody in the class got done with the test. Again this test did not go well as I rushed through the last problem and will lose around 10 points for dropping one term out of an equation at one step of the long problem, I skipped an 8 point problem, and 12 more points were guesses on a hard problem (looks like 70-80…which is only disappointing because I know I am above average in this class and might lose that on this exam). So then it was off to lab which is useless every week and then we had a project team meeting. If we get this stuff together it will be a miracle. Then I worked on the take home midterm for another 5 hours. I was not working hard at this point because I was sleep-deprived, sitting in front of the TV with the guys, and just not feeling great, so 1 hour of work took 5. Then it was off to small group where we talked about prayer. Yay! Berens had to wake me up the following morning to go to our 7:30 AM class late…I really need to catch up on sleep.
So finally Thursday has arrived, and our morning class sucked. After class we worked on doing the lab report calculations and graphs for next week. 4 grueling hours later, we are off to Moe’s in a blizzard. Absolute white-out. 20 minutes later we are going back to class and it is sunny and beautiful. God, that irony has got to stop this quarter in Ohio. We sat through the first hour of class and then left during the break, leaving our midterms on his desk. A couple other people were doing the same thing so I do not feel so bad. He knows he bores us, so oh well. Then back to the apartment where I get everything packed and start my journey to Athens. I get there about 5:30 through crappy traffic and Kelley and I head out for Marietta. While she did choir practice I did schoolwork and graded papers. We finally leave Marietta, dropping by a local shop for a bachelorette party Kelley is attending this weekend (gifts for the future wedded lady) and Wendy’s because we were starving. We laid down to bed around 10 PM. Let’s just say we were sleeping or watching movies or being lazy until 6 PM tonight. Heh I needed that and it was great to spend time with her. Then we had to rush off to dinner (yummy sex on the beach in large sizes J) and I left town. I almost cried on the drive back because I did not want to leave. It’s only going to get worse, but at least in 2 years and 5 months we will never have to say goodbye again like this hopefully. So I rush up to Columbus, making it to my professor’s house on the north side at 9:20 which was just in time to pick up the papers I wanted to work on tomorrow (as opposed to not getting them until Sunday). Of course this was before I realized I was driving to Detroit tomorrow for the PTQ. So much for doing work on the way up. Hopefully Tom Lapille and I have plenty to talk about, as we have over 6 hours facing us on the way up and back tomorrow. I hope I win the whole darn thing, especially after getting screwed last weekend. I’ll write another entry at some point, but you never know when so just leave messages if you got a minute. I love reading them. Have a good week! I know mine has to be better than this one.Oh BTW, I got into Cincinnati Law School this week. Still have not heard from the other 5 schools, will keep updated.