catch a falling star and put it in your pocket...

dude, so algebra done -- woohoo... the exam was unexpectedly open book which is nice... but also makes me wonder what exactly our grade is based on... 4/5 of the problems could be just about directly copied from the book! whatever.

now, all that stands between me and a happy end of semester is analysis. analysis = not my friend. i have 2 out of 5 problems done on the take home part of the final and haven't even started looking at studying stuff besides those problems. today i should have worked on more but alas....

so first i woke up, studied for algebra (which turned out to be open book anyhow), took the algebra exam, then went home to make lunch... remembered i had stuff to box up and get to the post office, but discovered i didn't have packing tape, called eric, who also happened to need to mail stuff, and had a package wrapping party at his house... by the time we made it through the line at the post office, etc. it was already nearly 5... we went back to his place, and opened a package i got today -- christmas present from kristin (aka roommate... valpo roommate, not current roommate =P)... she gave me a pair of toe socks that say "cranky" on them with a frown face on each toe and a 5.5 foot tall inflatable punching bag... both completely cracked me up! knowing how much stress i've been under this semester and that i always talk about punching things, she purposely gave me stress-relievers to (a) make me laugh (the socks -- how can you wear such a thing and not laugh =P) and (b) be a stress channeler (punching bag)... most excellent!

so after unwrapping those, spending forever inflating the punching bag, and having hot chocolate, it was time to meet up w/ other people to go to applebees for dinner... it was eric, me, scott, colleen, and john... made it home by 9 (had to deflate the punching bag enough to get it in my car =P), and started to work on analysis... getting nowhere, i ended up chatting on IM w/ eric who commented to me "so why don't we go looking for that abandoned ferry again or something?"

so yeah, not ferry hunting but other exciting things... first we drove down to U.S. 1 to see this huge legendary tree in front of a mobile home park that has 70,000+ christmas lights on it -- quite spectacular... then we took backroads on the return trip and found a dead end road in the middle of a field a bit mroe away from city lights than normal in NJ and looked at stars for an hour -- saw a LOT because it was such a clear night! -- absolutely amazing... quote:

me: so do you know what this means? i just saw the big dipper AND the little dipper on the same night! that's like a lifelong goal!
eric: yup, that's me... eric rowland, fulfilling one lifelong goal at a time.

heh... besides the dippers, the usual cassiopeia, cephus, orion, taurus, canis major, pleiades... also learned lepus (spelling?) and found a double star in that which was really cool... the moon was only a half moon too so with our binoculars you could see craters on it by the border between the light and the shadowed part... most excellent.

so yeah, lots of stars, and then we took a picture of a cow crossing sign that has times below it (as if cows know when to cross the street?) on the way back that i had seen before... also jammed out to my new "billy joel: greatest hits" double CD all the way there and back... first CD that both me and eric own that we've come across since we've met!... duuuuuude,... all in all an entertaining analysis free 2 hours.

but yeah, tomorrow i'm gonna pay for this analysis-wise...unfortunately... at any rate, wish me luck! =P night.