seabiscuit, etc.

dude, there are so many things i'd write about on here if it weren't for potential audience i don't want to discuss such things with... that's vague but whatever.

so jessica and i went to see seabiscuit tonight... she saw it this summer but i never had, and it was still actually in the discount theater... apparently i's not a popular movie night or a popular theater tonight... there were 2 guys working and when we came to buy our tickets one took our $$ and the other ran off to start the movie... we were the first two to come to watch, less than 5 minutes before the film started! i enjoyed it a lot... it was a quality story, and fun to see it on the big screen...afterwards, freezing, we decided a warm snack would be good. (it's in the 30s here... was in the 70s yesterday! dude) so we found a deli neither of us had been to before... but it was bizarrely set up and after waiting for a bit for someone to take our order decided to go to the counter and ask... most everyone else in the place was senior citizen age, but whatever... a nice big bowl of soup and some sweet tea hit the spot after freezing all evening... fun indeed.

just finished getting addresses from people for stops along the way on my drive back to jersey... scott decided that i'm going to pick him up on monday, on my way from MN to valpo instead of on saturday on my way from g-ma's house in IL to MN... this way he gets 2 more days at home but doesn't see colleen's place, so oops... i'm excited about the trip... i'll be exhausted by the end of it but it'll be good to see so many people along the way, and fun to have company instead of talking to myself and singing myself hoarse the whole way like i do when left to my own devices.

this break has been good... now it's down to two days of busier/crunch time before i head on home to jersey again. here it is after midnight and i've been up for like 10 hours... i need to go to sleep again soon so i can show up places on time tomorrow. =P besides reading and lots of movie watching, i've gotten to rest up, get over being sick, take a break from a waaay too long to do list. i've finally started to process exactly what i think of the last few months... no mega conclusions, but just have untangled some thoughts about things that have been bothering me. this is good. in a way, i'm taking january now as a fresh start. leaving the fall and its stresses behind me, and just not worrying about them. trying my best and working on not flipping out about things so much. and hey, i have a punching bag to take my stress out on this time around. =)

academically:
it'll be refreshing to take on analysis again, different book, different prof and not feel overwhelmed by the scores behind me. (not that i didn't like ocone for a prof., just it's all new atmosphere)... it'll be refreshing to start fresh on all my classes without feeling behind from the start from circumstances beyond my control like last go around. it'll be exciting to actually be in a graph theory class (my favorite area of math so far).

socially:
last time i was making this drive i knew nearly no one... exceptions being rahul, sarah, and eric... the first two i almost never see, while eric's been a good friend all fall through... now i have a much wider group of friends and acquiantances to look forward to seeing again.

spiritually & emotionally:
fall semester beat me to within an inch of my life... it seemed from september on nearly every time i turned around there was death or exceedingly bad news staring me in the face, and i've learned from experience that it's not God that moves and turns his back on me, it's me that turns my back on, or puts my fingers in my ears and yells at God. it was an extremely trying time of things... especially now that i've had some good downtime without other things preoccupying my mind, it's been good to come to terms with some of the things that have gone on.
dad doesn't mean to but he has this uncanny ability to make me feel like crap when i'm home long enough... i've gotten good at filtering what amount of what he actually says to take seriously, but now that i've had thinking/processing time away from school, it'll be good to release him again and return to jersey, with a break from his nonsense too

all in all, i'm glad for break, but it's been just long enough, -- i'm ready to go back. =)

plan for tomorrow? there's pandas at the zoo that came from china this summer... dad promised we'd see them as a family this summer and then made excuse after excuse until finally the last week i was in town he had horrible back problems and honestly couldn't go... this break it was excuse after excuse again... jessica really wants to see them too, but her dad's schedule has prevented him coming with, so we're finally both going to see them... it'll be an out of the ordinary excursion for us instead of the usual movie/play/shopping/dinner routine, and we're both looking forward to it, so yay for that. =)

at any rate, i'm not tired but i really need to work on normal sleeping hours again, so i'm going to pretend to get some sleep. night.