Early November

     Amanda asked how I was doing yesterday. I said basically that I was trying to take it about an hour at a time, then once that hour was done, start over and begin again. And that's pretty much how the last couple days have been.

     It was good to be at GBC Sunday. Then back to school for the new week to begin, with a bunch of homework to finish. Well, I got through it all, not as much this week, which is a little frustrating. Next week looks to be pretty busy, and the week after that.

     How is it that when you don't want to be in class at all, they run as scheduled, but when you really need them to take place, that's when it's out of session? It's like Maria told Liesel in The Sound of Music: "You can't use school to escape your problems, you've got to face them!" Yeah, but...it'd be a welcome distraction to focus on school subjects.
     We were all set for lit Tuesday morning, reading over a poem called "Gone Forever", going to dissect it during the next hour or so. There's this loud noise - BRUUUUUUUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ..........
We all leap up out of our chairs at the sudden noise, then nobody does anything, just sits there hoping the sound will go away. (Even me. Do I win a prize or something?) The fire alarm keeps droning on for somewhere between five and ten minutes, I can slightly start to smell smoke, maybe it wasn't a false alarm this time? Finally Prof. Semrow just says, "Welll....you wanna just regroup and come back on Thursday?"
We all shuffle out. "Well, that class was gone forever..."
     So...there's still editing. Or not... The class mostly assembles in our usual positions around the room, all set to face down a relatively-easy day of spelling work. Then Dr. Eversole comes in and says, "Turn in your homework and y'all can leave. We'll take the workbook chapter Thursday and go home now." (It was in honor of two girls in the class competing? taking part in? being part of a beauty pageant that night.)

      So I finally figured out which classes to take in spring and ran around the entire campus working out the kinks in the registration system. It took about two hours and two or three miles, and four tries, but I did eventually register for government(ugh), speech(unsure about this), Latin II(Yay!), Multimedia Writing(Hmm...I'll learn a lot, hopefully it'll go okay) and Media Management and Planning(No idea what to expect here, but it's one of those required core major classes.)
15 hours, Monday-Wednesday-Friday at 9, 10 and 1, Tuesday at 9:30 and 11, then online assignments on Thursdays, I think.

     We've got a SWAT program at First Baptist-Tahlequah coming up this Sunday night, there will be a lot more people in the audience than we're used to. And we'll know a lot more of those audience members. And it's an enormous church. So those are a bit of extra pressure, but it should probably go all right. Basketball and acting don't line up perfectly parallel, but it's sort of like when Coach Dale measures the court at Hinkle Fieldhouse when his Hickory High team arrives for the state tournament in Hoosiers. One of the best movie scenes ever. We know the script, we know where and when we enter/exit the stage, we know our lines, it's just the building is (much) bigger, that's all. It's the same ballgame as we always play.

     It's been raining a lot of this week.

     Been playing mandolin and guitar a bit, little of everything except country. Mostly hymns, "Great Is Thy Faithfulness", "You Are My All in All", etc. And reading through Psalms. Just sort of trying to preach to myself as much as possible.

     Bennett and Daniel each texted me, kind of sympathy, "Sorry about Copper" kind of thing.

      Jessica and I pondered for a while whether animals went to heaven, hoping that they will. Can't exactly come up with concrete proof with Scripture spelled out that says that, but it seems like they would. If there are horses and freaky lion-creatures, couldn't there be more ordinary animals like dogs and cats? And if all things are supposed to be good, well, pets are good things.Of course, they don't exactly have souls, so... I don't know, and this could be completely off base. But it makes things a little easier sometimes to think that.  The conversation then turned to "why do some movie scenes make us cry" and The Crippled Lamb. 

     Last week bought a new copy of Alan Jackson's "Let It Be Christmas" CD off his website, it came Monday, which was good. That's like, the BEST CHRISTMAS MUSIC EVER. And Dad hunted up a space heater out of the wellhouse to take to the dorm, that's been useful. Except there's this weird smell that makes me wonder sometimes if I'm at the house in the middle of January without electricity sorting through what can be salvaged from the fire...and that's not really very pleasant. But it is very warm, which is helpful. And it makes a good hair dryer.

      It was sort of cold this morning...then I get back to the dorm, check the weather on KOTV's website, and it says "Temperature for Tahlequah: 41 degrees, feels like 37." Well, that would explain it...