Closing Out Another Year

     Everybody else is finishing up their semesters, staggering through finals. I've been sitting here writing up reviews of An Affair to Remember(which I hated) and Sleepless in Seattle(which I liked). And also rewatching Space Jam(which is still awesome), It's a Wonderful Life(which is wonderful) and Iron Man(which is great). 

      Trevor hurt his foot on Thanksgiving climbing up a bluff, so he's been hopping around on crutches since then. And then Sunday Caleb was building the bucks a shelter and stepped into a hole, breaking his foot and slipping a ligament out of place. So he's got a huge hard cast on his foot now, and isn't supposed to put any weight on it. They've been playing a lot of video games to keep busy.

     The finals week pancake feed went well Sunday night, there were lots of posting saying, "I'm exhausted, and I smell like pancake batter, but it's so worth it." (It's a NSU tradition the Sunday before finals week, there's a huge line stretching from the BCM basement over to the business building across the street.)

     I guess I've graduated from TCC now. Word was awful, government boring and saddening but easy, and biology was biology. Very complicated and confounding, but with some interesting concepts. Photoshop was really interesting. We had to create a mock website for our final project, so I invented a fictitious animal shelter and went all-out. (Paws-N-Play Animal Shelter and Dairy, and it's located close to Joplin.) It was difficult, the creative part, but fun. And the instructor really liked it, saying I had a strong grasp of both the creative side and the design/functionality side. No idea what, exactly, Enterprise Development is, but it's something business-related. And that was the degree that my NSU hours fit most efficiently into. So, anyway, I have an Associate's degree now, which isn't much, but it's something.

     Somebody committed suicide on the RSU campus last week. Which was really sad. KOTV did a good job covering the story appropriately, balancing the awfulness of the tragedy with concern for informing and calming the public. .

     Reading a couple of books about World War II right now; a collection of wartime love stories blandly collected by Larry King and about a small Nebraska city's effort to raise their boys' spirits one train at a time through a kind word, smile and a sandwich.

     Pearl Harbor Day was Sunday, which was interestingly fitting. And Friday will be six years since the fire, which is also fitting, as it was on a Friday.

     Christmas shopping is coming along. The tree is up and decorated; it's pretty.