Birth of a Niece

     Amanda had her baby! So there's a new mischief-maker in the world now; named Maya DesireeLynn. That's not the right middle name, but it's close, I forget what she said they were going to pick. Anyway, I'm an excited uncle. As Cal would say, "Best. Day. Ever!"

    In other, less important news...
 
     This semester is almost over, and this insane work-loaded-week is halfway finished. (I have something written due every day this week.) Documentary script Monday, paper and presentation Tuesday, I can't remember what was Wednesday, another paper Thursday and last law-brief Friday. And a portfolio over the weekend. It's made for a lot of late-yet-productive nights. And apparently an overload of hyphens. And I've been both really hyper and barely able to keep my eyes open. Maybe that's why it's not usually a good idea to gulp down nine energy drinks in four days?

     A Full House sequel series was announced for Netflix next year, starring DJ, Kimmy, Steph and Jesse. "You got it, dude!" Probably no Michelle, though. And hopefully no Joey.

     Now halfway through season six of my Parks and Rec-watching project. I don't want Ann and Chris to move to Michigan...and why is Donna still living in Pawnee, if she has a condo in Seattle?

     Speaking of Cal, he's causing havoc at the Inhumans' base camp somewhere near China...and so Tuesday's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was seriously intense. It also reunited the original team, so that was extra awesome. But painful. Agents, Parks and Friday Night Lights are all extremely different shows, but their characters all pull you in so deeply...Firefly, too. Anyway, it led straight into Age of Ultron, because, y'know, #ItsAllConnected. Because of course it is. Which is why we love the Marvel Cinematic Universe so much. Another Olsen reference...their little sister Lizzie plays the Scarlet Witch in AoU. 

     It's been an eclectic mix of study-music here recently...tons of Relient K and Avril Lavigne, lots of FFH, with some Brad Paisley, DC Talk, Taylor Swift and Owl City thrown in there too.

     Had that terrifying cliched dream last night where you forget there's an extra class you haven't been attending all semester...had that a couple times recently, actually. The classroom looks like Coulson's office and Dr. Faulds was the teacher. The subject was something incredibly obscure but useful, and now I can't remember what it was...
    Also had a dream last Saturday that had Ben Wyatt coaching a flag-football team I was on for some reason, and Ash was in it somehow. There wasn't a notebook nearby when I woke up, so I can't tell y'all what it was about. Which is too bad, because it was really interesting.
   
     In other exciting family-related news, Courtney got an internship for the summer with Tim Challies! (I'm totally going to have to borrow some of those books once she's done...)

    Speaking of books, found this really interesting graphic novel called Marvels at the school library. It's a retelling of most of the major events from Marvel Comics history told through the perspective of an ordinary photojournalist. Also, I finally read Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 last night. In about three hours. (Most of that was also watching Agents, so slower than normal.) It was amazing. So amazing that I walked to the (cough - ack!) campus bookstore to buy a copy for myself. It will soon be highlighted within an inch of its life.

     Now to finish tomorrow's essay....

     Updates: That essay did get finished....at four a.m. Also, Maya's middle name is Rae-Lynn, she weighed 7 lbs, 11 ounces and was 19 inches long.

Another Semester Almost Over

     Tonight I saw PEOPLE! That I know! So, that was cool.

     Bennett's soccer team was playing in the state championship game, held at RSU's soccer field, and so I stopped by and watched as the Mingo Valley Eagles beat the Wright Christian Wildcats 3-0. And watching the game with Steven and Jamie made the win better.

     Also texted Dylan this morning, good to hear from him. And texted Ash, it's the end of the semester. So that meant swapping Avengers quotes for motivation.

     The NHL playoffs are wrapping up the first round, so lots more intense hockey action to follow. Anaheim swept Winnipeg, but the Ducks are a pretty good team to follow, too, along with the Jets, Blues and Flames.
     And I finally completed the latest run-through the Mighty Ducks trilogy last night. And my "obsessively watching all seven seasons of Parks and Rec in six-ish weeks" plan is coming along well; almost finished with season five.
     Daredevil is really....strange. And VIOLENT. And slow-paced. But it's part of the MCU, so.... But I don't think I'll rewatch those. Unless it's searching specifically for all the quotes about blindness. That's sort of neat. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. had another great episode Tuesday night, and Age of Ultron comes out next week. (Review to come on my writing-blog.)

     Reading over this post, it makes my life right now look a little pathetic. But there's just been a lot of studying and writing essays. My latest video got 220 out of 250 points, so that was good. Other than that, I still have no idea what my grades are.  

     
   

Thunder and Ice

     Well, first off, basketball season ended way too early. On the other hand, the season ended in the most Thunder-est way possible. And since the af2 Talons don't exist anymore, somebody else had to let fans down at the last second. (I suppose the Drillers could, if you cared about baseball. Or the new soccer team, the Roughnecks.)
     But anyway, it was a very challenging season to be an Oklahoma City Thunder fan. KD got hurt. Russ got hurt. We traded Perk and Serge got hurt. KD got hurt again. Russ got hurt again. Random guys we'd never heard of got hurt. But somehow, because they're the Thunder, they fought and clawed their way back through the Western Conference to put themselves with a chance to sneak into the playoffs despite everything. And they did everything they needed to, winning their last handful of games and winding up in a tie for the eighth spot with New Orleans. But the Pelicans owned the tiebreaker, so they got in and we were left out. So that was very disappointing. But the resilience and persistency of OKC kept them going this far. And yeah, it's a major bummer that we missed out. But this is the first time that's happened in years! Since the Sonics moved here! So it's a reminder of how much stronger our state's team has gotten over the years.

     Because of the lack-of-local-team-to-follow in the NBA playoffs, I'm pulling for our toughest rivals, Memphis and San Antonio. But the TV is tuned into playoff hockey each night because IT"S PLAYOFF HOCKEY. AKA "one of the world's best sports ramped up to even more excitement and tension". I stayed up watching the late game last night between Winnipeg and Anaheim because I couldn't sleep, and besides, it was a good one. (Final - Ducks 4, Jets 2. Ducks got lucky late in the third period.) I think the games on channels my TV gets tonight are Ottawa-Montreal and Calgary-Vancouver.

     Besides volleyball, hockey is probably the most team-focused team sport there is, and then when you add in the frenetic pace and sacrifices integral to key plays, it adds up to amazing. Really, almost everything involved in hockey is fairly boring and unimportant in itself; chasing down a loose puck, setting a screen on the goalie, receiving a pass. But when you add everything together, it allows for those handful of shining moments that result in a goal. So it's a lot like life that way. Most of the time, our lives are very boring and the daily or weekly tasks are very insignificant. But consistently doing those little things add up to a life well-spent. It's what makes the difference between Nano's funeral and NaNa's.

     I have like, three papers to write over the weekend, so if there's any time for other stuff, I'm thinking The Big Green or D3: The Mighty Ducks is in order.

     (4-22-15 Update). Oklahoma City just fired Scott Brooks. Not a fan of this decision....

Funeral of a Stranger

     So....I've missed classes twice this week. Missed Monday's Media Law because I woke up, flipped over my watch, and it read "11:04." Class is at 10. Needless to say, that started a miserable Monday with the Friends theme song stuck in my head. We were just listening to a lecture on the FCC anyway.

     Read through The Hunger Games again for research on an essay due next week; it didn't get much better the second time around. (The best was Mockingjay, because the series ended there. And also, it dove deeply into the role of the media during wartime, which was really interesting.) Also reading through The Book Thief right now, also as research. It's depressing, but a good read so far. Mainly just due to the WWII setting; the narration hopscotches all through time crazily.

     Missed today's Media Law because of being at a funeral. My dad's mom died Saturday night, so went home yesterday afternoon, the funeral was today, and now back in Claremore. It's been a long, tiring day. Which is really the rule this semester...
    It was, I think, the quickest funeral I've ever seen. And one of the emptiest, too. Not just because basically nobody showed up - maybe fifteen or twenty family members and maybe twenty-five other people - but in terms of content, too. There just wasn't much material to work with; it was almost like Bob Miles Sr's death in Philip Gulley's Signs and Wonders. At the end of the day, like you could just say, "Well....Bob sure did like Cheetos", there was only "Well...Judy loved shopping." Her husband Jim hung in there well during the service. Not sure anybody else felt anything. I felt bad for Dad; now both his parents are gone, and then he's got school and work and his inspections on top of getting all the arrangements ready. Mr. Steeley came to the funeral for him, which was good to see.

     Glory's and May's kittens are tiny fuzzballs of adorability; May's have their eyes open now, and are just barely getting the use of their leg muscles to wobble around in tentative exploration and the opening discovery of playtime. Glory's are still mostly sleeping and eating with their eyes shut. Anyway, Caleb and Trevor are enjoying having a set of kittens in their closets. (Incidentally, in the highly-developed imaginary world we made up around the property years ago, there was a tiny community called "Closet", and the school's mascot was the Kittens.) Captain gave me a hug as soon as I walked in the door, and right behind that was Banjo's enthusiastic slurps. Rags was happy to see me, too. Everybody wished I could've stayed longer, but there's a ton to get done before this semester's over. (Assuming it ends.) And then it'll be summer, so I'll be home then.        

     Talked to Amanda for a while once I got back, which was needed. It's weird...we never met until that second year of camp, and then because of Jessica, but it's like we're siblings. Completely unrelated as far as blood, but she counts as family. Why is that adoptive connection made so strongly when the biological strain of a grandmother is alien?
     Jessica's plowing through nursing school, hanging in there. We talk about once a week, kind of encouraging each other to keep going one more hour at a time. Courtney's planning on starting nursing school in January if everything falls right, so that'll probably be pretty tough. Maybe Sandi could give her advice or something.

Falls Creek Exploration

     All college students are basically dead now, which Grumpy Cat would be pretty happy about. Last weekend was full of video-production work, editing together a short comedy sketch that was due Monday. And also filming a documentary, which used every drop of power in about four camera batteries, filled roughly six memory cards and wore out a flash drive. But it's mostly finished shooting, so that's something. It was a little weird, though, to be filming a documentary about cheerleading... The cheer team is in Daytona right now at some big competition, so it's gonna be focused on the lead-up to that with a short tag at the end telling how they did, etc. They were pretty helpful, explaining the differences between competition-cheer and ballgame-cheer, that kind of thing.

     The family went to the gun museum last Friday, so we had dinner together and went to Wal-Mart. That was good to see them. And Robbie called the other day, so we talked for a bit, guess they're doing all right. It was good to hear from her.

     I'm now halfway through season four of Parks and Rec(super awesome), and Tuesday's episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. more than made up for last week's snoozefest. (Also, I've accurately called three fairly-major main plot points, so that's cool.) And the Netflix show Daredevil came out Friday, not sure if I'll watch the whole thing, but I'll give it a try for sure.

     Me and Ash speculated on Marvel theories and debated the new movies coming this summer, texting each other while waiting for classes Tuesday morning, that was fun. (Age of Ultron will be unbelievable. Unsure on Ant-Man, but we'll see... Curious about what happened in Budapest, and the Winter Soldier needs to be in more movies.) Also texted Daniel, it was good to hear from him.

    The people from RSU's BCM talked me into going with them on a retreat-type thing this weekend, so that was different. (I heard "volleyball tournament" and figured that was worth exploring somewhere I'd never been with pretty-much-strangers. Yes, I really love volleyball.)
    So we were at Falls Creek, which is a kind of small city in south-central Oklahoma. High up in the Arbuckle Mountains, it's enormous. There's really no good description for what it is, exactly. Somewhat a city, somewhat a campground, somewhat a school campus and somewhat a park, I guess. There's lots of good scenery to look at, though. I hiked around a lot with a lot on my mind, which really I might do in any of those settings. There's a really weird hodgepodge of nature and man-made construction, and also of grandeur and squalor.
     Had breakfast yesterday with the NSU gang, which felt instantly homelike, and then went exploring around with Daniel P., Bucky and James. Also had breakfast with them today. (The Thunder Curse of 2014-15 is so terrible it's not only taken out almost every player we've had on the roster, but even Thabo Sefalosha, who's in Atlanta now, and Bucky, one of the most diehard fans I know. She had a fracture of the kneecap.) Daniel is a terrible wheelchair driver. But it was entertaining to watch. And by "exploring", that means "getting lost", which is something we're kind of experts at... Finding anything around there is something like our Sallisaw SWAT road trip. Me and James listened to seminars on car-pushing and - well, not actually pushing cars, but some of the sermons felt like that. The first breakout session we went to was on proper management of time and money, and the other was on planning worship services.
     James asked how RSU was while we were eating, I say, after thinking a bit, "It's...y'know, just another school." He then stage-whispers in Amber's ear, "And by that he means 'hell'." She laughs and nods. Exaggeration, but they know me pretty well. It's just different. And it's still college, so...yeah. Said hi to Bob and Deb, they seemed about as glad to see me as I was to see them. After they both gave out hugs, Deb said, questioning, "There's no chance you can't come back?" I don't know.
     Back to sort-of being a Hillcat again after lunch during the 2015 BCM state sand volleyball tournament. We had a first-round bye, playing SWOSU after the team they were supposed to play forfeited by failing to show up. Final score was Hillcats 21, Bulldogs 9. So it was on to the semifinals against TU. Communication errors were rampant, and TU had a couple people who played for their NCAA-official volleyball team. Those two facts played about equal roles in the 21-7 Hurricane win. So after watching other games for a bit, we asked if the SWOSU people wanted to just swat it around for a while. That was how the next three hours were spent; probably about nine games' worth of play were crammed into that space. My nose got a bit sunburned, but my serving was fairly-enough accurate(it was very windy) and passing/setting went well. I think ECU won the championship, but I'm not sure. Did some actual exploring with some of the folks from the volleyball team last night.
     I've slept eight hours since Friday night, because of ice-cold indoor temperatures and guys running around and slamming doors. Pretty sure there was jungle pong that I heard going on there someplace, too. Anyway, it added up to 11:30 p.m. to 3 a.m. Friday night woken up six times, and five straight hours last night from one to six. So I'm a little tired. And there's a lot of stuff to get done this week....
     I'm not sure that I liked it, but now I know what people are talking about when they say "Falls Creek this or that". (One of my first thoughts once we got there was April Ludgate's attitude towards camping.) There was over 800 students from all across the state attending, so that's a lot of people. The cabin we stayed at was basically a garage; but I got a ton of exercise, so that's good.

     Also, Glory and May both had kittens, so there's lots of feline fuzziness in the house right now, and plenty of love and caring from both of them, Rags, Captain and everybody.

     I'm gonna take a shower now and go back to homework...