You can't take the sky from me.

    Last week was a bit intense due to a crazy five-day Japanese schedule (I lost my sleep-until-noon Wednesday...not happy about that) and some tests and meetings and papers and insanity such as that.  However, that week is over now, and I have begun another crazy couple of days, after which, hopefully, my week will slow down again.

    Monday last marked my first college test.  Or at least, I thought it was a test, and so freaked out sufficiently the night before when I saw it in my planner and began a scramble to shove all sorts of too-similar Japanese vocabulary words and phrases into my head.  As luck would have it, when I went to class, I saw no one else freaking out in their seats, and then he passed out the paper, and I saw why: in big letters across the top was the [English] word "Quiz."  Quiz.  Well, gee, if I had known that, I would not have had what was later referred to by my floor-mates as a nervous breakdown in the lobby the night before.  I mean sure, I guess I copied it into my planner wrong, but that's still just a sick joke.  

    10 questions.  I had memorized more than 50 japanese words and phrases.  Crap.  

    And that pretty much set the tone for the week.  As the days wore on, I proceeded to forget necessary class things in my room, skip lunch only to find I had run out of sustaining food days earlier, and sit in front of a blank screen for hours, trying to come up with a suitable beginning to my autobiography, and much much more.  

    Until Friday, when I just got so fed up I stopped trying.  Once classes were over, I made no attempt at homework, studying, or even thinking too much.  However, I still managed to have an uneventful night for the most part, breaking down boxes in the kitchen for an hour or so, then helping Christine wash and dry the dishes, then hanging around for a couple hours waiting for Theotherben to get back from Meijer so we could watch Serenity.

    And this is where things started getting interesting. [SPOILER ALERT]

    That movie doesn't have any down time; I swear it was a perpetual action scene or emotional climax.  Not to mention my favorite character dies in possibly the worst way a character is able die in a movie.  But what is worse is that someone I thought was a trustable source of Firefly-esque information turned out to be a no-good, low-down, double-crossing snake in the grass liar.  He told me that, and I quote, "One character dies."  And earlier on in the movie, one character does die, and it happens to be a character that I have no particular affinity for.  So I thought I was off the hook and was not going to lose anyone, you know, important.  

    But I did.  And I was a little frustrated at Bigben for that.

    Furthermore, I don't know what it is about this movie, but I cannot convince myself that some of its aspects don't exist somewhere out in the black.  Mostly, the Reavers.  Yeah, I don't even want to talk about how much that whole concept disgusts and scares me.  Except to say that, since my roommate was out for the night at her boyfriend's school and I was left all alone in my room, I had a hard time getting to sleep that night.  There were gymnastics, loud music, and night lights involved.  

    So anyway, I'm still not sure if I liked that movie or not.

    Then Saturday.  That was a lovely day.  At the time, it felt a little hectic and wasteful, but in retrospect, it really wasn't any of those things.  Well, yes it was, but I'm okay with that now.  It started at 11:00 when we had a dorm "retreat" (we all went out to the parking lot, ate lunch, listened to the story of Noah and the Ark and how it relates to the new wing, and then went shopping at various locations for stuff for our floor lobbies) and continued at 4:00 with a serious soccer game.

    Let me just tell you, that that game, more than anything else I've experienced in these past...what...three weeks? of college took me away from all previous experiences and out of my comfort zone (quite literally, as I am still quite sore some two days later).  I felt like Edward Scissorhands at a cake decorating convention.  I had a whole lot more to write on that subject, but this post is already breaking zoning laws on length, so I'll just move on.

    Then I went to Meijer again and spent way too much money, but at least I have food to eat when I skip organized meals, which happens always during the breakfast hour a lot during the lunch hour on study days.  And now I don't have to live solely on ramen, turkey jerky, and fruit leather, which is exciting.

    So little homework was done that night, though I wrote the insides of my autobiography, saving the introduction and conclusion until...oh.  Today.  Right.  I should get on that soon.

    Sunday was church at Ada Bible.  Which I identified as a WCA church almost immediately, though I'm not sure why.  That makes me like it more, though that doesn't take much, as the pastor talks too fast and the people I met aren't really friendly.  

    After church was homework until dinner (one of the study days without an organized lunch) and then we hung out in the lobby until LOFT*.  Which was moving.  And I took communion again.  Does twice in one day make me a better person?  Don't ask my floor-mate Richard: he has a tendency to start raucous theological debates at the drop of a hat.

    And then we stayed up until 2:00 with no purpose, discussing which names we thought had negative or positive connotations and how people have proposed to their significant others in the past and whether or not the parking lot outside our dorm is a good place for ghost in the graveyard.

    I will let you get back to your regularly scheduled day now.  My friends may you grow in grace.

<3 spadeALLcross

* Yesterday's LOFT isn't up there as of yet, but it will be, and I encourage anyone interested to listen to it.  I'm not sure how much I agree with, but he does present some interesting points.