01-06-03 - 6:22 p.m.

Let's see here, it's been 23 days since my last post. Shame on me. I blame it on the general disruption of life that the end of the semester, Christmas, and New Year's bring. Okay, that's not a good excuse.

So what's been going on? Hmm ...

On the Monday after I last wrote, I took my Hebrew exam. I did a lot of educated guessing. After I finished, I really had no idea if it was a passing effort. I waited all week to hear from the department, but I never did. So on Friday I wandered in and asked one of the relevant professors. He told me I passed. I was so surprised I blurted out, "I did?!" hehe :) So that's out of the way.

It's a good thing, too. I also saw the syllabus for my Genesis exegesis class next semester, and it looks like the most murderous class in my school career yet. But now I've had advance warning, so it won't be as much of a shock, and I can plan ahead!

I finished one logic book and started another, A Concise Introduction to Logic by Patrick Hurley. I'm still reading that one.

I went home on Christmas Eve in a really nice American Airlines plane. It was one of those international flight 777's with 10 seats in a row, and there was a TV screen on the back of each seat. It was a short flight, though, so they weren't showing any movies. The plane I rode on the way back was a normal one and wasn't very exciting.

We had Christmas with just our family, and it was nice and relaxed and normal feeling. I got books and CDs as usual. And we got our parents a DVD player! That, of course, is what Christmas is all about, and how dare you think otherwise.

On Thursday we went to see The Two Towers, which was very good, of course. It had several parts I was waiting to see, like Helm's Deep, which didn't disappoint me (UNLIKE the Council of Elrond, which they completely messed up!). I'm glad they left in the part about Gimli and Legolas keeping score. :) And I never knew how to picture the Ents, so that part made me happy, too.

On Friday I drove 2 hours to visit my old roommate Jason. His cousins were there, three very hyper teenage girl cousins. To illustrate, while I was there they watched The Fellowship of the Ring ... for the sole purpose of seeing Legolas, and when he finally appeared on the screen they all let out this ear-piercing scream. And they did it again when he showed up the next time. I'm very quiet around strangers, especially hyper ones, so I was rather uncomfortable when I was around them. In fact, I haven't been so uncomfortable around people in a long time. But it was nice anyway. I got to see Jason and meet some of the relatives he's always telling me about and see his house and his parents' house. And I got to play Simpsons: Road Rage, which is the kind of game I've always wanted to play.

One of the exciting things I got for Christmas was the Baker Encyclopedia of Psychology and Counseling. I've been thinking for a few months that I might want to get a degree in psychology (waaaaaaaay in the future). So I've been reading that some. It's a very good resource, if you happen to be looking for an encyclopedia on psychology and counseling from an evangelical perspective.

Monday we went to see Star Trek: Nemesis. It was good but not as good as First Contact. That's still the best, followed by The Undiscovered Country. Somehow Nemesis just seemed to start things without finishing them. But I still liked it. The music was different, and the scene on the desert planet was definitely different, i.e. not typical Star Trek. And Michael and I even got to finish watching all the other Star Trek movies before we went to this one. Quite a feat, I think. We watched Insurrection on our new DVD player.

Tuesday night we stayed up watching The Omega Code and Megiddo, which is the sequel. I didn't watch much of them because I felt like doing other things, but I popped in occasionally. They were okay. The special effects were good, and I like Michael York. I just ... have trouble getting excited about most Christian apocalyptic movies, I guess. They tend to have an element of hokeyness, even though I think they try to make it realistic.

Why am I italicizing book titles and not movie titles, you might be asking. Because I feel like it.

On Wednesday I came back to Wheaton, and there was nothing notable about the trip except the somewhat interesting conversation between the two other people on my row. It was a man and a woman, and the man was a pilot. Towards the end of the conversation he told her about a device they started putting in jets about eight years ago that would detect when another plane was approaching too closely and would tell the pilot which way to go to avoid a collision. Kind of neat.

On Friday a package arrived for me. It was a set of plastic paperback book covers that I had just ordered on Monday. The covers on a couple of my favorite books were getting curled or bent, and I wanted them to last, so that's why I ordered them, and that night I covered them. Now they're kind of like hardcover books, and I felt much better. Aren't I nerdy? :)

On Saturday I worked for eight hours at the museum. It was fine for the first four hours, but then I got very bored. So the next day when I had to work again I brought my computer and worked on one of my projects. I'm compiling a list of all the topical entries in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy. The other entries are names of authors and movies and such. I toooold you I was nerdy! I'm almost done, too.

Yesterday I got up late and was late to church, but I got there just in time to hear the sermon. And during the sermon, several lines of thought that had been wandering through my mind in the last few weeks (months?) culminated in a decision to start reading my Bible regularly again, try to start praying more, and get various other things in my life more in order. Dr. Dorsett, who was preaching that day, always advertizes Robert Murray McCheyne's Bible reading calendar, which takes you through the whole Bible in a year and the New Testament and Psalms twice. They had included it in that day's bulletin--what a coincidence!--so I think I'll use that. I got caught up yesterday and today. I thought it was nice of him to preach that sermon at the beginning of January, since that's when the Bible reading calendar starts.

Last night I had several dreams, but the most interesting one I remember was that I was living in a dorm again, and the housing office had made a mistake and put me with a girl. She was a nice person and in general I wouldn't have minded living with her (platonically, people! *rolls eyes*), but I thought it would be a bit awkward, so I told her we should tell the housing office about the problem. It was a guy's dorm, so she would be the one to have to move.

And then today I worked, had some interesting IM conversations, and wrote this.

And during one of my IM conversations, I found out that my best online friend Paul put his new site up, and he linked to me! I've never been linked to before! Wasn't that nice of him?

Oh, and I almost forgot! John's coming this week! He's going to stay almost the whole month! Alright, I'm done now. :)