One thing I can tell you is you got to be free

And just like that, the semester is over and I'm free until January 13.  I finished up the last of my grading and submitted grades at around 11:30 on Thursday, meeting my desired deadline of noon so I could partake in my traditional Five Guys' celebration lunch.  The plan was then for me to relax and be lazy that afternoon before hanging out with Krista once more before the break.  Instead, Krista's teacher body realized she was going on break and so she ended up getting sick and we didn't meet up at all.  I'm fine with that as we're not in that stage of the relationship where my first thought is to go comfort her; I'm glad she didn't want me to see her puking and she kept her gunk to herself.  Friday morning, I cleaned up my office, as in, I threw away all the non-important papers on my desk.  For some reason, we don't have obvious paper recycling at AU and this needs to be changed and soon.  I saturated my plant with water in the hopes that it won't die before heading back to finish packing.  I took off around 11:30 and outside of some issues with greatly reduced visibility due to fog in Northern Indiana, made it home around 4:00 to begin Christmas break.

The question now begging though is "What do I do with all of this time?"  I don't have a clue what I'm going to do for all of the next two weeks.  I should have gone for a run this morning, but based on how icy the driveway was when I pulled in yesterday, I gave that up as a bad idea.  I'll get around to running soon enough, seeing as how I'll be doing novice marathon training to get ready for the half I'm running in May.  Obviously, I'll do a lot of reading over the break as well.  Once the sisters get here, I'm sure some games will be played and there's a puzzle or four that will be done.  Heck, I might even go back to Skyward Sword and see if I can't finish that off.  Besides that though, who knows?  Its 10:00 right now and all I've done so far this morning is eat breakfast and write this blogpost.  It feels good, man.

Tick Tick Tick Tick Boom

Somehow, someway, the end of every semester always seems to sneak up on me.  Its not like I don't know its coming up, as I'm always very aware of it, but there's just always so much work to do and then you get to that Friday afternoon and then boom!, all of a sudden I have free time.  I actually get to spend today doing what I want, instead of worrying about all of the stuff that needs to be done before Monday.  Sure, I still have a Linear Algebra exam that I should write, but I can knock that out on Monday.  Today will be spent reading, working out, running a few errands, etc.  I'm hoping it will be a good productive day and that I can even enjoy the beauty of the snow storm that's accumulating outside of my window.

As promised before, a few more details about my relationship with Krista.  It's still a little weird for me.  Everybody who had me dating a liberal, quasi-vegetarian, yuppie/hipster, raise your hands.  Liars.  There are a lot of differences between us, but there's a lot that's the same as well that isn't obvious on the surface.  This could be a great thing and there could be immense growth for both of us.  Alternatively, it could very easily blow up and be over in a month.  Needless to say, I'm hoping for the former.  The list of what we've done together so far includes the Indy symphony orchestra, a Neil deGrasse Tyson lecture, an Iowa football game, an art museum, trivia night at the local pub, abundant games of trivial pursuit, and making fun of Lisa while at the zoo.  Like I said, this could be great or the differences could get to us and sabotage it all.

I'm the same as I was when I was six years old

I must first say that I am very ready for Christmas break and the end of the semester.  The students I have in my sections of Finite are fine, but the material just isn't that exciting.  It's my actual math majors in my other classes that have my frustration levels starting to boil over.  Admittedly, I wasn't a great student my first year or two at Trinity.  All I cared about were my math and chemistry classes and so the other classes weren't a priority and I blew them off occasionally.  Its not something I'm proud of, but I'm not terribly ashamed of it either.  However, when its actual math students not showing up to math major classes, I get angry.  I have ten students in Differential Equations.  It isn't uncommon for there to only be three students there at the start of class and five of them have skipped on a frequent basis.  Similarly, I have 14 students who will finish Linear Algebra and at the start of class yesterday, I had seven of them there.  That class has started with as low as four.  Once again, there are four or five that skip on a fairly regular basis.  It is just mind-boggling to me that you can pay $35000 a year for tuition and then blow off the stuff about which you supposedly care.

Rant over.

I am looking forward to the break, but I am concerned about it as well.  I know mentioned back on Xanga that things change when I go home.  I revert back to who I was the last time I lived at home.  I don't know what it is, but I just change back to something else.  Its certainly no fault of my family's and I love being around them.  I just let my bad habits crop back up and I don't fight them as hard.  I struggle with eating right, working out consistently and occasionally skipping devotions.  Most likely, its just a case of idle hands.  If I don't have things demanding my constant attention for much of the day, I don't necessarily stay on target for what I should do.  This has gotten me to thinking about what I can do to take care of this.  The easiest thing is just to get out of the house and make myself busy.  I should try to get to East Lansing and Chicago for a couple of days.  I also noticed that Red River Gorge was listed in Backpacker Magazine's list of top 100 day hikes in the U.S. I wonder what hiking in Kentucky in January would be like.  Maybe I'll have to find out; or maybe, I'll save it until spring break and also explore Mammoth Cave and a whiskey distillery as well.