Happy Holidays?

Well, the holidays are over, except for the last few gifts to give out and the celebration of the New Year. Overall I was plesantly surprised with it all. I made it back for Thanksgiving, but I stayed in Colorado for Christmas, away from my family, but I did get to spend the time with Matt and his family. It made me feel less alone and things went well. I think that since my family doesn't have as much of a tradition over Christmas it went better than last years Thanksgiving. I've noticed that things that have been the exact same for the past 25 years are much harder to do differently, but things that have changed every year for the past 25 years, those seem much easier to deal with. I still managed to get my tree and decorate it, and make a new wreath to put up each year:

Lilu also enjoyed Christmas very well, she had a great time looking at the presents and then trying to get inside of them. She also assisted in helping me with my laundry attempts for the time off.

All in all it was a good time, I hope everyone had a great time. With or without family.

Halloween

It's both wonderful and awful to have your birthday on a holiday. If it's a going out holiday, everyone wants to do that and you have to compete with the going out crowd of events. If it's a staying in holiday then everyone is with family and not really able to ditch them to hang out with you. You can't avoid your birthday, if its something like May 15th, then you can quietly not say anything and no-one knows. Holidays seem to get less of that.

All in all my birthday(halloween) was pretty great. There were times that I wished I had know that I wanted (and voiced it) to have a quieter house party birthday instead of going out, but I still had a good time. We went to the play Dracula on Friday. It was an amazing play, tons of creepy moments and flashes, I was quite impressed with it. Then Saturday I spent the morning/afternoon with Angie, chatting, baking biscotti, laughing at everything. It was fun. Follwed by dinner downtown (Marco's Coal Fired Pizza, awesome and wonderful) and then out for drinks/dancing. I didn't really do much dancing my feet hurt and the "dance floor" was so crowded that I was inches away from way too many people. Lastly came the actual birthday which was Sunday. Had a nice Cajun brunch, followed by some knitting time, followed by dinner and a movie (RED) which was very enjoyable and exactly how I wanted to end my birthday weekend.

Now to get on with some knitting, do some exercise (I can't seem to drop weight no matter what I try), and relax.

Blind

I personally think that most professors are blind. A few professors, the truely great ones, are the ones who can actually see and empathise. I'm taking this class, my professor is reviewing for the first exam of the quarter, and all he keeps saying is how fundamental and elementary this all is. How its stuff we all should sorta know already and have no trouble figuring out. Now this is a grad course, so if that premise were true then why would I take this course? School should never be about telling you things you already know, it should be about expanding things. Next, honestly, these things are fundamental to a materials specialist. I don't even think Mechanical engineers or stress engineers go into this level of detail or know this much about all the different subjects. The crystaline structures of the materials? The complex costing structures based on economics and variable costs. The different names for the different stages of a material as it goes through a heating and cooling process... some of this is simple, some of this is not. But for an introductory class that is a survey of processes that is open to grad students from all different backgrounds (as the prof said during the introduction to the course) this is way to detailed.

And you know what? I'm okay with it being difficult, that doesn't bother me nearly as much as a class that is taught as simply throwing up some slides to cover things I've never seen before and then before the final to be berrated by the fact that this is easy. It's like saying that figuring out your taxes are easy, you just have to pay a percentage of your income, no worries. (oh but I expect you to know all the fine print that says there are changes to be made if you have children, or are married, have solar panels, were blind and born after 1985, live in an area with more than 12 traffic lights and so forth, but don't worry its something I expect you can do easily)

This prof is the king of being both condescending and heart pounding at the same time. He told us to pay attention to todays lecture, and in an email it say "TIME WILL BE CRITICAL FOR COMPLETION OF THIS EXAM", followed by a review which was nothing but "don't read to much, this is all simple, I just expect you to know what you should already know"

Tomorrow at lunch will be me taking all of the slides and stuff and making a study sheet (because there are tons of definitions and equations to remember, closed book and all) followed by an evening of reading through them, maybe talking them out loud, who knows, but I still have no idea what this test will be like and I still think this is a boring and outrageous class. At least the last one was challenging, hard, and had a purpose to my career and further education. This information I'm dumping as soon as I no longer need it for this course.

*sigh*

It's a funny thing, life is

There have always been a few things I've really wanted in life, which I find ironic. I absolutely love technology, from computers to Ipods, and kitchen gadgets and whatever I love it. But I also like doing things the old fashioned way, the hard way, or whatever. I love making my own bread, dying my own yarn, planting crops (though without a yard that's kinda challenging in itself) and doing things like that. Sure I like just ordering Pizza, but I also like baking my own.

For one example, last weekend I got to make cider. Over 7 gallons of it. I was helping out some friends, I chopped apples (removing any rotten bits) I milled apples both in a meat grinder as well as a food processor, and even helped with the pressing. It was a ton of work and a great time and I know a lot of people wouldn't have even considered it. But even though the cider in my fridge might not taste any better compared to the store for people who weren't involved, but to me it tastes even better!