Monster: Skillet

It's been awhile since I've posted. Many reasons for this, but only one worth mentioning. I avoided reality and some technologies over break. It's been wonderful! Although I did miss meeting up with a good friend that no longer resides in this state because I didn't check facebook.

I've been in a zombie films intersession class for the past week. A 4 day, super intense course. It's been great. Although I don't like zombies. The idea of zombies creeps me out, especially when I'm at work, I'll hear a sound and assume the bodies are coming back to life.

For this class, we've been studying George Romero's quartet of films. Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, and Land of the Dead. It's a thinking class, so we spend 2-3 hours each day trying to figure out what Romero was saying about all these different topics. Race, Social Status, gender, politics, military, science and much more.

Now, you know me, I don't like movies that make you think, zombies, or horror movies. So this class has been interesting. Add to that my Pakistani friend is in it and she wears on my nerves sometimes. It's safe to say it's been a long week. Plus, I got a horrible migraine last night, I don't have meds, and there is no way to miss any part of this class and still pass. Long, long week.

I really have liked parts of this class, but it seems that today is just annoying me as a whole. Zombie films, at least the older ones, have grown on me. I've found most of the gore comical, and I've learned to analyze the film as I go, which makes it all easier to handle. Day is the only film that's made me jump. One guy actually screamed at the opening scene. It was really surprising. It's so interesting to see a set of films that are meant to go together that were made so far long after each other (1968, 1978, 1984, 2005 respectively), especially because they were all commentaries of how people thought at those times, at least how Romero saw the world thinking.

I guess I should recap everything since the beginning of break.
Classes: I passed all my classes that I took in the fall, B in BioMolecular engineering, B+ in Ordinary Differential Equations, and the thing I'm proud of the most: I PASSED CALCULUS II!!!!!!!!
the exclamations points were definitely needed. Yes that many too.


And now it's stuck in italics. shoot. Oh well. I've always known, and heard that something is better if you work for it. Well, I've definitely worked for this class. I've worked hard in it 4 times. The fact that passed ODE before Calc II (a 300 level class before a 100 level class) was insane. I'm going on to take Calc III this spring semester, and I just know that I can do it.

My sister graduated! She is a college grad. Just don't ask her what's next in her life. She doesn't know. I just avoid the conversation. It works for us. We don't pressure each other to tell anything, it just works.

My parents and Zach came down for the graduation, it was good. It was fun. Then everyone went down to Alamogordo for a bit. It was good. I really enjoyed staying with Dr Smith. It was weird to see another family living in our house. Every time I've been there in the past, no one has been living there. So it was easy to imagine the house as ours still. I know we still own it, but it defiantly didn't feel like ours still. It just cemented in my mind that we've moved on from that part of our life. It was good, I was like a ninja and wasn't seen by some old 'friends'.

Then we all came back and had a great Christmas. Fatima was hanging out with us a lot. I was glad that we were able to include her since her parents don't talk to her anymore.

I learned the game 'settlers of catan' it was so much fun to play with all my family. That's one thing I miss about the dorms/home. Playing games with people.

Christmas morning was fun. It was great to see how people reacted to the presents I got them. I did get a TV. :) No more hitting the TV to make it work. I mean, we had the last TV for 16 years.
The rest of the vacation was fairly boring, relaxing and almost perfect. Yay. Now it's 2012. I'm excited for spring semester, but I'm doing 2 intersession classes, only 2 hours left in the first one :) but next week's class is going to be hard and with tons of work.

Oh, best thing about this break. I've been craving God and his word. It's a wonderful feeling. I've started reading Psalms, side by side with the message version and my NCV. I'm loving it.

Here's to a better me.