Let's Try This Again

By golly by jimbo! How long has it been since my last entry here? Beginning of December? Golly geepers. So I'm sure everyone's still waiting with baited breath as to what grades I got. Yes, I'm sure. Well, in case you happen to wander through this empty banana peel of a blog, I am quite satisfied with the grades I received last semester. A's in everything except for Speech Composition/Presentation, which was a B (B+, but who's keeping track? =p). I wasn't actually expecting much better than that, as the Professor in that class was/is a very strict grader. I was very happy with what I got for U.S. History, though. I'm not sure if it's true, but I thought my grade rode on my final quite a bit. Do good on it, and I'd get an A, do bad, and it's a B. I got an A, and so I can only figure I did alright. 

As for this semester (which is practically already done. Tsk tsk to me), I'm taking Taekwondo again (but the ADVANCED class), Foundations of Literary Study (essentially an introduction to the English major. S'awright, I suppose. Dealing with literary criticism and stuff [not exactly something I used to place stock in {although that's changed somewhat}]), Survey of British Literature II (yay for getting to read poetry 'n' stuff!), Creative Writing Workshop (a lot of fun. Get to write short stories), New Testament Survey (Learning all about the history of it and stuff like that), and World Civilizations I (which covers from the 1600's [1700's?] back to the beginning of civilization). The classes are fun, and I think I'm doing pretty well in all of them. 

I'm just getting off Spring Break now. Flew out from Costa Mesa to Portland Oregon, had a 3 hour layover, from Portland to San Jose, and then an hour drive to Salinas. Spent a fun week with half the fam'. And now I'm waiting for my plane to board after a twelve hour layover in Portland on the way back. It wouldn't have been so bad if I had managed to get to sleep last night. I went to bed at about 9:30, tried to fall asleep until about 1:40, and then decided to just get up since we were leaving at 3:30. My flight left at 6 and arrived in Portland at about 7:30. 

And then I got to sit around and write for twelve hours. Wrote the first draft of my next short story, as well as finished the next post for the writing contest I'm currently in. Altogether it's about 4500 words. And I walked around and had breakfast/lunch/dinner, on top of other random things. I'm just glad Portland has free Wi-Fi. That was nice. 

But seriously, I seem to have a problem with traveling ever since I started college last fall. My first trip back home was over Thanksgiving. The drive both ways, usually 6-8 hours, was about 10 hours with traffic the entire way. 

And then for Christmas Break, the guy's car I was riding with needed its radiator replaced. We left at 6 (5?) in the morning, drove for about 15 minutes, pulled over to a gas station, figured out the radiator was bone dry, waited 1 1/2 hours for it to cool down, filled it up, went driving again, drove 5 minutes, saw the temperature skyrocket again, pulled over to the side of the Freeway, called roadside service, waited for 2 hours, and got towed to East L.A. We waited for an hour in the auto shop, they told us it would be another 3 hours, we went to the only safe place around (McDonald's! Oh joy!) that didn't have drug deals happening, and spent 3 1/2 hours in there playing cards and generally doing nothing. Finally, we got back on the road, and we drove pretty much uneventfully. We did stop at a gas station in the middle of nowhere where I think the employees go stir crazy from boredom. A big black guy saw my motorcycle goggles I was wearing, and said "Those motorcycle goggles! (me: Yup!) Dang! You gonna ride a motorcycle in flipflops! HaHA!" 

Yeah, it was an interesting trip that ended up being about 13 or 14 hours. The drive back was fairly uneventful, just for a change. Meanwhile, my parent's moved to Salinas to pastor a Vineyard church. We went there for my dad's dedication a week later, and amazingly got there in a reasonable amount of time. But that's apparently where my luck ended, because then there was this plane trip for Spring Break. Now, it wasn't necessarily bad or anything, because I can handle hanging out in airports, and it was cheap for my parents because they were using their airline miles, but 12 hours in an airport when you snatched 30 minutes of sleep on the way to the airport, and another 30 minutes of sleep while in the air, isn't quite as enjoyable as you might think.

Nevertheless, I managed to snag a booth in the internet cafe and hang out there for about 8 hours or so. And now I'm waiting for my plane to board, which it should be doing in about 30 minutes. Maybe I'll catch a nap or something.

So there you go. Or there I go. All caught up in an abbreviated version of my life. Makes it seem kind of cheap. And makes me seem rather brusque. But so's life. Huzzah. 

Indubitably,

Elijah