Friday, December 28, 2007

Christmas!

We had a great Christmas! Here is a glimpse into the chaos:
Isn't it great when the biggest present belongs to you? I never dreamed I'd get something this cool! Thank you Keaton!



Our special ornament for this year was a chinese takeout box, complete with a fortune cookie that reads: "What good fortune to have each other." Every year we get an ornament from Keaton's family that has some significance for what we did during the year. I think maybe we go out to eat a little too much if it warranted an ornament!

What a cute hubby!

Hmmm...so I guess this means you liked the present?

Thursday, December 20, 2007

School Update

So I just got my grades for the three classes I took this semester:
Eminent Authors (my Sherlock Holmes class) : A
Nature Writing: A
Excel: C+ (Its like, one credit. I probably could have tried harder, but I was busy writing hundreds of essays. Just happy to pass.)

Yay for me!

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Playing Catch-Up

I don't know what has happened to me this season, but it feels like I've missed the whole lead-up to Christmas. I blame school. I really, really, really tried hard this semester, especially nearing the end. (I did the tabulations, and in the last four weeks of school I did seventeen units for my two online classes. Each unit had four essay questions, and I wrote about a page of essay answer to each question. That equals...well, around 68 pages of essay writing. Yikes! That isn't even including all the essay stuff I did before the last four weeks of school! The cool thing is, my professor wrote in his review of my work, "I've really appreciated the time and thoughtfulness you've put into your responses for this class. It's not often that I see such scholarly commitment in an on-line class. Thanks for all your extra effort." Say what? Me? Did you say scholarly? That is the first really positive response I've ever had from a teacher--most the time I try to fly under the radar unnoticed, and if they do notice me its because I'm not doing all the stuff I'm supposed to be doing. So its cool to A. actually try, and B. get something positive out of trying besides exhaustion. So, though now I only have a week to get into Christmas, I'm still feelin' all right!

On a work-related note, Wells Fargo is a sponsor of the Utah Food Bank and each branch was supposed to decorate a barrel for donations for a statewide contest. Because banking is boring and I happen to love art, I enthusiastically volunteered to paint our barrel on company time. (Who wouldn't?) Here are a few pictures of it:




It really looks better in person. What's really cool is that we won 2nd place in the state! (Price won first, but they cheated by decorating theirs as a stagecoach. Brown nosers!)

Well, that's what's been happening in the last couple of weeks. Hopefully I can get more Holiday-themed things up before Christmas comes and goes and I've blinked and missed it!

Thursday, December 6, 2007

Wisdom from Thoreau

It's nearly midnight of the umpteenth night in a row I've been scrambling to finish the last of my essays as the semester nears an end. One of the classes upon which I'm laboring is Nature Writing. This evening, as I struggled to keep my eyes open, I came across a bit of wisdom by Thoreau, the man whose works I was so desperately trying to memorialize. He said, “Many a poor sore-eyed student that I have heard of would grow faster, both intellectually and physically, if, instead of sitting up so very late, he honestly slumbered a fool’s allowance.”
I couldn't agree more. Maybe next week.