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!