The Station

It's Over!

There was one of those year-summarizing news montages on television this morning. As I watched a potion of this synopsis, I was reminded of just how much can happen in a year. For the first time, I realized that 2003 will soon be over. It seems like it just got started.

If I were to be granted a wish, I think I'd ask for time to slow down. There's too much to do, and too many people to know, with the current rate of time. Rate of time?!?! The deriviative of time with respect to time? "Time dot?" Can there be such a thing? It's way too early.

Thank you friends for another great year!
B

Merry Christmas!

Check out some of the photos I have so far.
B

Christmas Eve

In addition to the Christmas story I posted a few days ago, I think I'm going to upload some photos of our house at Christmas. Here's one I took tonight. Quite fitting for Christmas Eve.

Christmas

Recently, a friend commented that I have become somewhat of an Ebeneezer Scrooge. That is, I'm not very excited at Christmas time. Eventually, I got to thinking of how Christmas was when I was a child. I'll share a few memories.

Preface: Somewhere, I was supposed to better explain the Scrooginess that has developed over the last few years. However, it all sounded so out of place that I'm just going to leave things as they are below...and await visits from some spirits.

One early December afternoon when I was four I took a nap. When I woke up, I wandered into the living room and there against the wall was a fireplace! I should point out that the old Joliet house had no fireplace. My Dad had purchased this fake cardboard fireplace complete with an electric lamp for the "fire" and two electric candelabras on the "mantle." Today, anyone would laugh at this arrangement, but to me it was the greatest thing I had ever laid eyes on. It's majesty at that moment was beyond compare. It was assembled next to the tree every Christmas thereafter until we moved out ten years later. By the time our current home was finished, the poor thing was an absolute wreck and I fear it met it's fate with the recycling bin. I thought it would have been more fitting to burn it in the new home's real fireplace.

I also remember every Christmas my Grandpa setting up my Uncles' old Lionel train set for me to play with. The enchanting sound of that little locomotive rolling on those tracks and the groan of it's horn will gleefully haunt me forever. Such sounds! He also started setting up the old Aurora slot car sets. These were nowhere near as cool as the train, but the old cars with vertical armatures and numerous gears would often break - an opportunity for me to fix something! Grandpa let me take them apart and learn how they worked. So much fun!

Then, of course, there's Santa Claus. Every year I thought I certainly didn't deserve to getting anything (I was quite mischievous most of the year), but there were always even more gifts than I asked for! It always amazed me. And I always used to think to myself on Christmas Eve: "try to stay awake so you can greet Santa when he comes." Which was always followed by the thought: "who are you kidding? there's no way your going to get the courage to talk to him!" I never saw him, but he always brought the most wonderful things for me and Jen (and always ate the cookies we left him).

There were so many other things, too. Grandma's Christmas Eve Polish feast, singing Christmas songs in church, gingerbread men, Baked Alaska pie, family picture time, watching Grandpa add color crystals to his fireplace, driving around to see decorated homes, decorating our own home, Christmas plays at school, and on and on! So many things to make it magical.

Time stands still at Christmas when you're a child. The wonder and enchantment of it all is like nothing else ever to be experienced again. Then one year you realize it's gone. It's kinda like The Polar Express, by Chris Van Allsburg. The little boy and his sister visit Santa at his workshop and he gives them a bell from his sleigh. When they return home, they find out that only children can hear it. Later, when they grow up, they no longer hear it (actually, perhaps the boy does, it's been a while. I think I just further illustrated my point). Like most everyone my age, I stopped hearing the bell years ago, but unlike most everyone else my age, I'm still listening for it.

So yes, Christmas certainly has lost a lot of its whimsy. Over the years, beloved traditions have faded away with little to replace them. I guess that's just the way time works, but I don't like it.

The great thing though, is that now I understand the truth of Christmas and how wonderful it is. As a child, I knew it was about Christ's birth, but I never really understood what that meant. Now I know exactly what it means, and it makes me indescribably happy. Just think, the greatest gift at Christmas is simply the gift of Christmas itself!

Christmas is about the birth of The Savior. Christmas is about sharing the love He taught, not only with friends and family, but with everyone - especially those who do not know His love. Christmas is about remembering that God loves us always, and will bring us home if we simply believe in the gift He gave the world on Christmas.

Two For Tuesday

My lack of desire to study for finals has started to amaze even me. I used to be such a good student only a couple of years ago. Next semester though, I'm getting a 4.0.

Despite being irresponsible, I have been constructive. Today I fixed the links on the right to automatically resize to fit the screen. Now people who set their screen resolution to 8 pixels by 6 pixels (or some other ridiculously low resolution) can see those items.

This is the first time I've posted twice in one day. I should get an award.

Beware of cows with guns.
B

Where did they go?

These last few days I've noticed a dramatic decrease in updates to my friends' journals. Perhaps those pesky finals are to blame. Good luck everyone!
B

Look What You Did!

Today I got up and went to the lab early to finish a report with my lab partner. At some point I decided to get some tea (there's a Za's coffee counter in MEL). As I'm waiting for my beverage, I see a couple students hold open the front doors while another rides a motorcycle right into the building. He revs it a few times, then parks it against a wall. Completely random.

That's what I like about this place. As long as you pretend to know what you're doing, you can get away with anything. No one cares! If you need to inspect a motorcyle for a project, just ride it into the building! No need to be out in the cold! Fantastic [said in that Michael Schneidewind way].

My last final is scheduled for the latest available time slot. From 7PM - 10PM on Friday of next week. So, while everyone else will be partying, having fun, or going home, I'll be demonstrating my knowledge of finite element analysis. Jim's going home on Wednesday. I'll be stuck here alone until next Saturday morning at the earliest. Not fantastic.
B

Out On Strikes

Every semester I seem to get more comfortable with being completely unprepared for a test. Tomorrow I have one in control systems. It's one of the more interesting courses, but one of the more difficult in which to attain true understanding. Ironically, some of the more boring subjects, such as Thermodynamics, I understand completely. I digress. So tomorrow I have this test and I didn't study early enough because of my distorted perception of the quantity of material covered. You see, I just took a test in the same class on Friday, and thus didn't accept the reality of Wednesday's test. The rest of the class took the test three weeks ago. I was very sick, so I missed the test and only recently took it. I'm unprepared and I'm short on notes from my absence. I haven't made out the formula sheets, and I don't have a clue about some of these practice questions. It's about this time each semester I make the Cub fan analogy when I say, "maybe next semester!"
B

Look What I Found

This morning I put on a pair of corduroys that I haven't worn since last winter. In one of the pockets I found three twenty dollar bills!
B

Sponsored by Maroc

How do you know it's time for Clementines in Urbana? When the apartment smells like a citrus grove from Jim's collection of tangerine rinds. I introduced him to a Clementine last year. He reluctantly tried it, and has been a tangerine feind ever since. It wouldn't suprise me if he ate a dozen in one sitting. The empty crates are stacking up.
B

What A Mess!

Around midnight last night I was sitting at my computer alone in the apartment. All of a sudden there's tremendous sounds of destruction emanating from the kitchen. When I went to see just exactly what kind of self-initiating catastrophe had just occurred, I found Barq's Root Beer everywhere. And I do mean everywhere.

This is what I envision must have happened. Someone had precariously perched a case of Barq's Root Beer on the high shelf in the closet by the front door. Somehow the box tipped and several cans fell out onto the carpeting and the metal runner at the bottom of the closet's sliding door (which was wide open). One of these cans exploded with such violence that there was soda on the walls all the way to the ceiling. It was also on the intercom, front door, mirror, dart board, and coats in the closet. That's not all. After the can was done spraying the entrance area, it propelled it self more than 12 feet away, into the kitchen, where it commenced raining suds on the appliances, cabinets, food box, and trash can. Did I also mention the floor and carpet were thoroughly soaked?

Initially, I thought carnage of this magnitude could have only been wrought by many exploding cans, but no. No conspiracy here, just a lone gunman. One can managed to get soda on nearly everything from the front door to the refrigerator (a distance of more than 20 feet). I had to call Jim so he could come home and help me clean it up.

This Post Is Brought To You By The Number 9

This post will be random. Get out your entropy protection kits now. I warned you!

Have you ever had an electronic or mechanical device that you thought was possessed? I've had a few, the most recent of which is my mobile phone. Sometimes when I've pulled it from my pocket I'd notice the backlight on the outer display would be on. Usually I'd just think "that's weird" and make my call and forget about it. On occasion I would get to wondering if it was somehow designed tosense that it was picked up and thus light the display for convenience. I doubt this because I can't think of any design that would make sense. Sure, you could put a motion sensor on it, but the phone is always getting jostled around in my pocket, and thus the display would always light up. It could have an infra-red or radiation sensor, but that would also set off from just being in my pocket or near house-hold plutonium. So I eventually thought it was a fluke that the display lights sometimes when I retrieve the phone. All this changed Saturday afternoon. I was about to run an errand and I went into my room to grab my phone before I left. As soon as I touched it, the display lit. This was the first time that I know that it knows when I've picked it up. It was quite disturbing. I've thought of setting up video cameras around it at night to see if it also levitates while I sleep or something.

Today's drive back to Urbana had to be the longest I've ever had. There were numerous points on I-57 where traffic just stopped...for no reason. There was not an accident or construction site anywhere. I guess people just wanted a traffic jam. What's worse is that it was one of those traffic jams where people would accelerate at full throttle to move a couple car lengths before slamming on the brakes to avoid rear-ending someone. Some kid in a Focus would have certainly hit me, but instead swerved into the ditch and got stuck, which likely worsened the traffic condition. Morons. If people just moved at a nice steady pace, the problem would be alleviated. At least I had good music to listen to since Lauren let me borrow her Blue Man Group CD (the second one).

Also, interstate driving is like a dance, don't you think? Lots of unwritten rules that people are to follow and actions that are lead without verbal communication. I won't explain, but I see patterns all the time and dance is a good analogy.

Saturday night I went to church with my parents, sister, aunt, uncle, and cousins. Since the mass was being said for my late Grandfather, our family had the honor of presenting the gifts. So, after the ushers collected the monetary offerings from the congregation, my sister and I along with my older cousin, Darin, went to the back to get the gifts and bring them up the aisle to the altar. Jen picks up the basket of the money which has just been collected, Darin picks up the pitcher of wine, and I palm the ciborium of Eucharistic bread. I'm all set to walk up the aisle, but the usher stops me and Darin and instructs Jen to lead! As we walk I can't help but comment to my cousin of how ironic it is that the basket of money proceeds the body and blood of Christ. Once again for the record: I am a Christian, then a Catholic.

Dave and Busters is a fun place, I want to go there again (with the proviso that Jim not get a kazoo or other annoyingly loud device). Trains are loud. Ever wonder why people say that a tornado sounds like a freight train, but no one ever says a freight train sounds like a tornado? Tornadoes existed before freight trains, no?

Crab legs are good, and so is Joe's Crab Shack, except for the one in Downer's Grove. Don't go there, try Aurora. I tried some of Andy's BBQ Dungeness Crab and it was delicious. Crab is delicious. Yay for crab! Crabs are great, except at cards. Never met a crab that could play euchre decently. They always confuse the right and left bowers.

Thanksgiving break was great! Thank you, friends!
B