Venti, Navi, & Wild Parties

This evening I went to see Avatar with Joe and Mattea. Movie rocked my socks! Instant favorite! It was somewhere in between the Matrix, Star Wars, and apparently, Dancing With Wolves (which I've never seen, believe it or not). At any rate, about as soon as the star, Jake, spent his first five minutes with the Navi (the big blue indigenous people on the far away planet) I decided I wish I was one.

So... being a Navi would be kind of weird I guess. But you know what's almost as weird? Being 20! Yes, I turned 20 today! That's like one of those things that I thought about when I was little: "wow, when you're twenty, you're like... wow" So... anyways.

I didn't have a party, but that's really OK, because I'm almost partied out for the moment after yesterday. I had three, back to back. First, I went over to Kathe and Chad's house in Wellsboro to hang out for a little after semester celebration. Then, I drove home just in time to leave with my family for the Osburns house up near Catan NY. After drinking some wassail and chatting about the demise of Western civilization for about half an hour, I headed down into Gang Mills to play Halo with Joe and the crew.

Tomorrow I'm waking up earlyish to go here the Christmas Cantata at the Old Coovert Church up on Armenia Mountain. Then, going over and hanging out with our local fellowship for a bit. Then, I'm off to another Christmas party in Corning with friends from the Church I used to go to there. Now, this celebration is vamped as being something like the party of the decade, and with a theme like "It's a Wonderful Life" I imagine it is going to be pretty cool.

So... wow... I'm 20.

Someone Set The Sky On Fire

Last week was crazy with all the writing from my three (W) courses. It's paying off this week though, because those classes either didn't have finals, or they were given online and I was able to take them already. So, as of 4:30 this afternoon, I was done with the semester. Woot.

This evening I went to Bible study at North Hall Library in Mansfield. Before going up I went into the Night & Day Cafe and ordered a chai latte. The barrista saw my bible and didn't realize what it was and said "Wow, that's a cool looking book." So I was like, "yeah, it is pretty cool actually.", and showed her what it was. It was almost closing time, and I ended up getting upgraded to a "Chai Charger", meaning that it had an extra shot of espresso in it, simply because she had was going to dump it down the drain otherwise. That shot may be responsible for my antics the rest of the evening, as well as the fact that I am up writing this now.

Patrick and I ended up going over to Allen Hall where they were giving away free coffee and doughnuts for a "late night finals study break" before starting. As it turned out, there were no more doughnuts, and I already had coffee. It was all worth it in the end though, as the had Baklava, which, while random, I was ecstatic about.

On the way home, I saw eerie flickering red glow lighting up the entire horizon. On the way over I had taken it for a lightning storm or something, but since it was still there, I decided to investigate. I switched the stereo to Muses latest album and turned off of 549 onto onto a backroad that seemed to be pointing roughly in the direction of the flashes. After driving recklessly for eight or nine miles, switching roads once, and only briefly catching sight of the source of the conflagration, I shot up a hill and came face to face with it. It was a gas well that was uncapped, and jetting a forty foot plume of flame into the night sky. The video doesn't do it justice. You can hear the roar, but I could also feel the heat radiating from it all the way into my car, and I wondered if I was maybe closer to it than I was supposed to be.

A semitrailer came up behind me, and I was unable to turn around, and ended up thinking I was lost, but then ending up in a little village outside of Mansfield that I recalled. So I ended up having to drive all the way home again. It was worth it though.

Currywurst - I Ate It

Today on BBCnews.com, I stumbled across a headline video about Germany's current culinary obsession: currywurst. I was delighted then, that when I was in Villach Austria this past April, I actually had some.

We (Connor, Nicole, Mary and I) had just gone for a long walk, and coming back toward the center of the city, we found a little cart down by the river. It looked like one that you would expect to be selling hotdogs in the U.S, but this was Austria, so of course, they were selling bratwurst; prepared in more ways than I ever imagined possible. Connor is a vegetarian, so it didn't do him too much good, but Mary and I went down and ordered. Out of all the different variations of wurst on the menu, currywurst stuck out to me. It was good. Basically just bratwurst in a thick curry sauce. So I was surprised this morning, to find that it is now apparently something of a cultural icon for the German speaking nations of the world. And I ate it.

A Long and Dark December

Well, I'm effectively done with this semester. After turning in 20 pages of writing last week, all that I have left are two finals, but they are both online, so I won't even have to go to school for them

I can't say I'm at all sad to be done. It was a crazy and not fun one. I guess it did improve in the middle, but it started really badly, and got a little intense toward the end, what with that Social Research class and having to write three major research papers all due the same week and all.

I did develop some relationships with people in the department that I had really missed out on the last two semesters, which was good I guess. On the other hand, I'm not sure how long all that's going to be meaningful.

We have been having some serious winter weather the last few days and I've been frustrated by the fact that my house still has no real heat. Last night was so cold that I could hardly sleep, despite being under a quilt and a sleeping bag.

My Dad had promised several times that we would install some kind of heating system, and he ended up deciding on a Verner, which is a Czech biomass furnace. We used to sell them at this warm house, and ended up having a display model left on hand. They are really nice machines, so I was exited about getting it.

The only problem with us and projects is that my Dad has all these contractor friends who do work for him. They end up basically being contractors, only minus the contract part. This means they often show up, do some work, and disappear for weeks (or even months) at a time leaving the job undone.

Naturally, they got the Verner about 90% installed, and now its been three weeks since I've seen them, and I'm sealing of my room with blankets and and trying to find out how many electric space heaters our breaker will support.

So anyhow, as Coldplay said, it's been a rather "long and dark December" so far... but I feel like the rest of it may be a lot better, or at least I hope it will.

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree!

Today my brother had the idea of getting a small Christmas tree from the pine forest near our house and planting it in our yard where we had recently chopped a dead tree down. He asked my Dad about it, and my Dad decided that we should get a bigger tree - and put lights on it. The next thing I knew, I was standing 12 feet in the air stringing lights on a mid sized tree that 20 minutes before had been in the forest:

Thanksgiving

Two days before yesterday my Dad had surgery. Since he had his last episode they wanted to look around in his arteries and see if it would be possible to place a stent where the restriction that caused him his first stroke is. It's a somewhat risky operation, and I was praying really hard the morning they did it. The surgeon ended up deciding it was still to fragile and they didn't place the stent, so while that's unfortunate, I'm thankful he made it through for the time being.

The day before yesterday I interviewed my Aunt Beverly. I'm having to interview two people over the age of 75 for my social research class. It ended up being really good. Just the interview went for almost two hours and I learned a lot of things about her family (and mine also). She is really an amazing person. She and her husband now travel all over the world and are involved in all kinds of community service projects. I just hope that if I live that long I'll be something like that. So regardless of what kind of grade I get on the project, I'm glad I got to talk to her.

Yesterday we celebrated Thanksgiving at my Uncle Tom and Aunt Linda's house. It's really just down the road from us, and just across the street from my Grandparents house where we would more traditionally celebrate it. Did I ever mention on here that my Aunt and Uncle have an awesome house? It used to be a fabric store called the Strawberry Patch that my Grandma ran. Back they it was just a single room long building with a basement and a tiny upstairs. When my cousins moved to the hill when I was seven or eight they moved in there (after a short stint in the house that I now live myself) and added on the upstairs of the Strawberry Patch building. Then, two years ago or so, my Uncle started building this huge four story addition that more than doubled the size of the building. It's all beautifully done, and with the combined length of the two buildings (which he left open all the way) you easily put a couple bowling allies in the downstairs!

So anyways, it was a good Thanksgiving. I have lots of papers that I need to work on and seem to have almost no motivation to do so. I also need another senior citizen interview. That should happen though....

On the Age Old Art of Mousetrapping (And Videoing It!)

For the last couple months there have been a lot of mice moving into my house. I would occasionally see one run up the staircase or disappear into a hole in the bathroom wall. I could also hear them chewing in the walls at night, which could be kind of unnerving. I was trying to just ignore them, but last week, they climbed up onto my sink and pooped all over my toothbrush. I decided it was time to take action. I set out just one mouse trap. Within a few minutes it had caught a mouse. I set it again, and caught another, and again, and caught a third. Now, I have always kind of wondered what it actually looks like when this happens, and now, being reasonably assured that it would happen, I set up a camera. Here is the result: