School, schmool

I have always loved school. I haven't always loved all my classes, but I have always loved going to school and learning things and getting A's. :)

This semester I'm paying so little attention to school that it scares me. I'm 4 weeks in and I don't even remember when the midterms are due. And the worst part is that I periodically think, "I wonder when the midterms are due?" and I could, then, go look it up, but I don't.

I have one incredibly interesting class with a super-cool professor who doesn't seem to believe in having to do a lot of work and also believes in getting out of class early every week. This is the perfect storm of awesomeness for school: I learn something cool and applicable to my life every single week, but I don't even have to invest much to do it. I just show up and absorb. So I don't pay that much attention except for the couple hours a week I have to go there.

My other class is BORING and I am not learning ANYTHING so I'm having a hard time caring at all. It's an odd feeling not to care, but I really, really don't. For the first time ever, I'm embracing the idea that I can skate, and it's okay to skate, and I'm probably still going to get a good enough grade. I can't invest too much effort in something that's giving me no tangible or useful return except a grade and three more credit hours toward graduation. I even looked into dropping the class, but there's nothing else I can take; I've taken every other class that's being offered at the campus I prefer to attend, so I'm stuck.

It doesn't help that work is completely insane, so the amount of time I have left to divide between home and school is greatly diminished. And with two classes that don't really require me, at this point, to spend much time on them, I'm weighting my "free" time much more heavily toward home/family stuff.

It is so odd for me to just let this kind of thing go. But I guess I've finally hit the point where I know this is the way it has to be. Sometimes good enough is really good enough.

I've flirted with this "so what?" attitude before, but this is the first time I feel like it's really taking hold. I am beginning to understand how everybody in undergrad had so much time to go out and do stuff - they'd already arrived at this enlightened approach to education. Talk to me again, though, when I'm trying to get midterm papers done...because usually the closer the grade gets, the more wiggy I get. That will be the true test.

Which reminds me...I really should look up when those things are due. Bah.

I'm done with Twilight...what now?

This is kind of a review, I guess - but mostly it's just me sharing my all-consuming enthusiasm for the Twilight series. For the past three and a half weeks, I have done nothing with my down time (little that I have) but read these books. I know I'm very late to the game on this; the first book came out in 2005, I think, and the fourth and final one came out a few months ago. I kept holding off because I didn't think I had time to read them, and I wasn't sure if I even wanted to read them, but two of my friends - my age - highly recommended them so I finally went for it. I'm actually really glad I didn't start reading them till now, because I could just go straight through all four books without stopping, or having to wait in suspense while I wondered what was going to happen next. I just had to close one and open the next one, and keep right on going.

These are the first books I've been REALLY into since Harry Potter. It was so fun to be so excited about a book series again! Although, I admit, I was a little embarrassed for being so wild about books that are essentially about teenage vampires and werewolves. I confess that I didn't make eye contact with the salespeople at the bookstores where I bought the books. If I'd been thinking, I would have gotten gift receipts so it would've looked like I was buying them for a little sister or a niece or something.

But now, whatever. I loved these books and I don't care who knows it!

One of my friends asked me what the appeal was...and I couldn't really explain it. The mythology in the books is really intriguing, but I can't really come up with some high-sounding literary reason why I was so completely absorbed in the story. I just loved the characters, loved the love story, and loved the idea of something so imaginative being set in someplace so ordinary. The idea of a super-hot vampire being completely devoted to you for eternity isn't bad, either. I think, though, that what really did it for me was kind of remembering what it was like to be in high school and fall in love for the first time (for me, the only time!), even though there were no vampires at my high school (to my knowledge).

I finished the fourth book, Breaking Dawn, late last night, and I have to say I was very satisfied. It wasn't even like when I read the last Harry Potter book and felt sad that I was never going to read more about Harry. With the ending of the Twilight series, I just felt like I'd read the whole story, the ending was nicely tied up, and I could now go on with my life knowing what happened to all these characters. I don't particularly feel like I need to read more about them, because I'm not really sure what else is left to say. I'm also a bit glad to be done because I've been living on very little sleep while I've been reading these books (staying up till past midnight on more than one occasion, even during the week), so it will be nice to be able to turn off my brain and go to bed at a decent hour again. And when I have finally gotten some sleep, I have been having a lot of dreams about vampires, so it's not particularly restful. Some of them have been combined with work dreams, which is very weird, but oh well. :) Still, I love books, and I can't say enough about books that make me want to sacrifice sleeping to read them.

I won't say that the books were all perfect; there were definitely times when the main character, Bella, annoyed the heck out of me with her dramatic behavior, but then I remembered that teenage girls are just dramatic, so it was probably an unavoidable part of the story. Overall, though, they are the best books I've read in a very long time - worth the hype, and worth staying up too late and trying to cram in chapters over breakfast before work.

I'm now waiting on one of my friends at work to finish reading the series (I just loaned her New Moon, and I'm taking her Eclipse and Breaking Dawn on Monday) so I have someone nearby to talk about the books with!!

Slumdog Millionaire Review

We took a half day of vacation from work yesterday to go on a date for Valentine's Day, since the likelihood of going on a date on the actual day is never good for us. (We have no convenient neighborhood teenager to babysit, and no family nearby.) So, we went to lunch at Stir Crazy (where I tried something new, even though I didn't know what half the ingredients were, and it was delightful) and then went to see Slumdog Millionaire.

I know it's been out for awhile and already won a Golden Globe, so I will keep this short.

1) Go. See. It.
2) It is fantastic.
3) I now have a crush on the guy who plays Jamal, and I am resisting looking him up on imdb because I think he might be like 10 years younger than I am, and I just don't need that.
4) I laughed, I cried, I hid my eyes during a few uncomfortable parts. It had basically everything you need in a movie experience.
5) Go. See. It.