And it's true

... we named our children after towns that we've never been to.

Overall, a good weekend. And it had better have been good because it was the weekend before finals. I just took my first one today (Stats- it was scheduled for Friday but he gave us the option of taking it today instead so we could get out of here earlier.) I don't have any tomorrow. I have one on Tuesday, and two on Thursday. I opted out of my Mythology final, for a borderline B/A, depending on what my portfolio looks like. I might as well do the work for an A; my GPA could really use it. Poor thing is going to be half-dead after this semester. It was pointed out that a sure sign you're at Truman is when you're sitting in the dining hall eating dinner and can hear people at the table next to you calculating their GPA in their heads.

On Friday I made the short 15 minute journey to the theater on the square to watch The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I was meeting someone there "around 3:20ish," but I left my room too late because it took me quite a bit longer than expected to put on a necklace and earings, pull on my shoes, wrap a scarf around my neck, clip my hair back, slip a hat over my head, put my coat on, maneuver my gloves over my fingers, and zip my coat up to my chin. Before I could walk out the door I had to check to make sure my pockets were stocked with cellphone (on silent), I.D., room key, debit card just in case, and cash. Everything was slippery and covered in ice, and it took me a bit longer to walk there than I thought, so I was a little late. Yesterday, one of my friends said she saw me walking to the theater and almost accidently ran me over. My recent movie-partner was there waiting, so I grabbed my ticket (since we were seeing the matinee that afternoon we got to skip to the front of the enormous line of people buying tickets for later that night) and we hurried into the theater to get a good seat. After removing an outrageous number of layers and settling into our seats, we made small talk until the theater filled and the pre-preview adds began: Yes, I am PHRE/French. Are you excited about the Math/CS majors bar crawl tonight? I used to work at a summer camp and taking that many kids to the theater is a bad idea. I hope they're quiet the whole time. When was the last time you read the books?

Finally the previews began. Nothing too exciting or worth mentioning, except the sequel to Pirates of the Carribean. I expected it to be a horrible movie, but made plans in my head to see it anyway because Johnny Depp makes a gorgeous pirate, and the scenery looked quite spectacular. However, once it was obvious the next barrage of noise and color was actually the movie and not another preview, the theater quietted down a bit. The first 5 or so minutes of the movie were the most emotional and most well done, I thought, and they were in the "real world." I hadn't read the book in about 8 years but as far as I could remember they did a fairly good job of adapting it to the screen. It was hard to ignore the blatant allegory being presented but the story was still enjoyable. I'm glad I didn't figure that one out until long after I'd enjoyed the story for the very first time. The only issue I had was that they presented the professor as being too eccentric. And Aslan didn't have cat eyes. And he was the only animal in whose face you could see any emotion at all. But other than that I think they really did a good job with it. It was worth the 5 bucks I paid.

Saturday was Movie Day. I was going to get up at 7 to watch Men in Tights because I haven't seen it in forever, but then decided it wasn't worth it. I woke up some time around 10, showered, and sort of lazed around the room for the next 45 minutes or so. Finally I got all bundled up and walked the four or five blocks to Sara's appartment. Upon knocking and being ushered in, I was faced with a very dim but large bedroom stuffed full of a loveseat, an airbed, a trundle bed, and several swivel chairs. About 8 or 9 people were spread out over the entire ensemble, in a colorful menagerie of body pillows, down comforters, and snuggling couples. I arrived just in time to catch the last half of Fight Club. The only other time I'd seen that movie, I was stoned out of my mind, so I only remember bits and pieces of it, although I knew the "twist" ending. It was interesting to watch it knowing what happens in the end. They make the whole thing kind of obvious, but it's still hard to pick up on (for stupid people like me, anyway.) After that we vetoed Super Troopers because none of the people who voted on it were there. Instead I was subject to the entirety of American Psycho. I don't see what the big deal about Christian Bale is. Yeah, he's got a nice muscle-y body, but other than that he's really not attractive at all. His voice annoyed the shit out of me. He was like a bad Luke Wilson.

I had to do my scholarship hours that day- the last ones of the semester. During the movie, the guy I do it with called to say that he slipped on the ice and messed up his knee really bad. That left me to do it by myself, but it made up for the week I missed. I thought about asking if anyone wanted to join me since I was left partnerless, and since there was a certain guy there who was involved in the same project (though a different aspect of it.) But I decided against it. I almost thought he was going to offer, but I slipped out the door unnoticed. It didn't take me too long to do by myself, and I got to see two cows fucking. I'm out there for an hour four days a week and I haven't seen that yet. I almost touched this enormous cow, too, but it wouldn't come close enough to the fence. Once upon a time (two months ago) I was canoeing down the Big Piney and came to a low part of the river in which were standing four or five really big cows. I got pretty close, trying to pet them from the canoe, but their glares forced me to keep my distance. Anyway, when I got back to the movie day party two hours later, after having changed my pants and eaten lunch, he came up to me and asked if I could handle the big containers by myself (we have to dump the contents of these big containers in a pile, it's kinda gross.) I thought it was cute that he asked because I do it every other day I'm out there, but it was nice to have someone looking out for me simply because I'm a girl, despite all my attempts to establish equality with the guys. He said he was going to come with me to help, but I was already long gone by the time he realized I had left. I should have just asked him right out to come with me, but oh well.

The rest of the night consisted of watching the end of the Boondock Saints (the only other time I watched that we played the drinking game in which you drink everytime someone says "fuck," so I don't remember a whole lot of it either [I had to quit about half an hour into it, but I was one of the last to quit.]) Those guys are hot though. Then we watched The Aristocrats (not so good the second time around.) I had missed Mambo Italiano while watching the cows. A couple hours were passed just sitting around talking- mostly about taking over the world, but also about other less ambitious things as well. We ended the night with the Family Guy movie. Quite interesting, I must say. I walked out the door with two other guys and down the front steps of the appartment building; at this point, one of them grabbed a handful of snow and threw a snowball at the lamppost. We noticed that since it had warmed up so much, the snow was excellent for packing into snowballs. After throwing them at various objects I suggested we make a snowman. So make a snowman we did. We each rolled around a fistful of snow until it became a giant mishapen ball, then stacked them one on top of the other. The result was a little unbalanced and dirty, and certainly not spherical, but it was satisfactory. The next 45 minutes were spent adding details such as two sets of arms and T-rex fingers, toed tentacles at the botton, a snow hat, slanty eyes filled in with leaves, and a beak-like nose complete with gill-like stripes. We had made a glorious snowalien. It was dancing an exotic alien dance, because it's hip was jutting out severely. After that we said goodbye to one of our fellow snow artists and I walked back to campus with the other one (who has really long legs- I can never keep up with him when we walk back to campus together without running.) I don't even remember what we talked about, but I kind of wish I still lived in Dobson so I could talk to him longer, because my dorm always comes first now.

So all in all last night was an enjoyable time with lots of movies, lots of talk of science fiction stories, and lots of playing in the snow. This morning I slept in til noon, read a book, and generally lazed around. I finally got out of bed to study for my stats final for an hour, then went and took it. It wasn't too bad, and I'm just glad that I never ever have to take another math class again, unless for some reason I want to. I've been writing this for an hour and a half now (with many distractions) so I think it's time to get off the computer. No finals tomorrow!

Good luck everyone with finals week, and have a glorious winter break! (And Jane, I hope you don't mind that I stole your idea of putting pictures everywhere; it's just that I think it makes the stories so much more interesting with the visual aids.)