It's amazing how exhausted a long weekend can make me. An extra day off means another day to relax, right? Wrong! It means time to get stuff done! Shane and I are also staring down the barrel of the coming semester, which is going to be busy and packed and stressful and fun. Shane is returning to being a full time student for the semester (since he'll have to put off going back to work by a couple of weeks, he did get the blessing of his boss to do this so his summer employment is still fine) and I'm actually taking a class as well. A graduate class no less. My "welcome to grad courses" was an email from the professor saying, "I know we don't have a scheduled class on Monday because of the holiday, but we're having class anyway. See you there!" Then I got to class and found out that the one paper we're going to write this semester needs to be of publishable quality and my only thought was, oh f*ck. I might be in a little over my head. At least, it feels that way right now.
I'm also in the Fairbanks Symphony again this semester, and I'll be doing FLOT's production of "Jesus Christ Superstar" in February and March. Shane was talking about how busy he'll be this semester (his classes are undergraduate courses, but difficult ones like physics) and then I mentioned how busy I'll be for the next couple of months. He looked so sad when he said, "I'm not going to have a wife this semester."
So we took lots of time over the weekend to Get Shit Done. We've been meaning to clean out our closet for months now, since it was spilling out onto the floor next to the bed. Three hours on Saturday (watching one of the LOTR movies at the same time) we got the closet cleaned out and I repaired (by hand) a few items. I got piles of laundry done (our bedding needed to all be washed as well), we cleaned the kitchen a bit (not that you'd be able to see it anymore) and generally went around tidying and straightening. The one thing which didn't get done was the vacuuming, since our old filter was just disgusting at this point and I'd thrown it out. Unfortunately, we didn't have a replacement. So when we went grocery shopping yesterday (we got about two weeks worth of food) we bought a couple of replacement filters too so that I can get that done at some point. When I have time? Ha!
The weekend wasn't all hard work. Friday night we had a couple of friends over to play games, since we'd all gotten new ones for Christmas. I love playing board games and this was particularly fun.
Saturday night a friend was having a bonfire at his cabin. That group of people can get quite rowdy and out of control so we went with the caveat that we would leave if things got too nutty, but they never did. Another friend of ours was also back from his basic training for the military and he showed up. It was lovely to see him again.
Sunday night was the most relaxing part of the entire weekend. We went to dinner at our friends' apartment and then we all went out to Chena Hot Springs. How can a group of people, all late twenties or at most thirty, have so many aches and pains? Most of us had a neck or back complaint, and the hot water soothed it. You wouldn't think it, but going to a hot spring when it's around -20 and windy is one of the best things ever. I don't understand why all the tourists love doing it in the summertime. You overheat so quickly! As it was, because of the breeze I kept having to dip my head to warm up my ears again, or my nose, but if any of us were in danger of overheating we'd just pop out for a second or two. We spent probably two hours at the springs, relaxing and chatting. It takes a lot out of you so we were quiet on the way home, listening to the audio book of "Let's Pretend This Never Happened". I fell asleep.
Monday should have been relaxing but was, unfortunately, dedicated to getting the rest of the things done which we needed to do so that the rest of this week will run smoothly. I set up a CrockPot meal for tonight (I will have a grand total of half an hour at home to eat dinner before I rush off to rehearsal, and Shane might not even be home depending on homework stuffs) and made lunches and discussed our schedules for the week. We even had a few minutes to lie down together and watch something (the British game show "QI") before we needed to go to sleep. As I was turning off lights and doing a final glance around the living room to make sure I hadn't missed anything, one thing caught my eye. In all of our cleaning and organizing, one major thing didn't get done.
We didn't put away our Christmas tree.
Don't worry about grad classes - you've got it in the bag. They're much easier than they seem (waaay fewer busy assignments), and the published quality of a paper really isn't that big of a deal if you have any writing ability (which you do!). If you need any help, just holler and I'd be happy to work on the technical stuff with you.
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