A Thankful Long Weekend

It's hard to be thankful in the midst of a busy life.

On Friday night my dad celebrated his birthday so we had my gramma and my Uncle Bruce over for dinner. At around 6:15 I got a call from the boy I was tutoring that night asking me if I could come half an hour early, meaning I had to leave in five minutes. I wolfed down my desert and bolted out the door. I drove down George Fergusen Way and turned onto Ware. There were a couple police cars stopped and one policeman was standing in the middle of the road with a pad of paper in his hand. He waved me past and I didn't really think about it. As I was approaching the light at South Fraser Way a white truck cut in front of me from the right lane, narrowly missing me and the car in front of me, headed straight into the turn lane and went right through the red light. All I could think was, "Woah fella, slow down!" Then I looked in my mirrors and saw a police car with it's lights on giving chase. He had a harder time getting through the light because he wasn't being reckless and the light had turned green so car were accidently getting in his way. I wondered if the police had been waiting specifically for that truck or if they stopped him for something and he decided to run for it. I was thankful that I hadn't gotten hit and that there hadn't been a horrible accident right in front of me and prayed that God would continue to keep everyone safe.

Saturday I didn't have to tutor (which is why I went early Friday night) so I mostly worked on homework all day. In the evening I watched some MASH with my family. I was thankful that I could take some time to relax. Sunday I went to church in the morning. John Stobbe taught our Sunday school and his topic was "Hell." He talked about common conceptions the world has about what will happen after death, will we all just disappear, will we get to choose where to go, will everyone just get to go to heaven. We talked about God being a just and a loving God and discussed whether hell took away from God being a loving God. Since it was just Alan Trick, Matt, John Stobbe, Greg, Cam, and me, we all got a change to express our feelings and views. I was thankful that there was Sunday school for us and that we weren't just lumped in with everyone else.

After church we had our thanksgiving dinner at our house with my gramma and my Uncle Bruce. I allowed myself to sit and chat for a little while and then went to study for my calc midterm. Around supper time when I was ready for a break I asked my mom if we could have popcorn for supper and watch a movie. We watched Karate Kid, which I'd seen before but enjoyed. It was longer than I was expecting so we didn't finish til around eight. Then I went back to my room to do more homework. It never seems to end. I was thankful that I did take some time to relax. My brain just can't keep working non-stop.

Monday I got up around eight, had breakfast and started in on my homework. I read several chapters of my database textbook, read two articles for EDUC 203, and read a chapter from my physics text. I have been trying out taking notes using a concept map. See http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newISS_01.htm for more info. It's supposed to be an effective for helping you to remember and quick to review. However, since I haven't been in the habit of taking notes while reading, it took me a lot longer to read all those chapters than it would otherwise. Hopefully I learned and retained more, though. In the afternoon, my dad, mom, Jason, and I went to MEI to play tennis on their tennis courts. My mom and dad took turn throwing the ball to Jason for him to hit. I offered to do it too, but my dad said I needed the practice. I managed to win one out of five games against my dad, and four out of six against my mom. Then my mom and I played on one side against my dad we managed to win the last game out of five or six. It was fun but I am sore today. Every time I get up I realize my hips are stiff. my shoulder is a little sore too. I'm surprised I'm sore because I have been playing tennis, but I guess it's because I haven't been playing for two hours at a time. After we got home, I continued to work on homework and realized that I wasn't going to get enough done in order to be able to go to Camp Squeah next weekend. Oh well, I tried. I managed to get ahead on the reading in several of my classes, so that's good. It will also allow me to study for my databases midterm next Tuesday, which it was looking like I wouldn't get a chance to do. It will also make for a lot less stressful weekend two weekends from now because I have three projects/papers due the week after. I am planning on either doing two small ones or one big one this weekend to alleviate the pressure. I'm thankful I got a chance to play tennis. It allowed me to work on my serve, which are going in a lot more often now. It seems like fifty minutes in class is never enough time to play. I wish more of my friends liked tennis so that we could play but I know it's not for everyone and most are too busy to find time to learn.

I set Mozilla Thunderbird up on my computer at home this weekend. It's like Outlook Express and allows you to download your emails and check more than one account at a time. I tried it out at school and it is working well so I thought I'd use it at home too. I discovered when checking my email via hotmail today at school that unlike the way it's set up at school, the one at home downloads the emails from hotmail and doesn't leave a copy there. The way it's set up at school, I can read it via Thunderbird and then go to hotmail and it's still there but for some reason it didn't work that way at home. I'll have to see if I can figure out why and figure out some way to fix it. Does anyone know use Thunderbird/know anything about this?