December 17, 2004

When You're Out of Slits, You're Out of Pier: The End of a Semester

And so my 5th semester draws to a satisfying close. After a highly successful week of finals (which included an 11.3 hour extended Lord of the Rings marathon in the evenings) and a day of tying up loose ends, I think I am nearly ready to grant closure to Fall '04.

All of my grades from finals are already in save one. Out of my five classes I have four confirmed As and a highly probable B (the teacher in this course is notorious and hasn't graded any assignments since October 19th). This morning I woke up at around 9:30 in order to take my American Lit I final, and then I joined various people in MSC-1 for lunch.

After this, Bryan, Martinez and I made use of my pickup to transport a number of boxes to the mail center so that Bryan could ship his stuff out of here. After a good deal of standing around with various people and popping back and forth across campus, I settled in the Ice Cave to work on a few things. During this time Anna and Scholl slipped out to make their flight out of Tyler.

Shortly before 3:00, Rachel wandered in to say goodbye and I walked her back up to Quad One before returning to drive Martinez to Longview airport. Saying goodbye to him, I returned to the Ice Cave in time to take care of a few errands, work out dinner plans with Bryan and Uncle Doug, and say goodbye to Gallagher.

Bryan, Uncle Doug and I went to Ryan's, which serves a great deal of all-you-can-eat buffet goodness. Uncle Doug and I had hoped to spend a bit of time alone with Bryan during his last evening on campus as he will not be returning in the Spring (he's gone and joined the Navy). We enjoyed ourselves immensely (I got a great deal of amusement out of the thought that I was eating dinner with the Old Man and the Sea). Before proceeding, however, I should probably take this opportunity to note the following . . .

Many of you knew Bryan when he was my roommate during freshman year, and we were all saddened when he was unable to return the following year. It has been really great to have him back with us this semester, and I only regret that I didn't spend even more time with him than I did. You're a great guy, Bryan, and you will be missed. I hope we see you again sooner rather than later.

After dinner I convinced them to allow me to swing by the library to pick up some Christmas reading for myself. I grabbed a few things to listen to during my long drives to and from Plainview, including a BBC dramatization of Man and Superman. I'm not sure how many books I will read out of the number I selected, but I wanted a decent range to choose from. I particularly hope to have the chance to take a crack at Lady Chatterly's Lover and Ulysses during the break.

Returning to campus we found Randy in a state of extreme agitation. He has been trying to get someone to watch Hero with him for days, and I had promised to sit through it this evening. But first I had been wanting to see The Butterfly Effect again, so we watched that as well.

We emerged from the Village Center into a fog of decent thickness, and it wasn't long before Wilson suggested a stroll. So the three of us (Wilson, Randy, and I) set out together to experience a few quality noir moments and see what we could see. It was so cool! Hopefully Wilson or Randy will take a crack at describing it . . .

As the capstone of my evening, Wilson and I observed the Ritual of the Ultimate Sacrilege together here in the Ice Cave. Standing solemnly before the thermostat, we gently switched it to "heat" and stood back for a moment of silence before saluting.

Two minutes later, the smoke alarm went off. *sigh* Oh, well.

I won't be leaving until early Saturday morning, but Bryan and Wilson will be pulling out tomorrow, and it is likely that only Doug will still be around when I leave. As far as I am concerned, the semester is quite done.

Oh, and in case you're still wondering, the title is an obscure reference to a Swedish joke in an MST3K skit.

See you next semester.

Posted by Jared at December 17, 2004 01:02 AM | TrackBack