Catch-Up

Mentally, I come in breathless, thinking, "I have GOT to post something!" Upon logging in, I am informed that my last post...was really only a week and a half ago. Ah. Well then.

Time differential again. I could have sworn that I hadn't said a word here since the first week of August.

This past weekend was absolutely splendid - my parents and sisters came down to visit. There are a number of attractions around Chicago where a military id gets you in free, so we hit the Shedd Aquarium the first day. I still prefer Underwater World for, well, feeling like you're underwater, but I love dolphins (normally have to go to the MN Zoo for those) and I had never seen belugas before. I have photos, of course, but I had no idea they were so graceful in the water. You don't expect something that weighs a quarter-ton as a baby to ever be 'graceful', but it was like a different take on ballet. Ballet minus legs, you could say.

Or not. That's a really unfortunate mental image.

Sunday we hit the Art Institue and Millennium Park. I evidently love the art of the 16th and 17th centuries - I hadn't realized this before. Stark contrast, the sister with whom I spent the most time wandering the galleries places surrealism at the top of her list. No matter. Also had a great conversation with Dad, because he's got some woodworking background, and really appreciated the intricacies of the way things are put together, while I'd just looked at the pattern and thought, "oh, that looks cool."

Twinks and her family stopped on by Monday afternoon - two weeks ago, we'd been talking about them visiting base on their way back from a family vacation, but when I started night classes, it made a train wreck out of my schedule (I have friends on base that I haven't seen since starting night classes). But, we managed to snag a short time together, and I got the biggest hug I've received from anyone outside the family since I last saw Joseph. We all prayed together before they left, too - I've missed that aspect of all the relationships at Camp.

Night classes mean your liberty is completely whacked out, and it's tough doing anything with your normal daywalker friends during the week, but, unexpectedly, you do get more sleep. That is, you're allotted more time to sleep - the noise through the rest of the barracks during the daylight hours can't really be helped. My roommates have been splendid, though. I see one of them for perhaps a half-hour every morning, and I have over an hour with the other in the afternoons - all three of us are doing the best we can to be respectful of having three wildly different time zones/circadian rhythms existing in the same room.

Classes themselves haven't hit the difficult point, but we're assured they will. At the moment, it's mostly just in a style of soaking in/scribbling down a lot of information, and then testing the next day. Study time is good.

My appreciation for the cello has been renewed. Perhaps it never needed renewing, but that's what happened. I miss making music, and I've never played the cello (nor do I have particular designs to do so - it'd be cool, but right now I just want to get back to performing what I CAN play before I lose it all), and the emotion that gets caught up in it tends to leave me very grateful that I can only watch youtube in my room.

This weekend, I seem to find myself triple-booked once again, but in a scavenging sense - I've assigned one friend as much time as he wants (because I really owe him for skipping out on things the last two weeks), and everyone else can simply come as they please to claim whatever's left over. If nobody comes, fantastic, I will go for a very, very long walk.

I still have yet to find decent woods. Rumor has it that you need to leave the greater Chicago area for these.