This Is My Life

So I just finished my Linguistics Winter class on Friday. Winter classes are fun because you go to class longer each day, but for a shorter amount of time overall. The teacher has to cram a bunch of knowledge into your brain (or tell you to do it yourself) and generally everyone's a bit more frazzled.

Today would be the first day of Arabic 106 (Intermediate Arabic), except that any classes before 4pm are not in session. I have no idea why they do that on the first day of class, but I like it. I feel bad for the students whose classes are after 4, but I'm not one of them, so I'm not that worried.

Meanwhile, work has picked up again to where I'm earning decent money. A few contractors got let go, so there's more work to go around. I think the manager wanted to make sure she kept the good contractors, and in order to do that had to make sure to have some work in queue for us. I'll say this: It's nice to have put in a full days work before 11 AM. I don't think I could do that with any other job unless I started working before 9.

Social life has gotten busier too. With the addition of meetup.com to my life I've started finding some really cool things to do around here. The game night last night was a potluck dinner with lots of people at a really cool location. The next thing I want to do is go with the Adventure Group to one of their outings; they cost a lot of money, but they're usually something cool like learning how to ride a Harley, or how to make sushi. Diverse, and cool. Then there's the musician group, and the roleplaying group, and then, and then, and then.....

Things are good.

Now that I'm done with work, it's time to start cleaning the house.

My day just went from "AWESOME" to "Man, that sucks."

Not really. I'm in a great mood! Today rocks!

We have to get to Dubai somehow.

Winter semester started Monday, and I'm again enrolled in a class. In hopes of complementing my Arabic classes I settled on Linguistics 101, a look at the science of languages.

It's absolutely fascinating. I've never been engrossed in a science before, but this is one I can really sink my teeth into. Part hard science and part philosophical, it's different from any other class I've ever taken.

(He said knowingly, on his third day of class.)

My wife and I have been talking about our three year plan. One of the biggest things is that we're not sure we want to be here. Here, in this case, being the United States.

I don't have anything against the US; I just like change.

Combine this move with my recent Arabic instruction, and you might begin to see what we're thinking.

Are we nuts? I don't know. Maybe. Is this kind of move impossible? Not at all. Can we do it?

Time will tell.

What do you think? Crazy? Awesome? Weird? A strange orgy of all three? I'd love to hear it.

Today I'm taking Arabic. I'll be taking it for 12 more weeks. I'll learn to speak what bits of the language I can, and I will try to retain the knowledge until Spring semester, when UD offers the next step up. I could jump to class 3 for Arabic, except that it's being held in Tunisia.

So in the Winter, I have a chance to take some class that has nothing to do with The Big Plan. I'm thinking that since I've had this great idea for a webcomic in mind for a while, I should take something like Drawing 101. To me, that sounds enjoyable, even though I suck at art.

If you could take any kind of class, just for fun, and absolutely free as long as you got a B- or better, what class would you take?

Currently, I'm sitting pretty with a 93% in my college class. While I have no idea what that equates to with the numbering system out of 4.0, I'm going to assume it's good, since a 93% is good.

The final is next week, and while I'm a little nervous, it's nice to know going into it that even if I somehow only get half the questions right on the 120 question final, I'll have a passing grade; a grade that means I don't have to pay for the class since Maria's an employee.

So here's what I'm thinking: I take the final, and get a good grade, passing the class with high marks. Should be easy enough since on Wednesday the professor walked us through the test, question-by-question. No, seriously, he was telling us what we should study, while looking through the test so that he knew he was telling us the right stuff to study. Pretty cool, huh? Only thing is, he told most people the class was optional, so they didn't show up. There were about 30 students out of a class of 95. Whoo.

Now, Maria and I have been talking about my college career, and her own. She's going to be getting her MBA from U.Del, and so will be using up those free classes. There will be a few for me, here and there, but mostly the classes are hers if she wants them.

What I'm going to do, I figure, is take classes that sound like they could actually teach me something I want to learn. I'm not worried about a degree, but I realized during this Nutrition class that I crave learning, and a good teacher can make that awesome. A bad teacher can at least, hopefully, point me in the right direction for learning.

Meanwhile, I'm working on a recipe for chicken wings, and pizza. You can't get good chicken wings and pizza here in Delaware (have I mentioned this?), so, Maria agrees that a pizza and wing shop with good pizza could do really well. Just consider how the bad places are doing, take into account that this is a college town, that some of the people who come here actually know what good pizza and wings taste like, and the business plan almost writes itself.

I figure when I go in to try and get funding, I'll be bringing along some pizza and wings. The taste will sell my idea, and then I just have to sell myself as a competent restaurant guy.

Remember what I said about being an idea guy? Yeah. Time to turn it into a "getting it done" guy.

I'd normally think that a test getting over so quickly (the one I just wrote about for the dogs) would be a bad thing, a thing that meant failure. However, this time, the dogs surprised me, and passed with flying colors! I rewarded them with a carrot when we got home, and now they're wondering where their new friends went.

My wife and I got to watch them on a little black and white monitor. The funny thing was that when MaiTai was on a lead, she was very nervous, didn't want to walk around or meet anyone, and went into shut-down mode, curling into a little ball. For some reason, this prompted Kelli, the lady who was walking her, to take MaiTai off the lead and let her socialize that way. I thought it was a weird reaction, but apparently she knows more about dogs than I do because MaiTai immediately sprang to action, and made friends!

It was great to see my dogs getting along with other dogs.

Speaking of tests getting over quickly, I'm almost done with my class at the college. My final is on the 23rd, but the last class is next Friday. I had a test on Monday, which I'm pretty sure I did fine on. Without the curve I'm guessing I got about an 88%, and with the normal curve (assuming it stays at the average) that'll bring it to over a 90%. I was the first one done, and feel pretty confident. While I wish I could say I was confident I'd have the highest grade in class, there were a few questions that were unexpected.

It looks like I'll be passing the class with about a 3.5 if things go well on the final, but I just don't know for sure. I'm excited to be done with my first ever college class, and look forward to possibly taking another one over the Summer season. Probably a math class. Bah, math, who uses that in the real world?