We'll collect the moments one by one; I guess that's how the future's done.

It is official:  I have finished my first semester back at school.  I am pretty sure I squeaked A's out of both classes.  Some slackers do the bare minimum to get by; I seem to have done the bare minimum for an A.  Just kidding.  I could have studied a bit more for psychology, which may have gotten me solid A's rather than A-minuses.  Drama, though, is a solid A.  After all, my midterm project "set a new standard" for classes to come.  (We still have people from class coming up to us, telling us how great our project was.  My group members have graciously said, "It was all Jeremy's idea.")

Now I have to register for next semester.  Three classes this time, methinks.  Now that my financial aid has come in, I don't feel too bad about dropping a couple work hours here and there.  When I first moved to Madison way back in ye-olde 2001 (pre-9/11, imagine it!) I was taking 12 credits, plus working full time as a night auditor at a hotel, plus working part time as a delivery driver for a sub shop.  Oh, and I had a yoga class on Thursday evenings.  I rarely slept more than two or three hours at a time and even when I did get a full night's sleep, my friends said I still looked like a steamy pile of excrement.

In other words, I know now not to press myself like that, how to balance my load, and most of all, not to stress myself out.  This past semester, getting used to school again, in addition to helping Ethan get organized and adjust to 7th grade, and Jacquelyn completing her Masters degree this semester, and the financial aid snafu, things have been a magically insane stress storm of magnificently excremental proportions.  With the semester finally over and winter break looming and my financial aid finally coming, it's like a roto-rooter for the toilet of our troubles, like Drano for the plumbing of our problems, like spring cleaning for the winter of our woes.  You get the picture.  Things are looking up.

It's my only Christmas icon.

Since Jacquelyn and I aren't spending Christmas with either of our relatives, this is the first year, we've been home, and thus, our first Christmas Generic Solstice-Derivative Gift Exchange Ritual tree.  It's a balsam fir.  It's smells delightful and covered my hands in sap as I carried it indoors.  We decorated it with wooden beads and lights and owls and birds and penguins and pine cones and candy canes and Yoda and the Bumble and a big brass star.  Pagan heathens, we are.

( View it in pictures from a camera. )