Christmas

A little late, but does that even matter? Of course not!

So my Christmas was pretty sweet. We started on Christmas Eve with a BBQ ribs lunch, followed by a White Elephant sort of gift exchange within my family on my mom’s side, followed by mass, followed by a prime rib and crab leg dinner. On Christmas Day, we opened presents in the morning and spent the entire day in pajamas, including my dad.

There a quite a few present highlights. I got a Kustom 12A Tube amp, a ton of gift cards, some pretty sweet movies (Saving Private Ryan, Apollo 13, and Wall-e, among others), Season Two of Arrested Development, and some other small things. I bought some clothes, a new cable for my guitar, and some books as well.

Also, as a family, we got Guitar Hero: World Tour. It is awesome! I think my mom likes it the best, but I’m not sure. Right now, we can play with everything but the singer, but since no one really likes to sing I think it’s fine. I play Expert, so when my parents are watching us play all they say is, “It’s going so fast! How do you do that?” among other things. Same with my younger sister.

It was a good holiday.

Beverly Hills

So I just realized that when I cannot get a reliable wireless signal on my Mac and am forced to use the home computer, I have a greatly reduced presence online. I think it’s because I have to wake up and get (semi-) dressed to use it…

Anyway, my break has been going well. I have all of my grades back, and ended with a 3.500 (I love when that happens) for the semester. Pretty good, but I did want to do a lot better, especially when you consider how poorly I did in Calculus III and my Physics lab. I probably should have gone to class more for the former and tried and done the homework for the latter. No problem, as that will be rectified in my Physics lab and Linear Algebra next semester.

I’m back working at Mathnasium for break, but my total time will just be ten days. Not much, right? I don’t have to wake up early, I get $10/hour for joking around and occasionally doing math with some kids, and I get to help train the person that’s going to be running the center in January. That’s pretty cool.

To make things better, one of my students made me a bag of “Christmas mix,” which is surprising not some holiday XTC or something. It was really good, and I ate all of it while watching 21 last night. My little sister said that the main character reminded her of me. I guess that’s cool…

Christmas shopping has been almost non-existent. I have ideas for most of the remaining purchases, but other than that, I have no clue. I think I may just spend a few hours wandering around stores tomorrow and hopefully I’ll see something.

Oh, and I can’t sleep. Lucky me.

Facility for Rare Isotope Beams

Ok, so I’m a huge geek, and for the past few months I’ve been following MSU’s and NSCL’s bid to get a government-funded next generation nuclear science facility called the FRIB. Earlier today, the Department of Energy advisor committee that was in charge of selecting the site chose MSU as the site of the facility!

Lansing State Journal
MSU News
FRIB Website

Needless to say, I’m really fuckin’ excited! So excited, in fact, that I cannot even study for my last final for tomorrow…