Almost as though we've been practicing for New Year's Eve, we've been staying up really late every night. As a result, we are also waking up quite a bit later than normal. I'm sincerely concerned about getting back on a school schedule next week. I'm pretty sure that I'll be experiencing something similar to jet lag.
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The weather this year has worked to provide some of the best sled runs yet. In truth, some of them are a bit TOO fast. Still, Irene didn’t seem too phased by it.
The drive this morning was more difficult (and thus considerably slower) than what I had planned. Thankfully, we all made it home safely. Despite my vacation having started last week, this morning truly felt like the beginning of my holiday.
I still have a decent amount of work to get done before school starts up next week, but I am intentionally taking the time to relax and enjoy having my children all here for a little while. Today we had our big Christmas meal (with four different pies to top it off). It was too wet for sledding today, but I expect us to hit our sled runs tomorrow as well as get in some quality board game and Mario Kart time. Hopefully, we will have a nice laid-back week. Our pastor mentioned that, although this feast is intended to celebrate the family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, it is a feast for all families and a reminder to keep holiness within those families. As God’s love is boundless, sharing it only makes it greater. Sharing His love with our family and entwining that love with our relationships only makes them stronger.
Tonight, I am going to pick up my daughter and her family. When we get home, I will have all of my children under one roof for the first time in a couple of years. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate the Holy Family. I truly enjoyed reading Ready Player One and watching the movie based on it. The two were very different experiences albeit with similar characters and a similar overarching plot. Both provided many great 80s references, a dystopian world that was still believable, groups of characters that I cared about, and interesting adventures.
This sequel falls short in nearly every way. Now, perhaps my problem was that I had such fond memories of the first book (and the movie). It could even be that I was in the mood to read a completely different novel which was unavailable. Certainly, I could have been soured on the idea of a sequel to a book that I felt did not need one. Or … it could have just not been as good of a book. Part of my issue is that I'm not certain that some of the dystopian elements and negative character traits in this story were intentionally placed by the author or not. If so, many of them were left woefully unresolved. The story also makes several massive leaps in technology. The world of Ready Player One was already quite advanced in comparison to our own, but some of the jumps made here were entirely too much for me to swallow. Unfortunately, the plot relied on us believing that such things were possible. My largest frustration was that the trivia that was so endearing to me in the first book was much more focused in this second book (and in areas that I do not really care about) and yet more trivial at the same time. Strangely, our main character seemed to feel the same way. Thus, pages of references flew by with me, and the narrator, not knowing what they meant. I almost need a guidebook for this novel. However, as I don't really want to ever read the novel again, I think I will just continue through live without understanding those portions of it. Hopefully, other people enjoy it more than I did. It is clear that the author put in a great deal of research and thought into the story. Unfortunately, for me, it was missing heart. I pray that everyone had a merry Christmas this year. For us, Rowen woke up early to put baby Jesus in the manger and then wake the rest of us up to open presents. Janelle made fresh cinnamon rolls (from scratch) for our breakfast treat. We exchanged gifts, held video calls, went sledding, played games, watched movies, and had a nice Christmas dinner.
I sang at the morning mass, choosing slightly different music as the readings were different than the masses last night. For our service, the Gospel reading came from the poetic opening of John's Gospel. He reminds us that God the Son was with the Father from the beginning of time. His entry into our world was for a short span, but changed everything. In that time the Word became flesh, and God's teachings were clarified. We celebrate Christmas in the hopes of recreating the joy that Jesus promises. For me and my family, Christmas is not over. Our Magi are still making their journey around our living house. They will not arrive at the Nativity for a little while still. For the next few weeks, we are in the Christmas season, continuing our celebration of God becoming truly human and living among us. It feels like a great deal of this year has been spent waiting in anticipation for things to get better. The night before Christmas is certainly one of those nights of heightened expectations. My younger sons have been doing a countdown for at least a week as we have approached Christmas this year.
Christmas Eve is a night full of hope. People around the world spend the night with thoughts of the coming day. For most of them, these are thoughts of joy and happiness, full of light and promise. Although many people complain about the commercialization of Christmas (and justifiably so), the day does bring about hope for many people all over the world. Certainly, some of that hope is misplaced. However, I believe that God looks down on our celebrations of His birthday with more satisfaction than disdain as more people turn to joy rather than fear. Perhaps we can learn to approach every day this way: in joyful anticipation for the gifts we hope to find. Turning 47 today was a bit anti-climatic in the sense that I've thought that I was 47 nearly all year. In fact, I've kind of skipped being 46 and just had two years of being 47. Seriously, nearly every time I've mentioned my age this year, I have said that I was 47--often correcting myself soon afterwards.
While I'm well-known for my Star Wars geekdom, turning 47 ties into my Star Trek obsession. The number turns up an inordinate amount of times in Star Trek episodes and movies. I remember reading that it started as an Easter egg hidden by one of the show's writers, but has since blossomed into ongoing phenomenon. Consider that, 47 becomes a good descriptor for me as well. I am a fan of obscure references and hidden jokes. My mind is filled with often-useless and random trivia. It is also a prime number, and I certainly feel that I am unique ( … just like everyone else). I appreciate all of the well-wishers who posted, texted, called, or communicated with me in some other way today for my birthday. I had a good birthday. I think that I'm ready to be 47 for real this next year. We watched the first half of my marathon today. One thing that I will say about Phase III is that every movie is worth watching. Sure, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 pales in comparison to the first one, but that was a problem for many of the second entries in the Marvel Cinematic Universe--Iron Man 2, Thor 2, and Avengers: Age of Ultron were all the low points in their particular movie sets and Spider-Man: Far from Home is not as good as Homecoming (in my opinion). Ant-Man and Wasp breaks that pattern, but not as spectacularly as Captain America: Winter Soldier (which is one of my all-time favorite movies).
I'm just glad we were able to largely hold follow the schedule. There was a while yesterday, when I was thinking that we were not going to make it back at all for today's showings. Thankfully, the storm was delayed more than Alex's flight, so the drive was not too bad--especially with Navi's all-wheel drive and snow setting. I'm really looking forward to the movies we are watching tomorrow. The MCU is a great set of movies to watch in general, but Phase III really ends strong. I am astounded by the interweaving of excellent stories that they were able to pull off. I just need to go to bed so I can get up soon enough to get through them all. I've already shared this with a few people, but the coincidence is too amazing to not repeat. As most of you know, I usually celebrate my birthday by holding a marathon of a favorite series of movies. Particularly long marathons (such as the extended Hobbit and Lord of the Rings movies, the Harry Potter series, or all of the Star Wars movies) can require two days. Such is the case with this year's marathon, which is my most ambitious yet: Marvel Phase III. That's a total of eleven movies, starting with Captain America: Civil War and ending with Spider-Man: Far from Home.
Out of curiosity (and nerdiness), I added up all of their run times and threw in a five minute break between each movie (a total of ten breaks). I wanted to see if it was at all possible to watch all of the movies in a 24 hour period. It is not. In fact, when added together, the total comes to 26.22 hours. Wait … 26.22 seems familiar. … Isn't that … ? The length of a marathon in miles. [Now, if you're going to get picky, a marathon is 26.2188 miles and this movie marathon (with 50 minutes of break time) is 26.21667 (or a forever repeating 6) hours. It's still quite a coincidence.] The Lord promises David that He will be a Father to David's heir, and that David's heir would be a Son to Him. Considering the relationship between Jesus and God the Father, it's kind of hard for me to read through God's exchange with David without kind of chuckling to Himself when He told Nathan what to say. This is not the only time this happens in the scriptures. In fact, I'm kind of heartened to think that God has that sort of sense of humor.
Similarly, I wonder how surprised David would be to find that his heir traced that lineage through His mother. As Joseph is not Jesus' true father, Jesus instead draws his ancestral lineage to David through Mary. Thus, she is the one to receive the wonderful greeting by the angel Gabriel. It is she who accepts to role of bringing God into the world as a baby. Again, God's plan turns everyone's expectations upside down, yet fulfills His promises perfectly. I need to be mindful of that when things do not seem to be going my way. God might be making things work out in entirely different ways that I could never anticipate. And He's probably chuckling about it the whole time. We awoke this morning to a change in today's forecast. Instead of the 1 to 3 inches projected from the night before (which was an increase from the earlier "up to an inch" forecast), the Weather Channel was saying 3 to 5 inches. At the time, it looked like we only had about an inch, and the snow was supposed to end in the afternoon. Janelle made a comment about it needing to pick up the pace if we were going to get 5 inches.
It did just that. By the time Connor and I left for the dump and post office, Janelle's tracks from leaving for work were already filled in. In just the five minutes we were parked at the dump, Mera was completely coated. After the hour and half that we were at the post office (during which time I sang a series of Christmas carols without repeating a song--yep, I was THAT guy), we had to brush off over an inch of snow. As I pulled into the driveway, I noticed that our earlier tracks from leaving had been filled in. By the time the snow finally stopped and topped the five inch mark, even our return tracks were filled. Let me just say, I am so glad I have my ATV (whom I have decided to name Scarlet) with its plow this year. All told, our driveway was cleared after an hour and a half. Not only does my back not bother me, but I had a blast clearing the snow--while having "Winter Wonderland" running through my head (as I had sung it earlier). Time and time again, I have found myself with my shoulders hunched and my jaw clenched. Just now, I had to remind myself yet again to lower my shoulders, relax my jaw, and lower my tongue from the roof of my mouth. Clearly, the tension of this semester, especially these past few days, has been getting to me.
It certainly doesn't help that I haven't been getting enough sleep. Sure, I seem to say that all the time, but the past three days have been particularly bad. As wonderful as it is, coffee can only do so much. Part of my issue is that I know I will not want to do anything work related (nor should I do anything work related) once my daughters start arriving in a couple of days. That only gives me this weekend to get anything I want to get in order … well … in order. Yet a significant portion of my mind is telling me to just forget about it, take some deep breaths, and play some video games. I like that portion of my mind. I truly have mixed feelings about today. By far, this has been the most difficult semester ever for me as a teacher. I've put in more overall time in planning, updating, grading, teaching, and counseling than even my first year as a teacher (which, until now, had been my most time-consuming). I have also felt more stress, pressure, and frustration than I have in 23 years as an educator. When I say that, please remember that for nine years I works as a full-time teacher, an adjunct faculty member of a college, and a faculty advisor at the college writing center … all at the same time.
Certainly, I am ready to close the lid on this semester. … Except, the end of this semester is also the end of the three classes of students that I've been teaching. Normally, I would get to see them all year, but today was our last day. While there are some whom I hardly saw--even when we were in person, I have still built strong bonds with many of my students. I'm sure that I'm going to have some great students this coming semester, but I'm truly going to miss these classes, especially my seniors as I will not get a chance to have them in class again. Yes, this has been a rough semester, especially the past couple of months of online teaching, but I'm still glad for the connections we made. |
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