Staying Warm for now

I'm back in Denver and it's full blown winter here! I almost forgot it was winter while I was in Arizona and California. Yesterday it was pretty chilly- in the 20s- and it snowed from about noon all through the night. I shoveled our front walk and attempted to shovel the driveway but the ice had already set in so there wasn't much I could do. I shoveled once at about 3pm, then again about 5pm, and I made Daniel do it again just before bed so it wouldn't freeze on overnight. My back is sore today because of it. Last night the driveway was so icy Daniel couldn't drive on it. He had to back up and get a sort of running start just to park the car. Then this morning we spent 15 minutes brushing the snow and ice off so we could see through the windshield. I hate it when you open the car door and tons of snow falls inside the car and then it melts and you end up with a wet seat. Yuck. And today we'll be lucky if we get above 10 degrees. Which means all that snow will turn to ice. No melting! Growing up in Phoenix, I thought snow was the worst part of winter. But now I realize- it's the ice. Slipping and sliding and falling on your butt and dangerous car accidents and not being able to see through the windshield of your car- it's all due to ice. Despite my complaining, I find the snow absolutely beautiful. When you wake up in the morning and see a couple inches of fresh snow on everything, it's breathtaking. Every tree branch has a dusting of white. And something about snow makes Jackson go nuts! He gets all excited and runs around like crazy. Well, by the weekend we're supposed to be back up to about 50 so it will start melting pretty soon. Hopefully it stays warm enough long enough that all the ice will melt too.

I'm finishing up my first week of class and it's not going as well as I would like. In the past, every quarter I have started off excited about my classes. But not this quarter. Every morning I wake up, I just want to get back in bed. It could be due to the fact that our bedroom is like 50 degrees and I don't want to get out from under the warm covers. But I think it's also because I'm just not thrilled about my classes. And even more so because I'm so incredibly nervous about my job next week. And when it comes down to it, all my stress is about sleep. My least favorite thing in the whole world is waking up early. And by early, I mean before about 9:00. I'm most afraid that I will have to wake up every morning at 6am to go to work before classes start. My first day next Monday I have to be there at 7:30am. With traffic and everything, I have to get up at about 6am. That is torture for me. Realistically, I know that I have the ability to say that I won't work that early. I have class at 9am anyways which means if I worked in the morning I'd have to leave there at 8:30. How much can I get done before 8:30am? So once again I have this irrational fear that is causing me unneeded stress.

My favorite class is physiology. I had the professor a year ago, and I loved her. She is very motherly and sweet and kind, and she also really knows the material. She presents the material in a way that helps us best remember it. She is constantly giving us cues on how to remember something or how best to visualize this or that. And she gives us innumerable tools online to reinforce the lectures. She actually makes little animations with her voice and worksheets that go along for us to review if we want. And she offered to have a little coffee study session every Friday to go over the week's material. She's amazing. And it's probably the most practical class I've ever taken. Most of my classes are very abstract. They talk about things that are important in a background kind of way, but not in real life. This class is entirely about the human body and how it works. I find it fascinating. My other two classes have been sort of interesting. Chemistry so far is boring. We spent an entire hour on SI units. I learned that freshman year of high school. I'm sure it'll pick up soon though.

The rooming situation has been really fun so far. It's awesome living with your best friends. It takes some getting used to. For example, I don't think Eric has ever seen me in my pajamas. But in time it will feel more comfortable. We haven't seen Hope hardly at all though. She has been at school until after 10pm the last two nights. She's been auditioning for a bunch of plays. If she gets a part in one of them, then she'll be very busy and we still won't see her often. But I hope she does because then we can go see her in it.

Last night, Daniel was elected President of Theta Chi Fraternity. Last year I would have been really upset about it, but now I'm very proud of him. He works really hard for the fraternity and I think he is going to do a fantastic job. He has lots of ideas to improve the organization. I just hope it doesn't mean he's so busy he doesn't have time for anything else. It seems like he is already really busy and it's just the first week of the quarter. But I'll help him as much as I can.