It is the evening prior to Christmas and in my parent's house, it is pretty quiet for even a grouse.

Grandma Uffda is here for the holidays from Lewistown Montana. Unfortunately her time here has been less than ideal as she has been on the brink of pneumonia. Poor gramma. I also feel kinda bad because I have not been spending a whole lot of time with her while she has been here. I have been helping Judy, Willie, and Anna move in to their new house. It's really hard to move during the holidays because it's hard to get the christmas boxes located and then allocate the time necessary to decorate, and put up Christmas lights on the house, and get a Christmas three, and decorate the Christmas tree, and find the stockings, and find the Christmas gift wrapping paper...

I kinda feel bad about not spending most of my time with gramma, but it has been so incredibly rewarding to bring Christmas into the new Ekstrom house.

I have a Christmas miracle story:
I sent in a form for the six month food stamp checkup (to make sure I was still eligible), and I was sure that I would have my food stamp privileges revoked because I hadn't been working 20 hour weeks (which I perceived to be a requirement). Instead of taking away my benefits, THEY INCREASED MY MONTHLY BUDGET! This is such great news. I can still eat and pay rent at the same time!

I also got a jury summons for January 14th.

21st

I feel like 21 is the final birthday that one would look forward to in their entire lifetime. Scary. For months I have been super pumped for what is going to happen in less than an hour. I wonder if I will feel older? The thing I am most excited about is being able to have a beer with dinner outside of home.

Classes started today. I was 20 minutes late to one and skipped another for an ultimate event. Perhaps tomorrow will be more academic...

Summer shiz

Before

After

Worked on my tan in Anna's vineyard yesterday.

This summer, I'm living in Corvallis and working in the computer lab on campus. Unfortunately there were some budget cuts right before summer and we lost all but one of the labs cutting our hours from 300ish to 150ish. I was one of the more fortunate employees and managed to get 12 hours a week (a couple people only got 4). I need to start looking for more employment. I might even see if Pierce Steel would consider hiring me back. That would be grunt work from 6 to 4 five days a week. It would bring in the green, but that would be the end of my summer fun.

I made Rhino this year. I played in my first tournament a couple weekends ago at Summer Solstice in beautiful Eugene. I caught a goal in my first game with them which was more than I had hoped for. I went on to score once in the second game against Revolver and three times in our last game against Invictus. I didn't score on Sunday, but we beat Blackfish and Furious George to put us in the semi finals with Sockeye. We went point for point with them until the end and they beat us 11-15. The whole weekend was a lot of fun.

So, last term I pulled off a huge upset. For some reason I didn't put in the time I usually do to prepare for my midterms, and my grades showed it. I was getting 50%'s and freaking myself out. I had applied to Pro-school, which is required to take the junior level classes, and my acceptance was contingent on my performance last term. I was retaking one class and the other four were required for acceptance. Thanks to sugary treats from Circle K, I studied my balls off all weekend and all week to prepare for the finals that were all essentially "do or die." I don't know my exact score for each final, but I walked away with A's and B's in all five courses.

Sophomore conclusion

My sophomore season of college ultimate concluded two days ago at the Northwest Regional Tournament. It was a very good ending to a good season. You can see our results here. We went into the tournament seeded 8th and came out ranked 7th. Boo ya! haha

Unfortunately I should have been studying my balls off last weekend, but the tournament kept me from being studious. I had two midterms on Monday and one on Tuesday. I did not do well on any of them. I probably passed them and maybe did okay with the curve, but it was not a good performance. Now that I don't have ultimate practices during the week, hopefully I can stay on top of my homework a little better (probably wont happen, but it's a nice thought).

I'm going to try to apply for food stamps. Apparently as a student, if you work 20 hours a week, you are eligible for them. My roommate is on them. Getting that would be great help in my desire to get a motorcycle this summer. I want to be able to travel from Corvallis to Eugene without borrowing someones car, and if I had a bike, I would pay a fraction of the gas costs. I would also be doing my part to stop that global warming thing.

I'm trying out for Rhino again this year, but if I make it, I'm actually going to play (I tried out last year and made it, but couldn't make the commitment). I really want to be a part of the highest level that ultimate has to offer. It's almost like going pro. haha

This Friday I'm going to try to go down to Eugene to see the Blue Scholars at the UO. Might ride my bicycle with a friend. Not sure if that'll work.

I'm running out of things to talk about.

Out.

Workin' Hard

I don't really have any exciting news to blog about, but I thought I should put something on here. This is one of the labs I work in. I took this picture at 10:15am on a Sunday morning. I picked up two consecutive shifts from 8am-12pm, then my boss is taking me out to lunch. I get a free lunch because no one wanted to work this morning at 8:00am. Boo ya!

School is going a lot better this term than it went last term. I am trying to study for a physics midterm, but facebook, blogger, and skype are hard to get away from. I spend a lot of time in the library and I'm picking up shifts left and right to make myself study.

Ultimate is going awesome. I am an officer of the team since the fall of this year, so I've been involved in planning practices and selecting who will be on the A and B team. I feel kind of strange about it at times because I'm only a sophomore, and 75% of the team is older than me, but as far as skill and knowledge of the game, I'm probably in the top 5. I have a hard time telling people when they've messed up or giving them pointers, because I'm afraid they will take offense to it. Fortunately we have acquired a coach (well two actually). They have both competed on the national level. One of them won club mixed nationals, and the other won masters nationals just this past year, so they know a thing or two about ultimate and competing on a very high level. We went to Vegas a couple weekends ago, but I might have to blog about that another time (or maybe not).

In the Blue School, Class is in Session

Immediately following the first week of classes I had an abundance of friends come up from Eugene to hang out at my townhouse. I think over 25 people showed up. It was really nice to have that many awesome people just chill at my house. There was games, Mario Kart and Super Smash Brothers on the N64, but I ended the night by saving the world with Collin on Gears of War 2. Several of my bestest friends spent the night and I didn't end up going to bed till 5:30am. It was pretty friggin sweet. I didn't wake up till about noon the next day, but when I went upstairs the guys that spent the night had already cleaned up most of the place. All I had to do was start the dishwasher! I was amazed and bragged to all of my roommates about how awesome my friends were.

The very next night, one of my four roommates, Hanky, returned from a four week long trip to Thailand. He happened to be returning on his birthday, which lasted around 35 hours with the flight across the dateline thing. Naturally there was a birthday/welcome home party for him. I was not really feeling hanging out at my house. I was still coming off of the high from all of my childhood friends visiting. I wanted to escape. Fortunately another one of my roommates, Timmy, had been asked to DJ his first party. I hopped on my bike and rode across campus to the appartment he was scratchin' in. He was going nuts with his turntables and having a good time by himself in the corner of this small appartment. I hung around for a while, but didn't know anyone, so I left. Not wanting to go home, I started biking a long way home. It was so nice and peaceful riding around campus at night. I rode nowhere for probably almost an hour in the brisk misty night. I was diggin it.

Out With The Old, In With The New

I have never gotten a grade lower than a B in my life. Last term I got a D+ and a C+. I now have to retake the worst class of all time, "Matrix and Power Series Methods." Fortunately I don't have to reschedule anything for next term because of it. This year, I'm going to have to put in a lot more work than I am used to, because none of my professors are going to make anything easy for me.