Things like this should happen every day.

Blogger is the new Xanga?

It is snowing furiously right now, and it looks simply stunning. A miracle occured between 6 and 7 this morning when the University chose to cancel classes rather than going with the two-hour delay - a sound decision on their part, I thought, because the way that ice was falling I'd feared our faces would've been torn off completely. Now it is a hard, yet quiet-falling cloud of flakes filling the air across campus. I tried opening our front door, but it wouldn't budge past 3 inches because of the cumulation of ice on the doorstep. So now I'm in pyjamas, sipping water from my Nalgene and sucking on Wilbur Buds.
They're these fascinating little candies that Missy and Allie have been selling to raise money to go to the big English majors' conference in Pittsburgh next month. These two had claimed that Wilbur Buds were better than Hershey Kisses, but I am not so sure of that. They're smaller and denser, and the machine squeezes the chocolate into little moulds that spell out WILBUR around the bottom, rather than kissing the conveyor belt to create the flat-bottomed Hershey's version. Now the dark chocolate Buds are quite tasty, and because of the density of the candy, it lasts a bit longer than a Kiss. However, the milk chocolate Buds have a sort of weird aftertaste that I don't so much care for, so Hershey wins there as well. Again, Kisses are larger, but less dense [I suppose they whip the chocolate more], and I have my loyalties to Hershey since they have provided me with many a free fun-size sample at Chocolate World over the years.
So apart from some relaxation and reading, I might like to go out and enjoy the beautiful weather - provided it doesn't begin sleeting again, of course. Perhaps Father John will open the House today and we can congregate for games and hot drinks and hopefully a decent dinner [if Ed can't make it, do we fend for ourselves?].
I had been thinking how much my brain has been able to rot since college has began. I am slightly jealous of Allie and Missy, being straight English majors, for all they do is read and write and expand their minds and their vocabularies. Although I've enjoyed the Crafts major tract, it hasn't done much to keep my noggin sharp. The only for-school reading I've done in the past 3 years has been textbook selections - mostly of art history. Outside of assignments, most of the reading I've done has been Christian non-fiction, which is certainly wonderful and spiritually challenging and uplifting, but at the same time it is there to challenge the heart and the soul rather than to stretch the brain.
On a good note, I'm beginning to feel as though this is my easiest semester yet. I think it is because for the first time in a long time, I have only two studio classes, which relieves a good deal of stress. However, the two that I have are those for which one may only accomplish any work within the classroom itself: weaving and ceramics. I do dread going to the art building late at night, and I wish my projects were portable so I could work on them in the comfort of my apartment or the Chris House, as I was able to for drawing, painting, and especially non-loom. I do enjoy every single class I am taking [a first]: weaving and ceramics; survey of crafts [sort of a history of crafts, although we're learning chronologically backwards from contemporary to ancient]; European Modernism, yoga, and geometry. Geometry may sound difficult, boring, "ugh oh no not math", etc., but it really is quite a wonderful class. The professor, Anke, is quite amicable. She will give the men in the class a hard time when they are trying to be funny, but she is quite a sweetheart to you if you are a sweetheart to her. She is so very German: a beautiful accent, square-framed glasses, always wearing black. The easiest part of her class is that we only accomplish about two or three constructions per hour class period, because she will go around to each individual to check and correct our work. We also get extra points if we colour things in nicely.
Spring Break planning I think is going well. I am in charge of games, initiatives, and fun activities. The big event we [Jake, Josh, and myself] are planning for is a massive secret for now we are calling "The Time of Interest". I'm quite excited about this. Yesterday Bridget brought in a Valentine card from Grandmom, which I expected would have the usualy $5 bill in it, but this time it was a check for $50! So thus the Lord has provided my $50 deposit for Spring Break. At the moment, I'm working on raising support for the $200 fee. Most of it is the cost of van rental and gas [50 hours+ in a 15 passenger van = buttloads of fuel], since a lot of the food comes from donations of supermarkets in the area. What we're doing on the trip is working at a home for kids called Watersprings Ranch, which is in Texarkana, Arkansas [it's on the border between Arkansas and Texas, just north of Louisiana... hence the name]. The Ranch has several log cabin homes where up to 8 kids stay with a set of house parents [one of whom is our former pastor and his wife]. The children stay at the ranch rather than several foster homes throughout their childhood so they can have a community and parents who love them the entire time growing up. They've been abandoned, abused, neglected, and some have biological parents in jail, which is why the Ranch provides them with a good home and a loving Christ-centred community. Our work for the week is to stain and seal the log cabins, repair fences and other damages that came with the hurricane last fall, and to hang out with the kids and love on 'em a lot. The other aspect of Spring Break is not simply a service-based mission trip, but also a retreat for personal growth and fellowship with other young adult believers from our church. Basically it's an all-around sweeeeeeet time. So I think I shall spend some of today working on support letters and thank-you notes to ask for funding, and more importantly for prayer. It's a long drive, we've never been there before, we don't know what the weather will be like, so we'll need to ask the Lord for safety. We'll want to bond closely with each other and with the kids that we meet, so we'll ask that Jesus open our hearts and minds to love one another as He loves us. I really want this to be one of the most important weeks of our lives: to be impacting others in the name of Christ and sharing His love with all.
Nearer than that is a high-school youth retreat at Krislund, which is supposed to happen next weekend. Tim had emailed me saying that it might not happen because the low numbers of sign-ups, but I'm really hoping that we reach the minimum number of participants, because it will be such a great time! Bridget, Nate, possibly Brandon, and I would be leading NiteFest - about which I'm quite excited, because I had a pretty decent songlist picked out. Tyler would come and be our power-point man, and I guess Tim and Steve would be leading most of the goingson. I hope the current weather doesn't deter folks from signing up; all those snow at camp would be such a fantastic time!! I would think the roads up there would be cleared by that time, anyway.
Well, I feel I've spent enough time on the internet for now. Time to go read [for school, for mind, and for soul], play in the snow, get ahead on my weaving and mould-making, and just enjoy a nice snow day!

Return to the LORD your God, for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love. - Joel 2:13