So everyone has probably already left for Thanksgiving, and no one will read this until they get back. If that's the case, hope you had a wonderful break. If, by some freak chance, you are reading this before you head off to wherever you are going, I hope that you do have a wonderful break. And if, God forbid, you are stuck in Longview...well, this is the spot where'd I'd normally laugh at you, except that I happen to be spending my break in town as well. I kind of figured that if the family that has offered for you to live with them for the semester invites you to Thanksgiving dinner, then you're a little bit obligated to go. Oh, and Linda called me this afternoon to tell me that we have a plane reserved for Sunday so, weather permitting, I'll be flying this weekend. When you get back, you'll know how the weather was here by the look on my face Monday.
posted by Tom 2:28 PM
Monday, November 25, 2002
It's one of those late fall days where its colder outside at noon than it was when you walked out to your car in the morning. Of course, this being east texas, it was like this three weeks ago too, but the last couple of weeks have been back to highs in the 70's. Days like this are great in central washington in late October, but since it never really gets to be winter down here in texas, I'm not sure that I like the change in weather so much, especially since I get to stand out in it for two hours tonight after dark. So today could be better. The weekend, on the other hand, was by far the best that could have been imagined. Let's go all the way back to Friday when my morning class was cancelled and my afternoon class put me one completed project closer to graduation (which is, by the way, a scant eighteen days off). After dinner Friday, several of us went with Jordan up to his future in-laws' (yeah, we'll get to that in a minute) cabinet shop to pick up a couple truckloads of scrap wood. We got back to campus in time to catch the free screening of Signs, which I hadn't seen before. The final reel played out right at 9:00, and most of us went directly from the assembly building to the pond, where the bonfire had just been lit. As always, 1bonfire was excellent. The night was cold enough that people were encouraged to group together around the fire, but not so cold that you had to cook you're front while your back froze. Friends and acquaintences stood around the fire for hours enjoying each others company, catching up with people they hadn't seen in awhile, and watching certain bandits display their stupidity through such rituals as fire-jumping, coal walking, and of course, the chicky-chicky-bean. For those of you who were there, thanks for making it the event that it was, and I hope you all enjoyed yourselves. For those of you who weren't (Stu), HA HA. As the night wore on, people trickled off in small groups until only a few were left, and the fire was put out. It's always sad to kill a fire, and this one was just getting to the point where you could sit down and stare into the coals for hours, but the size of it required that it be doused while there were still four or five people to haul water up from the pond, and the last of us were ready to leave. Saturday breakfast at the yellow house was better atteneded than it had been this entire semester, largely because word had gone out that Rachel would be making her famous dutch babies, and for the second time in as many days friends gathered to relax and enjoy each other's company to the melodies of Dave Wolff's guitar. It was a beautiful afternoon, and soccer was requisit. Saturday evening we returned to the yellow house and dirtied every mug the girls own with hot drinks. Sunday, after church, brought some time to start thinking about moving, and getting my room in order for packing. Matt fixed my car before dinner (an excellent spaghetti feast, again prepared by Rachel), and after dinner Jordan came and knocked on the door. "Good evening," he said, nonchalantly. "You all know my finance, Amber." Her ring finger must be about to fall off; he drug her around by it the whole night as we visited the few floors who had gotten word about Christmas decorations in time to actually put up something. I don't know who officially won, but my vote would go to Thomas 1. The bandit tradition of Kleptomanic Christmas was carried out, although in somewhat reduced quantity from years past. And to round out the evening, we scraped together ten or twelve people to play some hockey at the tennis courts with Kass and Rachel. I had forgotten how good Kass was at always cutting off my passes, and he frustrated me to no end last night. It was, as I said, a great weekend, a weekend worthy of being one of the last.
posted by Tom 1:14 PM
Okay, tales of 1bonfire and the rest of the weekend to come, but first a respone to Maria's comment on my post from last Sunday. You might wonder why, if I dislike (and I don't know if that is quite strong enough of a term) the way things are run here at LeTourneau, I have spent my entire undergraduate education here. The reason is simple, and Maria has actually already pointed it out: God led me here. If He hadn't, I probably would have graduated a year and a half ago from one of the half dozen colleges I was looking at during my senior year of high school, all of them places that I would much rather have been at the time. I could have been wrestling or pole vaulting for a couple of them. Instead, I decided to take a year off from school. Halfway around the world, an MK going to visit his family for Christmas and a grounded airplane introduced my parents to the name LeTourneau. And the next fall I was here. LeTourneau University, a school with such a small athletic program that they don't even field teams in any of the sports I had played in high school; a school that housed its pride and joy engineering and aviation programs in a row of corrugated metal buildings along the back of its campus. But this is where God led me, and if I had it to do again, knowing all of the problems that this place has, I would still come. No place is perfect. I could have gone somewhere else, and it wouldn't have had the same problems that LeTourneau has, but it would have other problems. The biggest problem with anywhere else is that anywhere else I could have gone is not where God wanted me. I hope this will encourage Maria. Unfortunately I have run out of time, so the weekend review will have to wait.
posted by Tom 11:10 AM
It starts with the shoe. Maybe the next day it's a t-shirt or a sock. You don't know if the washing machine ate it, or your roommate borrowed it a month ago and forgot that it was yours. All you know is that by the end of the week, you're walking to class naked because you don't have any clothes left.
