The Bard of Lincoln: Back in to it.

Ok. Well this is it. Tomorrow is my first day of second semester. I am a little excited, and a little worried that all of this free time that I have been enjoying is going to disappear. But alas, such is life...

So tomorrow at 10:30, I will be heading in to Robot Ethics, followed by a little Kinematics and Motion Control at 3:00. Then Wednesday I will be attending Distributed Embedded Systems. I am really looking forward to this semester. These courses are the ones I really want to take, they are the ones that I came to CMU for. Don't worry, Ill let you know how they go :)

In other news, it did not take very long to get connected with friends again. Saturday was Tracey's birthday, so something had to happen. And She was busy all night with family, so Sam, Gwyn and I consulted Chelsea on what to do. Among other things, Chelsea suggested hanging candy canes from some trees It was determined that Tracey's house did not have sufficient trees so in order to give her proper attention the next morning at church, we descended upon a tree (and some bushes...) there. The apparent theme for the evening was 'Ninja' complete with a soundtrack of Ninja music provided by Gwyn. Chelsea: great idea, and great price. We bought 192 candy canes for $3.25. Awesome!

So here is the work:

We had to jump a little...

Yep. Everyone Saw them...

"Act like a Ninja!"

Also there had to be cake... so here is a 'T' cake. (I am getting quite good at these...)

Sunday was filled with church. After spending time with Jessie and dropping in on a CPC youthgroup, I realized that I really missed that whole thing (ill avoid getting sentimental...). Before Christmas, I had talked to Jackie (the high school and junior high youth leader, and avid member of the YadGrad group) about getting involved again. Seeing as Shadyside is in need of leaders, she was more than happy to have the help. So Sunday was my first jump in to the ministry here. It was great and scary at the same time. As many of my colleagues know, I am not a huge fan of Junior High. At Colbert I predominately worked with High School, and for good reason. Shadyside's group has loads of Junior high and a rather scant Sr. High. So, rolled my sleeves up, and got busy. The students are energetic, but they are very distracted, and lack motivation to do anything other than be a distraction. I am very excited to be a part of it, but it is going to be some work.

Today was another day of rest. I met up with Skanda for lunch, chatted about break, about this semester, about New Years in Oman... it was great to catch up. I did some birthday shopping (man... think there is enough of those in January?). Then later in the afternoon got an invite from Luke for a evening movie event. There is a theater that does $5 Mondays! Sweet! A large group, some I knew, and lots I didn't know made it. We watched "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader," It was great. I don't really want to say much more that that ;)

Oh! And here are some pictures of my time in Gig Harbor!