It's been an absolutely wild December. Towards the end of the fall semester for school, I became very bitter. I was going out with and talking with a lot of my fellow students. Talking about the downfalls of the programs, pointless classes, and on the subjects of students who have no right passing their classes getting perfect scores. I struggled my way to three B- and an A. Data Structures killed me. The final felt awful, as if I completely slept through the part of the year we learned about callback functions. But I got that A in it. During finals week, we had a nice end of semester dinner with two folks I've gotten to know through our technology club. After a great Brazillian meal, we went to CMU campus for coffee, since downtown closes at 8 PM. I'm thinking I shouldn't have gone there. Seeing those students. Those kids. They were buzzing about the common student areas talking about their finals, nose to book and nose to computer. Those kids are smarter than I'll ever be. CMU is the school I wanted to go to as a kid. A woman I tutored in programming was interested in my success and gave me all sorts of info she'd found about the school. I didn't pursue it. I wasn't smart enough. I graduated high school with a 2.5 GPA and had not taken my SAT or ACT tests. Looking back, I couldn't even have afforded CMU. It would have been a pipe dream. Back then, I'd have failed out anyway. I didn't have what it took. As an adult, I feel things would be different. But now it's way too late. I don't mind. But we sat in a table on the mezzanine overlooking the basketball courts. We saw a bunch of kids playing basketball while we drank our vanilla lattes. We talked about our problems, our futures, and our pasts. It got pretty deep. Introspective. I liked it. It was wholesome without being excessive. We talked for hours. Being in that environment was very different from my school. I resent my school in many ways. But it doesn't have a campus buzz about it like where we were. But a degree is all I need to escape. I can do so much more with this degree. Two more years. So I survived finals and have my next semester mapped out. Success. Brian visited my place from across state before finals properly happened. He needed to film two cars for his channel while he was in. He scheduled them for early Saturday while we still had light. The night before, we grabbed food nearby my place and had some beers in town. We spent the night on Periscope talking to his fans and being silly. We drank more whiskey. Justin, my neighbor, came over during that which kept us up a bit late. Early the next morning, Brian got sick. He thought it was a hangover, but we believe it to be food poisoning. He had eaten shrimp the night before, so it's the most likely story. He felt so sick he couldn't film the cars properly. He canceled on the one shoot and the other was nearly arrived so we couldn't send them back to Columbus. He tried to push through, but only got a portion of the necessary shots. We hit the road back home and he hit the hay. I actually arranged my room to accommodate for the change of seasons (moving my bed away from the radiator, reducing the fire hazard). About three hours later, Brian woke up right as rain. We grabbed Turkish food with some friends and called it an early night. Next day crept up on us and we said our goodbyes. I was meeting other friends within an hour or so for D&D. They were finishing their side-quest campaign to get everyone tied into the overall quest we've been running for 5 years. Forward ourselves a week into finals. I survived. I celebrated my last final by traveling to Orwigsburg for the RCR Christmas Party. I had an amazing time there. We talked about cars, played kid-tennis, and caught up on good times. After the party, we headed to Brian's place and hung out for a bit before hitting up a bar in Pottsville. That was some good company; and a good time. Catching up with those guys is always a joy, and I even met two new people in the process. Friends are great. I slept on his futon that night and headed back home the next day. Lots of driving. But then, after a bunch of time off work, it was back to the grind. I got through. Christmas came pretty fast. Too fast.
I drove to Cleveland on the 23rd to visit Micro Center. This was so I could buy computer parts for my sister. She asked me to do that weeks before; I failed her due to school distractions. I built the computer on stream. On a cooler note, my half-sister who lives in St. Croix surprised me by coming to town for the first time in about five years! She traveled in to get away from the powerless island. The hurricanes this year completely ruined the island. Spent Christmas Eve hanging out with my mom, dad, and her. Dad went kind of nuts after having some whiskey and brought up some weird crap about my brother (his son) resenting him. My sis and I thought he was nuts. It's an understandable paranoia, if completely unfounded in reality. I don't think this is the place to talk about it, though. Christmas was nice. After visiting and eating all day, I hooked up my sister's computer at her new house and hit the trail back home. Now, it's been a week of working midnight shifts. Been feeling too lazy to work on personal projects, but I'm not really down about that. I'll get by. I always do.