Hesitant, Hopeful

I've been snooping around at my friend's blogs & Facebook and everyone seems to be posting recaps of their Easter weekend.  It doesn't sound like anyone really had a stellar time this last weekend, but that the day was still generally nice and, disaster free, overall. If you did have an amazing, awesome Easter weekend, and I've somehow managed to miss the thrill of your awesome day, my apologies.  I'm not in the best head-space right now, so everyone's entries seem to colored in a layer of gloom... but in all fairness, maybe it's just me.

My Easter weekend started out alright. We had a three day weekend, which is always nice, and I felt generally upbeat on Friday.  It was Earth Day and Good Friday, and Matt and I celebrated the eco-holiday by not going anywhere or doing anything. It was really nice. I wasted the day away, despite having so much to get done, and it was nice to just hang out. I don't really have time to do nothing, but I threw caution to the wind and did so anyway.  If I don't take time to myself, when things get hectic, I snap.

Sadly, Saturday wasn't as good as Friday. I had too much work to do and didn't have the drive or desire to do any of it. I literally sat in front of my computer all day doing homework. I wrote the prompts for my American Lit final (we get to chose what we'll write our final over) and then toiled over my Teaching of Composition paper.  I got the prompts done but only got four pages written on the paper, all day, which was just disappointing. There was a time in my life, not so long ago, that I didn't trip over writing a paper. I generally write pretty fast, too, so spending 12+ hours writing 4 pages is just shameful. By the time Saturday got here, I was fried... and so was my modem.

A thunderstorm rolled in on Saturday afternoon. The sky was gloomy and black, lit occasionally in sparks of brilliant light. My sad little shih-tzu, Anakin, cowered all day long and refused to go outside in the elements. For my part, I enjoyed the weather, even though I was trapped inside, and took every opportunity I could to go outside and sit with Matt while he smoked--he smokes outside regularly now and doesn't even complain about it!  About mid-evening, while procrastinating and making dinner, I was surfing the net when my connection went down. Matt and I spent a minute or two discussing whether or not our connection was out before deciding it was. We waited and waited, but nothing all night, no internet.

When I woke-up, bright and early on Sunday morning, ready to dive into the last four or five pages of my Teaching of Comp paper, I happened to notice that the internet was still down. The power light on the modem was red, so I called CenturyLink around 8 a.m. (on Easter morning) to report my problem in hopes that they could fix it. They were really nice and said that if the power light was red, the modem was fried. I talked to them about the storm; they agreed that a phone line somewhere had probably been struck in the storm and sent a surge through the phone wires and into the modem, and that I would need a new modem.  They said they would be happy to send it, but that we'd have to pay $25 for the shipping.  Matt works from home, so it wasn't an option, we needed it overnighted to us so he didn't lose anymore work days than he already had between Sunday (yes, he would have worked on Sunday) and Monday, so I agreed.

Not. Awesome.

With that taken care of by 8:30 a.m. or so, I made a pot of coffee and opened my word document to work on my paper. I read over what I had by way of notes for the rest of the paper, which I had made at the end of the document the night before, put my fingers to the keys and hammered out 6 more pages before 10:30 a.m.  Coffee and a good night's sleep can do wonders.  I spent the rest of the day, internet-less, making edits to my paper and writing my works cited page.  The paper was due yesterday (Monday), so it really needed to get done. When I finished that, I dove into my teaching philosophy assignment which was also due sometime soon (no real due date, just before the end of April).

In all, we didn't do anything special for Easter. We were invited to my in-laws, in Waco, but there was no way we could have gone. We declined the invitation because we had too much classwork to do. The end of the semester is a terrible time for us. With all we had going on, there was simply no way we could pick up and take a day off to go to Waco and eat food.  No way. Besides, we couldn't really afford the tank of gas the trip would have cost and our car is still acting up from the transmission part that needs replacing (which we haven't done because it'll be $1,000 and we don't have it, nor would be spend it on this car anyway).

I did spend a good part of the day feeling quite homesick. My family all got together for the holiday, but we couldn't go, for obvious reasons (the 1,500 miles between here and there, namely). I miss spending holidays with my family and will be quite happy when we move home next year and I can begin doing so again.  Anyway, pity party aside, I had some other things to talk about but this is starting to run long as is, so I'll save it for another entry.

Adieu.