Ahh, the Weekend!
Emi and I are going to the Mount in a few minutes to visit the residents there and hang out. For those of you who don't know what the Mount is, it is an assisted living/nursing home in West Seattle. Emi worked there while she was in highschool and now she goes back to visit everyone. She and I went on Thanksgiving and had a blast. And apparently Lorraine has been asking about me and wants to see me. :) Afterwards we are probably going to study and do homework on Alki Beach again...I love that place!

Last night Emi, Laley, and I went up to Tully's on Queen Anne to read and study. It was awesome. I worked on some of my memorization, read some more theology stuff, researched some Scripture, and read more of East of Eden. We stayed until they closed, then we went and picked up some groceries and headed home for more homework and studying. It was just what I had been wanting to do all week!

Tomorrow Sara's dad is coming down from Vancouver, B.C. to go to church with us. He doesn't have to preach tomorrow at his church, so he's coming down to visit and he has been wanting to check out Bethany Pres. Yay, visitors! He's also bringing me a list of titles regarding speaking in tongues...woo hoo! I can't wait to talk with him on this stuff.

I think I may also check out the Fremont Sunday Market tomorrow, as well. Well, it kind of depends on how hard it is raining, though :) I still haven't been and really want to go hang out in "The Center of the Universe" for awhile and take some pictures. I also need to go to PCC...hmm...I think it's gonna have to happen tomorrow!

Praise the Lord for weekends!

Counting Down the Days
This afternoon I had my phone interview for Cran-Hill. Scott Gritter interviewed me this year. It was more like we were just having a really good conversation, rather than a formal interview. Nothing about it was formal! It was actually a lot of fun. I really do hope I get the job as Park Ranger, but if I don't, being a part of the maintenance staff would be awesome again, too. I am pretty sure that I will be at the Ranch again for my third summer in a row, but I just don't know what position I will be serving in. That's up to God. I should find out around Feb 20, so I have a month to wait! Ahh! Oh well, I've waited much longer for things in my life before (think YEARS), so I don't think this will be all that difficult. Time flies when you're having fun, right?!

Emi and Laley are definatley going to do that awesome summer study abroad program that SPU has with Oxford. I'm so excited for them!! We were talking last night about how it will be weird that the three of us won't be together, since we are practically the Three Musketeers, so we came up with a solution to our predicament: "Val-On-A-Stick" aka "Super Val's British Invasion!" We're going to take a headshot of me, blow it up at Kinko's, and staple it to a stick so Emi and Laley can take me with them abroad! They're going to take pictures of me with them at all the sights and send them to me as postcards at the Ranch! And wherever they go, they are going to ask random fun people to sign the back of my head, so then they will send myself to me in the mail and it will be covered with messages and foreign postage. I have a feeling that I will not only have to sing to receive that piece of mail at camp, but that I will also be thrown in the lake. How awesome is that?! I tell ya, I have the greatest and most creative friends EVER.

I'm so incredibly blessed :)

LOTR Festival
That's right, SPU is having a LOTR weekend, to be highlighted by bringing in John Rhys-Davies (the guy who plays Gimli) for a forum. We're also having theology faculty speak about the theological themes prevalent in the movie, which we get CHAPEL CREDIT for! Woot!! AND, SPU is renting out the entire Cinerama downtown to show LOTR:ROTK. And did I mention that we have an entire theology class on Tolkien?...um, my school rocks!!

Last Homework-Free Sunday
Well, it is our last Sunday without homework...at least for awhile, anyway. I'm excited for classes to begin, especially my Feminist Theology class! It's being taught by my favorite prof, Priscilla Pope-Levison. She has sort of become a mentor to me out here, and I have been very blessed by her these past two years. So having another class with her is going to be great. We have to read The Secret Life of Bees for class, which I just happened to read on the plane ride to Michigan last month...yay! It's a really good book and I highly recommend it. But I am glad that I will hopefully have some free time to read East of Eden, along with all the young adult novels I have to read for Young Adult Lit. Praise God - no more Dante and Dosteovsky this quarter!

Gwinn was open for an hour tonight, so Lael and I went to dinner with our friends in the dorms. It was a good time, and having some non-leftovers was good, too. Now I am in Emilou's room, hanging out until we go meet our friend Kristi at Starbuck's on Queen Anne. We don't know why she has called kind of an urgent meeting, but we have a feeling it is to apologize for New Year's Eve. Yeah, breaking six laws in less than 24 hours was a rockin' good time! We really did have a good time that night...it was just kind of surreal, and looking back on it, we can't really believe everything happened. Hey, we're alive, none of us were injured, I didn't receive a speeding ticket for going 90 mph on the highway on New Year's Eve, no fines for starting illegal fines on Whidbey Island or shooting large illegal fireworks at the Deception Pass Bridge, no cops found out we broke into the park and had open containers of alcohol...nope, we're all safe and sound - with the exception of Emilou, who wasn't supposed to leave Seattle at all that night. She got a good lecture from her mom, but eh...it was a memorable evening.

Laura moved in last night, and she seems really nice. I think everything will work out nicely, and we're all going to have a great rest of the year.

I better get going so Sonya can use her computer.

Yay for classes tomorrow!

Snowy Seattle
I arrived back in Seattle Tuesday afternoon. It started to snow later that evening and it even stuck around until the middle of Wednesday! Yay for snow!
Being back is GOOD. Lael and I have been relaxing, knitting, hanging out with Emily, had a semi-illegal adventure on New Year's Eve, etc. We're going to the mall and the three or four floor Target today. I need to get some organizational stuff to reorganize my stuff in our office. Our fourth roomate, Laura, moves in on Sunday and we need to make some room for her and her stuff. She's 23, from Oregon, and sounds really cool. We talked for nearly an hour the other night and I think things are going to go really well. We're getting excited for her to move in!
I ordered all of my books the other day, with a grand total of $150...yay! Still not going over $200 on books...can't break my streak!
I should go eat some breakfast and do some chores and stuff. I love all this time to get stuff done around here and play before school starts! I've been getting lots of reading in, too, which has been fabulous. Three more days until school starts...