Lately

We went to a USU basketball game and sat in the student section.  

As I looked around I saw some highschool students sitting in the college 

student section... that's cool.  After awhile I noticed that there were 

a lot of them and was a little confused as to why.

Then it dawned on me - they are college students!

Nathaniel is finishing up his last week of classes for the semester.  

He has finals next week and then one more semester to go!  In May he

will graduate with a bachelor's in statistics, hooray!  He has really impressed

me with his consistency in studying all semester long.  You all know how it goes:

decide to study really hard, determine amounts of time that you will spend studying, 

even make a schedule or whatever... eventually things come up or you get 

distracted or stressed.  But he has been pretty hard core and disciplined all semester.

I got a nice little prize because I hit my 25-classes milestone in Jazzercise.

The sad thing is that the instructor is moving and will be teaching in Riverton.

She is one of the best, if not The Best aerobics instructor I have ever taken 

a class from.  I may go to some of her classes in Riverton if she is teaching 

over the Christmas break.  Anyone want to come?

The Tuesday before Thanksgiving was a crazy one for Nate.  He was 

running one place to the next trying to do a million things and was even late 

for some.  In all the rush he forgot to return 2 course reserve books.  These

books are generally high demand and, therefore, can only be checked out

for a few hours at a time and have a $0.10 per minute late fee.  Two books

almost 4 hours late... total fee: $45.60 ($22.80 per book).

As soon as he realized the books were still in his backpack we drove quickly

up to the library and he ran in hoping to save every cent we could.  I asked

him to at least ask if there was anything he could do or if they could waive 

part of the fee.  I told him to tell the truth.  The worst they can do is say no

and we'd be in the same position anyway.  The manager wasn't there that

evening so the attendant couldn't say or do anything about his plea.

But today he went back and only had to pay $10!  Whew.

We've started and mostly finished putting up our Christmas decorations.  

They are all sort of odd and random though, and I'm not very good 

at decorating.  Put it all together and...  

Well, our tree is nice; my brother and his wife gave it to us last year.

It currently just has lights on it (the kind that come that way) and we haven't

plugged things in the right places to make it all work yet.  Plus it is too tall for

our basement apartment so we have the tip folded over and the star resting

several branches down from the top of the tree.  Last year we had it under an

even lower part of the ceiling and decided to only use the top two sections

of the tree.  That looked a little too homely.  We hope to come up with

random, different, inexpensive ways to decorate it every year.

Than has also been growing a beard.  He was going to do it for maybe 

just a few days but it has been a couple weeks.  I don't love it or hate it and 

figure if I feel strongly one way or another I'll tell him, but I'm pretty sure I don't 

want him to have it for a long time.  The longer he has it the more he likes it.