School's done! I've been so happy this week that I forgot to update my weblog. :-)

Well, really, nothing's all that new. I'm feeling better and happier than I've been for some time. On the weekend, I'd borrowed a car from some friends and went driving around on Saturday. 'Twas a lot of fun. Especially 11 that night with the blowing snow and early Sunday morning with ice all over the road. Saturday night, I went through a prayer time with some friends over my desire to keep myself under control. (It sounds like an odd statement, but it's true.) As we were talking, I mentioned that when I was young I had wanted to be small. My friends pointed out that that was probably not a good thing, and may have been influential in making me want to keep myself down. Now that I look at it, I see that they were right; it couldn't have been healthy. So I'm working through that this week, and it's amazingly freeing.

In the news this week: Bill 5 of the new session at Queen's Park appears to give the auto insurance companies the inability to reduce the price of their policies. They're frozen and can't be raised or lowered. Not exactly what the Liberals had promised during the campaign.

I've just spent the last six hours or so stressing about a take home final due right about now. I've been working on it and trying to answer the questions succinctly and correctly. It's not always easy in a Philosophy type course to know what the professor is looking for. I've been using my flatmate's laptop since he has Word installed on it, and well, I don't own a copy of Word but the prof wants the submissions in Word format.

Yesterday I sat the Latin 100A exam. They gave us two hours. If they'd given us only half an hour I might have been a bit stressed for time. As it was I sat there for ten minutes or more trying to remember the Latin word that they taught us for destruction (exitium). I was never able to remember it. I had to look it up after the exam.

In the news: It seems that George W. Bush is going to be attempting to pull a JFK and challenge the United States to a series of missions to the Moon with the intent of using the gained experience to culminate in a manned mission to Mars. I'm all for that, but it seems like unless he wins next years election and gets Republicans filling both Houses, he's not likely to get anything to go his way.

For the last week or so, trying to get my mind off Tetris (Which I was playing way too much) I've started playing boggle, a where the 'puter gives you a square four letters on a side and you have to pick out all the words with a least three letters. It's a very addictive game and I've been having a lot of fun playing it, but it takes up all my free time and a bit of time that isn't free. Thursday afternoon I sat down to play and got up three hours later, having done almost nothing else. It was pretty intense.

In more social news: Saturday, I was at a St. Nicolas Day party. A friend hosts them every year and usually it's a rather quiet evening helping to set up his tree. For some odd reason, this year he didn't put up his tree for it. Maybe it doesn't feel like it's almost Christmas to him either.

Last night (Sunday) I was helping to host a choralle. I helped with set up and tear down. Unfortunately, I was unable to enjoy the actual choralle since I wasn't feeling up to sitting for an hour and a half to listen. I went and hid in a back room instead. :-(

Today I wrote my Hebrew exam. She gave us two and a half hours. I was out in an hour and a quarter. I'm glad I waited so long before leaving since she kept announcing that there were errors on the question sheet. I was actually working on the second to last problem when she announced the first one. That actually helped me figure out the problem I was working on. I stuck around trying to work out something else out until I realised it may be a typo as well. When I pointed it out to her she agreed with my diagnosis. I guess being out of the exam quickly isn't always going to help you get the best mark.

Yesterday, I took a trip down to Markham where we tore apart a little shop. We had a lot of fun that morning. When we were done we went to this place called Frankie's Tomato. It was pretty good food, and was bottomless, but I'm not sure the waitresses were used to clearing plates. The waiters at Mongolian Grill seem to be little faster about it.

This evening I went to visit a friend in hospital. He seemed like he was trying to cool down the whole time we were there. He's the kind of guy who likes cold, and the hospitals are usually quite warm. He had ice packs all over the place.

Afterward, my friend that I rode with to get there let me drive his car back. It's a standard, and I haven't been driving standard much in the last few months. The owner of the car was having a lot of fun in the back seat as I took off a little faster than I really needed to and jerked the car around since I'm not used to clutching properly. I only stalled the car 3 times in the six or so kilometers from the hospital.

In the news: the Americans have announced that non "allies of the willing" companies in Iraq won't be able to bid on the rebuilding of Iraq. The Toronto Star and the National Post are saying the new Prime Minister is going to be objecting to the US ambassador. I don't really see why anyone is suprised. It's not like the Americans have ever been evenhanded when it comes to this type of thing. How else did they end up with taxes on steel imports from Europe, import taxes on Canadian softwood lumber and so many other interesting taxes.

Mmm, relaxation. Yesterday I did pretty much nothing until Prayer Meeting. 'Twas after prayer that I went to visit my friend in the Hospital. Today, I'm not doing much more. I had been planning to have lunch with a friend, but conflicting schedules means we'll have to put it off to the New Year. I'm likely to be leaving town in a few days.

Tomorrow I have my last final: High school equivalency French. It's odd to me, because I remember learning most of the grammar points in grade 11. Maybe they learned some stuff I didn't in the first half? I dunno.

It was pointed out to me that I've been rather anti-american in my posts, saying things like "The Americans are doing this", or "The Americans have done that". Reading back over the posts does sound rather anti-american. 'Twasn't what I had intended at all. I actually should have said the administration, but even that would sound rather harsher than I meant. I have nothing against Americans. I have a few friends living in the States, or living here who are from there. Nor do I have any great beef with the administration. I've just been pointing out some rather silly (or bad, depending on your point of view) choices the administration has made. I've been doing the same with regards to the Ontario and Canadian leadership, but have been using the name of the party in question to refer to the administration. Maybe I should start using the term Republicans whenever previously I've said Americans? I'm not sure that will solve anything. That's the problem with trying to comment on polictics. Everybody has a different idea about the boundary lines.

I walked out of my last final of the term this morning at 10:10. As I was going out the prof handed me back the test I'd written on the last day of classes. I looked at it and thought, oh, I did better than I thought I would, but when I was thinking later, I realised that wasn't true. I'd misread it. It was in line with the rest of the marks in French this term. Oh well, I guess due to not studying for the exam last Saturday, my mark will dip slightly this term from the last two. I'll have to study harder for next term.

In the fun news: We again have three national parties in Canada, although the ship jumping going on from the new conservative party to the Liberals is making me question just how national the conservative party is. In the meantime, PM PM is trying to make his party appeal to everybody across the board, the rumours last night were that he was going to give the DPM and FM jobs to westerners.

Saturday was a very busy day. A friend came over at 7:30 in the morning, got out of his truck and said, "You might as well drive, since you'll be driving from the Uhaul place." See, he was moving on Saturday and needed to pick up the UHaul at 7:30 AM, and I guess he couldn't find anyone else to drive his pickup back to his apartment to be loaded. Well, I had figured he'd have me driving something, but it was still a bit of a suprise that he let me drive his truck. He just bought it a couple of months ago, and I think last Tuesday was the first time he let anyone drive it out of his sight (and at that only his dad anyway). So I got to drive his truck around all day, until we returned the UHaul. Hehhehehhehe.

Yesterday, he invited people back to his new place for lunch, and well, some considerable time was spent playing Crazy Taxi. He got some stuff put away, or hidden so you could walk around. It'll be something to see when he gets the painting done. This afternoon I have to go out to the bank and go Christmas shopping.

So here I am in Timmins. The trip yesterday was very long. I almost missed the last bus from Kitchener down to Toronto that would have made TO before my train left. Then it was a long wait at the train station, then a much longer wait on the train as it travelled north through Ontario. There were a couple of times where we were stopped waiting for another train. Sigh.

In the interesting entertainment news file: Royd Tolkien (great-grandson of the author) has a small bit part in Return of the King. He's apparently shown handing out spears, wearing Aragorn's wig, while Faramir walks by, preparing for the defense of Osgiliath. Hmm, is Jackson trying to get the family on side so he can do The Hobbit? Or is this an honest salute to the author? Either way, it's kind of cool.

This morning my brother and his family and I went sliding with his sleds, like we did last year. IT's quite fun seeing the world go by so quickly when all that's between you and the ground is theis little sled. The last couple of days have been some fun, since yesterday, my brother left the minivan at home and let me drive around town a bit. Timmins isn't a big town so you don't get really lost, though I'm still having a bit of trouble keeping in my mind which way north is. I keep thinking Hwy 101 is a north-south road when it's an east-west road in this area.

It's been really warm for Timmins everybody's been telling me. It's colder than Wloo was last week though. Today it's snowing. Yesterday I went to see the Return of the King. The departures from the book grated me a bit, but the cinematography was pretty good.

I hope all my 10 readers or so have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year's. My net access is going to be pretty flaky for the next week, so don't expect any updates until New Year's Day.