The outline of my koi is healing up nicely. The lines aren't raised anymore and most of the dead skin / scabs have come off in the shower or while I'm sleeping. I am starting to get used to seeing a giant fish on my shouler when I wake up in the morning or when I get out of the shower. The more I get used to it the more I love having it on my arm. I am really happy that I decided to go big on this tattoo, it looks so much more impressive and exciting than a smaller one would look. I still need to go back to schedule another appointment for the shading and coloring.

Tomorrow night Laura and I are going to attempt to make sushi unsupervised. Usually I call Heather and she comes over and directs the cooking, but we're bored and under a bit of a time cruch, so we decided to tackle it outselves. Hopefully it works out because I could potentially have sushi for lunch at school which would be delicious.

Speaking of school, I am done in less than two weeks. A week from Friday is my last day (I'm hoping to celebrate by getting more of my tattoo done) and I really couldn't be more excited. I turn in my last paper for my last class tomorrow and after that I have eight days of student teaching left before the summer. There is still that damn class I have to take over the summer but really I think I'm done in nine days.

Today was a phenomenal day in school. I saw the C2 kids twice today and both times they were very well behaved. The took their quiz (and didn't to terribly) and managed to stay quiet for almost all of A block, and they seemed to enjoy my graphing calculator lesson during D block. That happened to be the block I was being observed, so I'm glad I picked a good lesson. My C1 class was actually way crazier today than I've ever seen them, but I think I handled it very well. I thought I was able to keep them relatively on task and I think most of them understood the lesson.

Despite that, I find myself somewhat unhappy with the whole situation. I am most upset by how restricted my schedule has become. I am a person who values my free time and to have it so suddenly and massively restricted it unsettling to say the least. A huge part of my day is taken up being at school. Another large chunk is devoted to lesson planning for the next day, something that is becoming more and more tedious for me to do well. My evenings are taken up with class and work, and I go to bed early because I have to wake up early. My time with Laura is significantly less than it was last semeseter, and the time I do get to spend with her is not nearly the amount she deserves. It seems like a huge sacrifice to make for a bunch of bratty, ungrateful kids when I'm not being paid.

I also feel generally unfulfilled with my classes right now. I don't do any of the readings and the papers I turn in are a joke. I skipped my first class ever in my now five years of college last night because I couldn't justify why I wasn't doing something useful with my time instead of listening to an old man ramble about irrelevant and useless things (this doesn't could the five or six classes I have skipped for concerts or climbing, which I consider valid reasons).

All in all, I feel like my life has taken a radical shift and I am not at all sure I like where it is going.

I met with Dr. Foster this morning to talk about my surgery. He was very happy with the condition of my knee and was able to answer my questions easily. A few nights ago I had a nightmare relating to this surgery. I haven't had a nightmare in something like 15 years, but for some reason this upcoming date with modern medicine has upset my subconcious. I can't say that I'm excited to go through six monthes of intense rehab while student teaching, but I'm also not prepared to say that I am scared of it. I have already been through it and while I know it is going to be difficult I am aware that it is more than doable. Stupid nightmares.

These past two weeks have been very trying for me academicly. Last week I had a Modern Algebra exam and a Research exam. Today I had a Chaos exam and tomorrow I have a Stat exam. I did pretty well on the two last week, I don't think the Chaos exam went as badly as I had envisioned it, and I am pretty confident in my ability to deal with the Stat exam. However, all of this fun testing has left me with little time to complete any other assignments, including the 15 page paper that I have due on Monday. I also have at least two other assignments due on Monday, which means that this weekend is going to be jam packed with projects.

Spoony and I decided that we're going to start playing Warhammer again. I asked my dad to mail me up all of my old Space Marines and rule books. I also asked for the new rule books for Christmas so I can learn the rules the way they're supposed to be. My plan is to play a bit with the Marines, figure out the game again, and then start a Tau army. I already have a few ideas, and my freelance work at Orientation this week (around 15 hours at 15.00 an hour) will hopefully pay for the bulk of the miniatures, since I am a bit short on cash right now.

I have been doing a lot of bouldering lately. I told myself I wouldn't climb hard until my knee was fixed but for personal sanity reasons I have not been doing that. I was very confidently climbing V2's at Metro tonight and I was able to send some V3's and work V4's. It is weird that I am doing some of my best climbing without a fully functioning left knee. I think I would be climbing a lot harder right now if I wasn't constantly terrified of falling and ruining my knee.

Thanksgiving is fast approaching and that means that this semester is nearly over. Right now I'm staring down the barrel of a 15 page paper but after that I am mostly home free (excluding finals). I think I am ready for this semester to be done with, although I'm not looking forward to the surgery that comes after it. There is also my student teaching next semester, which provides a whole host of terrifying possibilities even before I factor in the joys of knee rehab.

Due to a collection of reasons I have scrapped the koi fish tattoo idea for the time being. There were too many things not happening the way I wanted them to and I just didn't feel comfortable doing it right now. I may come back to it at some point after surgery, but that is something I'll think about later.

Chris O'Donnell e-mailed me back today saying that he was unable to do my tattoo because he is booked until late next year. He did suggest that I contact another artist in the shop, so I went ahead and sent Mike Rubendall essentially the same e-mail I sent to Chris. I feel a bit silly, but when I got the negative e-mail I suddently felt a bit uneasy about the whole idea. I think I had built up the scenario to include Chris so that when I found out it wouldn't the whole thing suddenly felt a bit off. I looked at a lot of Mark's work and he seems very capable so hopefully my aprehension will pass.

Laura and I went to see High Fidelity the musical tonight. I really didn't like it. High Fidelity (the movie) holds a very special place in my heart and since the musical was not like the movie I really couldn't get into it. The whole thing was bright and exciting, even when the topics were love lost and death. I also couldn't stand it when simple dialouge had to be turned into a song. I realize that these are exactly what musicals are, but I had a really difficult time trying to not think of the movie every three seconds.

I spent no time this weekend, and really no time last week either, doing work. My literature review is non-existant and I have two large midterms coming up, in addition to the general load of problem sets and reading that I have. I know that all of the math (even the stat) work will get done in a timely manner, and I know that I will spend ample time studying for my chaos exam. I am a lot less confident in the quality of work and the time spent on anything that is due for my research methods class. My complete lack of interest in that class coupled with my diminished personal drive for a high GPA add up to me aiming for a gentleman C and a big fuck you to SED for making me was several thousand dollars in student loans for something that will never be of any use to me.