Hello, my loves! It’s been awhile, has it not? Quick re-cap of the goings-on that have made my life quite hectic, albeit rather boring:

• Finals.  Yeah, it happened.  I studied hard for the microbiology class that had so discouraged me and actually walked out of the exam smiling!  It was great!  Then, I wrote the first paper of my college career.  That’s not completely true; I’ve written two-page French lit analysis assignments, but nothing serious like this.  Twenty-two pages on message boards.  Wow.
• Laura’s holiday party.  My linguistics professor has now had a holiday party three years in a row, and there’s always something fun.  This year, I think the Steven Chu stories will hold the most memorable spot, and I will surely share…sometime soon.
• Lounging around.  I may have lied.  It might not have been completely hectic.  But, I had to plan things.  You see, I’m dashing off to France!  I’ll (not) do the New Year’s countdown on the plane, after a small layover in Detroit.  I hear tell there’s a brand-new (ish) Northwest terminal.  Exciting!  (But, they lack Dunkin Donuts.)

In the spirit of planning, I offer here a blogging to-do list:

• Steven Chu stories
• latkes with Stephen (my friend from high school)’s family, and revelations thereof
• Emerald Bowl
• cookies
• France!  Activities!

That about does it.  I need to sleep now, because I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to do two things to become Super Cindy: get enough sleep and only focus on the things for which I have some sort of talent.  Ha.  Right.  We’ll see how that goes.

There’s an oft-forwarded email that beseeches us to take charge of our time–”Ask the cancer patient what a year means; ask the commuter what a minute means,” and with various time increments in between.  There is also the song from Rent, which, incidentally, is how I know the number of minutes in a year.  Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes.  How do you measure a year in a life?  I remember a fifth-grade classmate singing “Seasons of Love,” but I never placed it in context until the film came out in 2005.

Time is forefront in my mind these days.  I celebrated my 21st birthday last week–all week.  It is now, in my senior year of college, that I wonder how I’ll mark my time when I’m no longer in school.  I want to go to grad school for genetics/genomics, but what kind of program and for how long is still up in the air.  Regardless, I will no longer have a pat answer for, “What year are you?”  Tomorrow, I’ll be taking the GRE.  Time pressures are often a concern for standardized tests.  In addition, I’ve heard the GRE described as the bastard step-child of the standardized tests; will I come out of the GRE/grad school application process feeling as though it was a four-hour waste of my time?

Yesterday, I watched the Chicago Bears play the Atlanta Falcons.  The Falcons were leading in the fourth quarter when the Bears scored a touchdown!  Hurray!  (I usually like Chicago when Cleveland isn’t involved.)  It looked like the clock would work in Chicago’s favor, as there wasn’t much time left in the game; unfortunately, Atlanta then had enough time to score a field goal.  Now, the clock worked against Chicago, because it had wasted too many seconds in trying to keep Atlanta from having the chance to score.  Sportscasters love to talk about teams that can control the clock; it is particularly salient just how manipulative they can be when we consider how long a professional football game actually lasts, given that each quarter is fifteen minutes long.  From charged time-outs to running out-of-bounds, we mark time very differently in a football game from, say, the GRE.

Your time is precious; as is mine.  I need to do some last minute studying, but more importantly, I’m watching the Browns play the Giants right now.  GO CLEVELAND!

Today marks the home opener for our 2008 California Golden Bears!  HURRAY!  College football is spectacular; what is also spectacular is not having to show up at the stadium 3 hours early to help set up card stunts.  GO BEARS!

Random tidbits.  Let’s see…

Michigan State punted to us.  As it soared south, the drunk sorority girl behind me yelled out, “INTERCEPT THAT MOTHERFUCKER!”  I turned around and said, “Um, that was to us.”  Bitchy?  Yes.  But at least I got one in for the football fans of the world!

The guy behind me had two parents who graduated from Penn State.  We bonded over the fact that Jolie goes there, in addition to their scoring 66 points today, and Joe Paterno’s now being tied for most wins.  Wow.  I don’t like Penn State when they play The Ohio State University, but otherwise, we’re chill.

I saved the best for last.  Because I didn’t help with card stunt set-up today, I stopped by Aquadelt.  As usual, they had a lot of alumni pre-gaming, and at one point, I was watching the $c game with one of their wives and her two sons.

Marianne: Wow, you look so young for being a fourth year!
Me: Haha yeah, I look like I’m twelve.
Marianne: Uh…actually, my son over there is twelve…