He got his leg stuck in one of the plants right under the filter and couldn’t get away. Poor froggie. 🙁 No more for me for a while, until I can be around more to watch out for things like that.

On a better note, the weekend was fun. We tried going out on the river in an inflatible raft that we bought. It turned out not to be worth keeping, since it was supposed to be able to seat four but could really only seat two, plus the oarlocks were in a really bad spot. You couldn’t oar without hitting your knees, or you had to practically be laying down.

We docked at the Cambridge Rowing Club. It was kinda funny seeing all these accomplished rowers doing laps around us when we could barely make it near the hospital. Still, fun while it lasted. There were lots of baby duckies, which was very cute to see.

We went swimming yesterday, not for very long, but that was fun and nice. Hopefully we’ll get to do that a bunch more times before the children get back. The pool is so much nicer without all the kicking and splashing that goes on when they are home.

Kitty is determined to make friends with Trixie. She keeps “hiding” in the corner behind the plant and hissing like mad whenever he comes in the room. For the first few days Kitty would get scared and hiss back (while running away to make sure she can’t hurt him), but now he’s realized she’s more afraid of him than he is of her and keeps getting ever closer trying to give her a smell. Yesterday he was rubbing his head on the plant right in front of her trying to prove how nice he is. It was cute.

It’s been a long and hard week. I’m still not sure what I think about it. My mom called me on Sunday to tell me that my uncle died, and I really wanted to go home to be with everyone but I had my accounting midterm Monday night and at that short notice I was not willing to try to get it deferred. I spent all day Monday drowning in books and registration issues, and stayed really busy Tuesday and Wednesday so I wouldn’t have to think about it.

Yesterday my mom called to tell me about the funeral, which went really well. Most of my family showed up and there were very few arguments. My cousins brought their babies and they helped to keep everyone from getting too depressed. Most everyone is still in shock though. I know I still am.

Well I had my road test today, which I failed as expected. It went better than I thought it would overall though. I learned one valuable thing: I don’t know how to park. Other than that most everything was fine. So really I just need to practice that stuff, and make it more obvious that I’m looking around everywhere. At the current point in time, I’ve got two options available: I can take another road test or I can take the written test again and start over. I’m not quite sure which option to take. I’m planning on taking driver’s education this summer, so if I do start over I would be able to get the G2 in eight months instead of waiting a whole year and could work on highway driving and stuff then. I think if I tried to pass again before the end of the month it wouldn’t help much. If I do pass I still can’t drive very well, so I’d still be practicing the basics. Unless some major improvement happens in the next couple weeks, that is. Which I can’t really see happening. It’s been five years and the sporadic practice hasn’t helped. Cramming in practice shouldn’t help much either. I’m just going to need to take the time to learn things right. I guess this means I’m starting over.

I learned something very important in the two weeks I was at home: It’s boring as hell there. You’d think after living there for 18 years I’d remember this fact and take it into consideration before planning a trip down there, but no, I didn’t. It’s nice to be able to see everyone, but it was to the point where all I was doing was seeing them. My mom and my sister were sleeping all the time or gone because they work midnights, and my brother was at school all the time or working. My dad was home for the first week and we were supposed to spend it fishing and camping on the boat – but it rained LOTS. There were three or four days without rain, but they were cold and so we just stayed in the house. My dad got depressed about the weather wrecking his vacation and slept during the day a couple times too. Basically, for pretty much the entire two weeks I was left to myself to sit on the couch, read my DE stuff, and watch daytime Detroit tv. When Dean got down there for the second week things improved somewhat, but he was mostly stuck watching crappy tv with me. At least we could keep each other company.

Overall the trip would be bad by normal standards, but really it felt like it did when I lived there, and that was a seemingly endless stretch of boredom. In a sense this was a bit worse though, because normally my mom goes a lot of places and you can get out of the house. This time she had no car and works all night so the only place she goes is Sobey’s in the wee hours of the morning. I feel bad complaining so much, but it’s hard to believe how useless this trip seemed. I don’t know, I guess I’m just frustrated because visiting them should be more fun than this was. The fact that it rained pretty much the entire two weeks doesn’t help any.

On a good note, I had a nice dinner with my grandma, and another with Dean. I got to spend a nice afternoon with my cousins, and I leaned to play Bocce ball.
My uncle Shawn came over once and I got to talk to him for a half hour or so which was nice since I hadn’t seen him since Christmas 2004. My friend Meggie saw me outside talking with him and stopped in. I couldn’t get ahold of her to do anything after that though, which kinda sucked. Some things were fun, just mostly the ones where I wasn’t at my house.

I got to spend a lot of time with Buster, and he was a lot more outgoing and affectionate than he usually is. He was looking evil when Dean tried to take pictures though.

It’s the home stretch and I’m really feelin’ it now. This last essay is not a difficult one, I’m just having a lot of trouble forcing myself to finish it. I’ve gained a lot of admiration for Aristotle over the course of this term, but I’m sick of writing essays at this point and not really up to giving it my all. I’m burned out. It’s been at least six weeks of non-stop assigments, presentations, tests, essays and now exams. I’m tired. I don’t want to do this anymore. I need some time for myself where I don’t have to worry about dredging up arguments for things that I could care less about.