Soooo...

Its been awhile, hasn't it? Yeah, I really don't have any excuse, its just what it is. The thing is that nothing is really happening with me. Its just a constant above average. Classes are going well, my friends are still cool, and I love life, but its quite monotonous. I almost wish something bad would happen just for the sake of change and excitement. Note that I said 'almost', though; I don't want something bad to happen and I know life about always doing exciting things.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! I just remembered that something did happen. Last Sunday was my last day in the month-long course of antibiotics I was taking. I'm so happy to be done with it and hopefully it cleared things up. We have a checkup sometime in the near future to confirm that. My training is starting to fall into place again too, so hopefully that will work out. Its so nice to be back in the swing of things; everything just falls into place and my days are much more productive and therefore more satisfying.

So far today hasn't been anything special. Just another Tuesday. The classes were really good, even though I didn't finish one of the readings...oops. But I was mad because my friend aced the quarterly test for physics, and I got 1/4 of a point off because I made a really stupid mistake. It was a big number, so I had to put the answer in scientific notation and I miscounted the digits and put 10^7 instead of 10^8. GRRRRRRRR. I'm kind of competitive that way. But I got an 'excellent' on my essay about keeping slavery legal under the constitution, so that made up for it a little bit.

Speaking of that class, we are read the Lincoln-Douglas debates and other speeches from the pre-Civil War era and they are so cool. Lincoln's prudence and amazingness really comes out in his speeches. But they are more than intelligent. They are beautiful and fun to read. I recommend reading them, especially his speech the young men's lyceum. Here is an excerpt of it for your edification:

I do not mean to say, that the scenes of the revolution are now or ever will be entirely forgotten; but that like every thing else, they must fade upon the memory of the world, and grow more and more dim by the lapse of time. In history, we hope, they will be read of, and recounted, so long as the bible shall be read;-- but even granting that they will, their influence cannot be what it heretofore has been. Even then, they cannot be so universally known, nor so vividly felt, as they were by the generation just gone to rest. At the close of that struggle, nearly every adult male had been a participator in some of its scenes. The consequence was, that of those scenes, in the form of a husband, a father, a son or brother, a living history was to be found in every family-- a history bearing the indubitable testimonies of its own authenticity, in the limbs mangled, in the scars of wounds received, in the midst of the very scenes related--a history, too, that could be read and understood alike by all, the wise and the ignorant, the learned and the unlearned.--But those histories are gone. They can be read no more forever. They were a fortress of strength; but, what invading foeman could never do, the silent artillery of time has done; the leveling of its walls. They are gone.--They were a forest of giant oaks; but the all-resistless hurricane has swept over them, and left only, here and there, a lonely trunk, despoiled of its verdure, shorn of its foliage; unshading and unshaded, to murmur in a few gentle breezes, and to combat with its mutilated limbs, a few more ruder storms, then to sink, and be no more.
 
They were the pillars of the temple of liberty; and now, that they have crumbled away, that temple must fall, unless we, their descendants, supply their places with other pillars, hewn from the solid quarry of sober reason. Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence.--Let those materials be moulded into general intelligence, sound morality, and in particular, a reverence for the constitution and laws: and, that we improved to the last; that we remained free to the last; that we revered his name to the last; that, during his long sleep, we permitted no hostile foot to pass over or desecrate his resting place; shall be that which to learn the last trump shall awaken our WASHINGTON.

....its just........ahhh. He wrote that in his late twenties, too. I would tell you the full context of the speech, but it is at least party obvious in this and I hope to awaken your curiosity so you will look it up and finish it yourself. It is well worth it and not very long.

-Thomas