Things are going very well for me now that i finished up with the first wave of exams and papers of the term. on top of that yesterday was Undergraduate Break Day so I did not have to go to my one Friday morning class and instead spent the morning catching up on sleep.

The day off is informally known among the students and some with-it professors as "Suicide Prevention Day" since the winter and the school make it an especially tough 11 weeks. This is probably because in the past it has fallen on a day in January that experts have said is the most depressing day.

Spent the day off downtown with Mary my girlfriend getting some new clothes which was something i had been putting off and stopped by in Borders to get a Mocha and ended up entering the raffle there for front row tickets to the musical Wicked, since the drawing was only a half hour away, but we didnt win.
Ended up going to the Uno's downtown where Doug, Aunt Cathy, Grandma, and Grandpa, and I celebrated Doug's graduation Dec. 04 for dinner. It's a fun place to go to get historical Chicago deep dish pizza.
All in all, I enjoyed my day off which I have to admit was very much needed after a stressful week and a half or so.

and as 3-day weekends always go, it seems to be going by fast. but at least I don't have another paper/exam for at least another week

So, I saw that my Dad wanted me to share what happened with my biology exam.

5 minutes into the exam, I was still on the first question of 10, the FIRE ALARM went off. the class of a little over 10 had to leave the exams on our desks and shuffle out and down 3 floors to wait outside in the rain. We came back and decided to try to go on with the exam. However, the class period is only 50 minutes long and after a 15 minute delay with the fire alarm we were not able to finish in the normal time. So, some people had to leave for other classes and the rest of us moved to a different room because another class was coming in. On the way, someone pointed out that the others could go and look stuff up before coming back to finish the exam, so the TA said she'd have them write in different pen/pencil and note what they had written/not written. Anyways it was a big fiasco and my prof took this extra weekend to figure out the grading.

Going to try and fit in some time to watch some olympics and in march I'm looking forward to the college basketball tournament and the World Baseball Classic. And when I return in the spring I'll be going to the White Sox Opening Day and watch them put up their 2005 World Championship Flag. Very excited about that.