The days are packed! I’ve been going to school and getting my work affairs in line. Throwing in a few excursions, of course, and chances to examine and dissect the intricacies of life.

Friday night Lindsey, Lauren, and I met up and had dinner at Lindsey’s house, and then went out to Cafe Brasil for deserts. Brasil is a wonderful little coffee shop hidden away in the Montrose area, near downtown, and the atmosphere breeds interesting discussions and philosophical escapades. We spent nearly four hours discussing a host of topics.

Thursday night was my good-friend Matt’s birthday. We celebrated late Saturday night and I presented him with a few (hopefully) unique gifts. Good times, indeed.

Sunday morning Matt and I drove up to Lake Livingston to Mike and Melinda’s (the couple I’m staying with) lake house. Melinda’s son, Kyle, and his wife were also there. All of us relaxed on the lake, swimming, “sunning,” and riding the jet-ski around. We drove early this afternoon; a very nice, relaxing weekend on the lake.

And I have just completed five hours of history homework that I put off until tonight. So much for going to the gym… And I have twice as much homework due for the rest of the week.

But, hey: life is good.

I’ve been busy as heck lately! With the onset of school, getting Cacti Creative up and running, acquiring two new business projects, and just work in general, I’ve been swamped! Good news and bad news: business is booming, but I’m stressed out. Why, you ask? Well, Sunday morning I got up and went to boot up my laptop, only to be met with a black screen filled with vertical red lines–my motherboard had fried! So, now it’s going to take till May 31 to get it back and fixed from HP. Murphy’s Law, no?

Anyways… Pulling an all-nighter; have a proposal to write up and a test to study for. Screw it all!

Alright, after the frustration of yesterday, God gave me the gift of today.

Yesterday, I dealt with the staff at the Willow Chase branch of Tomball College, which is in turn part of the North Harris community college system. Today, I woke up at 7am and called down to the central Tomball location, and asked if there was any way I could get into the class I wanted–which Willow Chase prevented me from registering for–even though it was closed for registration. The person I talked to didn’t know very much, so I decided to drive down to the college to work things out myself.

What a wonderful experience! The staff at Tomball was very friendly and helped my out a great deal. I initially went to the office of the professor I wanted, but learned he had moved, and I was referred to a new location. Well, that location was not his office either, but a librarian helped me out and we found the correct office. However, the prof wasn’t there, but another staff member led me down to the dean’s office. And the dean was very nice, indeed. She called the prof’s home, got everything under control, and I finally finished the registration process at 10:30, just half an hour before class began.

The professor, Dreand Johnson, is very enjoyable. His teaching method keeps the class interesting and he presents the information in a conversational style. About a third of class time was taken up by good-natured debates and discussions over current events and various subjects, and I definitely involved myself in these debates. I’m also sitting next to some very pretty young ladies, and the one next to me actually went to high school with me and now goes to Texas State. We had this weird, “You look familiar, but I don’t know you” feeling, but anyways we hit it off pretty well.

Ahhh… I feel like a load has been lifted off my shoulders. The next three weeks look bright, and I can only hope that my next session will be as pleasant.

The North Harris community college system is ridiculous! First off, they won’t take official transcripts or records from Texas State as proof of my GPA and SAT scores. Instead, they require that I come in person for an admissions counseling session. So, I have to wait until I get to Houston to go in to register, all the while the classes I want are filling up.

I arrive Thursday night and go to the college at 9am on Friday. The ignorant woman behind the desk informs me that the college does not do registration on Fridays–a fact nobody felt important enough to inform me of. The alternative is to come in first thing Monday morning, the day class starts.

So, I drive on up to the college bright and early this morning. I go through all my “counseling” to get admitted, and instead of using my official university documents as waivers, the woman opts to use a print-out off of a non-secure internet site (meaning that I could have easily altered the scores). Simply stupid. Anyways, she then informs me that I can’t register for any classes that have already started–ie, the key class that I wanted started today. I’m beginning to pull my hair out!

For the past three hours, I have been trying to log-in to the North Harris web site in order to try and register for classes in the next summer session, since I am once again ineligible to register for the ones I wanted to take this session. But, of course, the registration system is down and won’t respond. Anyways, the bottom line is that I hate North Harris!

I’m going to wake up at the crack of dawn in the morning, drive 20 minutes to Tomball College, and see if I can plead with someone to allow me to register for a class that I’ve already been locked out of and missed a day of. Wish me luck… I may shoot somebody.

I drove to Houston yesterday. I will be staying at the Dickey’s house for the next three or six weeks, depending on my summer school schedule. I feel pretty indifferent to being back in Spring, but I’m making a point of keeping busy. I need to take six hours of summer school to be classified as a sophomore in the fall, so I’ll be taking care of that. I’m also starting a new web collaborative with a friend to sell web sites direct to small businesses and private practices. It should do well…

Anyways, I got my grades today: three A’s and a B! Not the 4.0 I wanted, but 3.75 is good enough. That averages out to 3.31 for both semesters. I’m doing alright, but I plan on bringing my grades up even more in the fall.

And now for some random links:

• The correct way to sit at a computer
• How light sabers work
• Awesome training videos of the Apache Gattling Gun
• Some cool advertisements on city buses

I’m off to sleep now…