Re-cap, week's adventures....

This has been a busy, busy week! I started school for winter quarter, I am taking astronomy ( again, second part of the class, not retaking it, haha) Electronic culture, a social sciences class examining the changes and effect on people by this crazy e- society of ours, algebra ( ! ), and counseling. The counseling class is a real class, not online, at the oregon institute of technology campus in Milwaukee, the next town south of portland on the 99. I had my first class monday, it was awesome. The teacher is young and energetic with a great sense of humor and some interesting experience. I am trying to give him the benefit of the doubt on a few things but the first announcement he made was that the class would be lecture based, all of which he had typed and would supply for our reading pleasure on the college's online program. No need to buy the seventy five dollar text book that I had scrambled to buy the week before. Oh well. The rest of the class was great, I am not regretting the choice to take a class mon eve from 6-10 pm. I had wondered whether I would.

The other school I started this week was circus school! Two nights a week all quarter, I will be taking aerial circus arts, or, as I like to call it, trapeze class. I had it tues and weds, and I have to say I am so sore I can hardly get dressed. Literally- the new muscles I have both discovered and overworked this week, the ones that live under your armpits on the back side, are the same ones you use to pull your pants up, climb ladders, and cut things with knives. Who knew? These things have all been much more difficult this week, to varying degrees of importance, but it's worth it. It's so fun! The class is split between silks and trapeze, the silks are giant hanging silk pieces ( I don't know what to call them, they're not ropes, per say, more like large hanging pieces of fabric). The silks are in two pieces but we have mostly been working so far with them held together. Climbing is the first task. It's not as hard as it seems like it would be but it's still really hard. You use your feet wrapped in the silk to climb, it's a kind of inchworming process up and down. Definitely easier than climbing just with your arms but it's pretty hard to grip the silk between your feet. Oh, aching muscles! Trapeze is just as hard, I hung upside down for the first time second class, the first class was mostly swinging, and trying to do something insane called a straddle up. Ok, seriously, you stand with a trapeze bar ( they swing) about chest height ( a practice bar) hands together, gripped around the bar. You then bring your knees to your chest and open them to a splits position while flipping upside down backwards and drawing the whole splits legs up over your head. Ya. It's hard. Ok, enough about trapeze! Oh, one more thing. The instructors are just amazing. Young, energetic woman who totally took it upon themselves to create a trapeze school in a studio space in se portland. I'm impressed.

What else....Ah, yes, the great plant debacle. So, the tea plant is on it's last days. It's sad, yes, but kind of a relief in the same breath- what a nightmare! I understand ( shannon : ) ) that washing the plant in the sink once a week or so doesn't sound like so much of a big deal but it really is. It's way more than I can handle. So look forward to tea plant funeral pics to come. I'm sure it'll be epic. Death brings with it life, however, this new life coming in the form of a flower contest of sorts created by my grandfather.

My plant is not looking so hot just yet, it looks about the same as it did when I took it out of the box. I got it a fancy orange pot though, so one point for me already!

The last exciting thing I did this week was install windows 7 on my computer. I got a crazy student deal on the software, 150 bucks for the windows 7 upgrade and also microsoft office package. It was kinda scary to make a switch, change is hard. It took a few days to get all the programs reinstalled and figure out my files and such. Now all I have to do is retrain it to know everything about me, that's the hardest part. It's going really well so far, I have almost no complaints about the new operating system. It's pretty, remembers more things in more ways and has several new programs like sticky note and snipping tool that I have yet to even delve into. Super exciting.

And so goes another week. Happy 2011!