On Friday night, my friends and I had a party.  We haven’t had one since the end of February so we were all having withdrawals.  I felt like I hadn’t seem everyone for an especially long time because I wasn’t able to go to the party in February due to midterms so it was nice to spend some quality time with my friends.

As usual, we just enjoyed each other’s company with lots of fun conversation.  We talked about books we recommend and we even made plans for almost the entire year, taking a lot of the guess work out of our get-togethers. We have some fun things planned in the next few months so stay tuned for the recaps. I’m very excited!

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Saturday felt like a big day of nothing, honestly.  I didn’t get up until late because I didn’t get home from the party until around 1:30 am.  And, Corey and I just hung around home for most of the day.  We cleaned, I did some homework (very little), and we went to Office Max to buy some Post-its to help me with annotating for my summer term class.  Wait … what?  Summer term class? You probably thought summer term didn’t start until June 21st. You’re right. It doesn’t, but I already have homework for that class.

I received an e-mail from my summer term class teacher last Wednesday.  Here’s a little tidbit of that e-mail:

Welcome to English 295 for the summer term! This may seem a little premature, but I wanted to give you a heads-up as to what we’re doing. This course is on “writing literary criticism,” … and so I’ll be asking you to examine texts from the inside out, moving from basic summaries of the text you choose to work with to a critical examination in light of a theory or issue which you find particularly prevalent in the text.

… [I]n the event that you aren’t aware yet, the set of texts we’ll be working with for summer term is (drum roll, please) The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. … I’m telling you this now because within the first week of classes, I’ll have asked you to finish reading all four books and make a decision about which of the [four] you want to focus on during the term….  I think it’s fair to give you all a chance to start reading now so that you won’t feel overwhelmed by reading in the first week.

There you have it. I not only have to keep up with my full-time job, church calling, and homework for my current class (which isn’t light I might add), but I also have to read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in the next five weeks and remember enough to be able to critique them using different literary criticism theories. It was nice of my teacher to give us some time to accomplish this, huh?

Don’t get me wrong.  I’ve always wanted to read these books.  I even tried reading The Hobbit seven or so years ago.  (I couldn’t get past page 42, but I wasn’t an avid reader back then.)  I’m just stressed to the max with trying to make sure I get them done in time.  Luckily, I don’t have to go to Girls’ Camp anymore so I’m going to take the time off work that I would’ve taken to go to camp and use it to read!

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On Sunday, Corey and I went up to Aymee and Dave’s, my niece and nephew-in-law, so Corey could watch the LOST series finale with them.  All three of them are huge fans, Aymee and Dave since day 1 and Corey since this January.  (Corey watched the first five seasons on Hulu in January to gear up for the final season.  I would’ve joined him if I didn’t have as much homework as I did/do.  I did see a few episodes here and there so I knew enough to get by, but not enough to have a firm grasp of the show or all the characters.)

I really enjoyed the series finale.  I thought it was well done and I cried several times.  Corey sent me this link earlier today.  It’s a guide to the series finale and helps you understand what happened and how it affected the entire series.  I think it’s quite insightful.