Today in my small group, we talked about the list of accountability goals we made last time, and how they'd gone this past week. Pretty good stuff, actually - it was cool to take some time to reflect on the way God had worked in the past few days. Becky had a really good suggestion for one of the things on my list that I didn't yet have a tangible way to deal with - my stress/freaking out about school. Her suggestion is just like something I recently saw in the movie "Elizabethtown." (Copy editors/writers out there - movie titles: italics, underline, or quotes?) ... anyway, here's what she suggested: when something goes wrong in school (I'm at Tech... something, inevitably, will go wrong), I'm going to give myself five minutes to freak out. And then I have to be done. That's it... move on. Because freaking out accomplishes nothing. So, that's the plan. I'm also going to try to do a better job of separating studying and study breaks. I'm going to close my computer when I'm working, and close my books when I'm taking breaks. I think it'll make the work more productive and the breaks more relaxing.

On another note, I forgot to mention that some of my closest friends at school celebrated my birthday this weekend. (No, it was not my birthday this weekend. And yes, they knew this.) ... they gave me a beautiful homemade card, and it explained that they were sad that my birthday and half birthday are both at times when school is not in session. So, from now until the end of the semester, they're going to celebrate my 20th birthday at random times in all of the traditional ways. A piecewise birthday, 3-4 months late. I love my friends.

I'm so ready for the semester to be over. I'm thinking of dropping out of school, traveling approximately 677 miles west-northwest, and becoming a personal assistant. Any takers? =)