Fun times

I made it through finals week...finally. It was one of those horrible semesters where I had an actual exam in almost every class. Bleh. But I managed to get through them without going crazy, mostly because they were nicely spaced. I'm still waiting for grades to come out but I feel like I did alright, in most of the classes anyway.
So where does that leave me for the next month? It's turning into quite a busy winter for me. I'm flying to St. Louis tomorrow afternoon. After enjoying a wonderful evening of Chris' hospitality (which we all know is awesome), I'm stealing his car and driving to Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau. SEMO is home to the Center for Faulkner Studies, which houses one of the best Faulkner archives in the country. They have a couple of items that I am interested in looking at, as they relate to my honors thesis. After spending all day in a sort of nerd euphoria, I'll head to Carbondale to hang with the Leonards (it's only an hour to Carbondale as opposed to the two hours it would take to get back to St. Louis). After that I'll loop back around to St. Louis and spend Thursday hanging out, doing something fun like going to the museum (which is free in St. Louis and quite good). Maybe a sandwich on The Hill (little Italy).
I'll be back in Dallas on Friday. Saturday I have tickets to see my hero, Terri Hendrix, at some little place up near Denton. (I'm sooooo very excited about this - my last chance to see her for quite a while). Then it's another week of getting by in Dallas, with most of my friends gone for the holidays.
On Thursday (the 13th), I'm going to head down to Austin for a long weekend. Uncle Todd and I are contemplating a whirlwind trip to Denver (now that there's nonstop service there from Austin), to see cousin Susan and maybe get some snowboarding in. Then once again it's back to Dallas to deal with more stuff.
Christmas. Bleh. We all know how that is. I wish I could just skip over it. Except for maybe the annual Christmas Eve mission to the Armadillo Xmas Bazaar with Uncle T to see the Texana Dames play and get some cds at Cheapos. I missed that last year because of the jerks in Russia, but not this year.
The most exciting thing about my break from school comes right after Christmas. Molly and I decided that sitting around in our respective hometowns for the week after Christmas (which happens to be her 21st birthday) would be just too boring. So we bought a couple of bus tickets. We're leaving on the Greyhound from Houston on the 27th, will arrive in McAllen (deep south Texas) later that day, and hop another bus which will take us across the border and all the way to Guanajuato. Woohoo! Some friends are meeting us in McAllen and traveling with us from there. More importantly, these friends speak Spanish (all I can do is order drinks and ask how much something costs). We found a great hostel for a great price. We're going to live it up in one of our favorite towns. Maybe even see some of our local friends. I'm so excited I can't sit still.
Unfortunately, I still have to pack and get up really early in the morning. So adieu for now.