35lbs of Fury

My husband and I finally gave in and for Christmas, we got each other a Wii. We have really been enjoying it. It came with Wii Sports, which includes the exciting games golf, bowling, tennis, baseball, and boxing.

We brought the Wii to Utah for Christmas, to share with the whole family. Scott and I decided to try boxing; everyone wanted to watch us duke it out. The suggestion was made that if we could use Wii boxing to diffuse any arguments between us; we know, however, that would make it much worse. Only friendly boxing rounds are allowed.

My sister-in-law, Laura, brought her dog Charlie to Utah and we've all enjoyed having him. His greatest strength, and greatest weakness, is his protectiveness. He generally likes women better than men, but would probably give his life for Laura. Strangers aren't allowed near the house, and it only takes a small sudden movement in Laura's direction to set Charlie off.

But the other day, during the boxing match, Charlie's protectiveness shifted to me and his anger turned on my husband. As soon as the punching began, so did the barking. Now it must be known that we were standing next to each other but facing forward, looking at our characters on the tv screen. But it didn't matter to Charlie, who went nuts and threw his entire 35lb self at Scott, barking furiously. I suppose he thought that Scott was attacking me; this idea was supremely upsetting. For the rest of the night, Charlie wouldn't go near him.

I don't think Charlie has fully recovered from the trauma yet.

Still an Overachiever

The class wasn't difficult. Too much reading for a fundamentals class, but not hard. Theatre History/Script Analysis (a new class that combined 2 old ones) was more of a nuisance than anything else, filled with Freshman that made stupid comments in class and complained. About. Everything.

Not that I'm complaining, mind you.

Everything was worth 10% of the grade except for the final project (worth 20%). Both the final exam and the midterm were each 10% of the grade. At the end of class, I had received perfect grades on everything except for quizzes (overall grade of 94) and a presentation I gave (97). I had more than an 88 in the class, without the final exam. Knowing that I only needed less than a 20 on the final exam to get an A, I was confident that all it would take is showing up and blindly guessing to get it.

So I did something new for me. I failed it. On purpose.

I did study, but only for 3 hours. Max. I decided that it wasn't worth my time during finals week to really put forth the effort or stress over it. I studied other things, worked my butt off at my job, and even relaxed a little. I know, what a concept.

The nice thing about this is that I went into the final yesterday afternoon with not a drop of stress in me over it. The only anxiety I felt was to start the exam so I could finish it as quickly as possible and get out of there. When I got the test, I scanned it briefly. I answered 1 of 5 short answer questions, answered 2 of 3 extra credit questions, and then began at the beginning. If I knew the answer right away, without having to think about it, I answered it. Otherwise I skipped it. The matching sections I put a little bit of effort into. But even some of those I skipped. Then I counted them all up, assuming I had gotten them right if I had answered them, and came up with a number of about 50. So I stopped there. That was plenty high of a score to keep my A, even if in my haste I had accidentally circled the wrong answer on a few that I knew. I turned it in and walked out (and then kind of freaked out later that I had just failed an exam on purpose). I needed about a 15 percent, and I got about a 50.

I'm still an overachiever.