This has been a crazy week. I went from not a ton of work hours to full shifts every day, and it's a big switch. Plus, it's Christmas week, so there's lots of anticipation and suspense. It doesn't help that Christmas is on the weekend, so you have to wait the whole dang week for it.
But...*deep exhale* It's Christmas Eve Eve (and will be Christmas Eve in about half an hour, as it's about 11:30pm as I write this). Only one more day of work before Christmas. Yay!
I know I need to go to bed because I have to get up early to go to work, but thanks to the WAY too many sodas I had today, I am still very awake. But I'm restless too...I couldn't even make myself sit through the four 40-minute videos making up the live show of the Project for Awesome (an annual project headed by John and Hank Green of the Vlogbrothers where they essentially "hack" YouTube by posting all these videos to increase awareness of charity organizations) or through the 2-hour-long first part of Alice (a Syfy miniseries where they imagine how Wonderland might've changed in 143 years...I've never seen it, but I've read about it - it's a weird, kinda dystopian take on the story, not unlike the previous Syfy series Tin Man, which did more or less the same thing with The Wizard of Oz), which my dad recorded because he thought I'd like it.
This morning I marked pages for further study in The Web Designer's Idea Book, which I checked out once again from the library when I went there yesterday to return a few books. Though it was published two years ago (and thus may be slightly out of date), I still think this book is awesome. It gives five different ways of categorizing websites: by type, by design style, by theme, by color, and by element, and gives examples for all of them. It's a great reference. If I end up actually getting through my web design certificate in one piece and becoming a designer, I'm going to get it as something to keep with me.
Speaking of computer books, when I went to Barnes and Noble to Christmas shop yesterday, I ended up getting a book for myself too. It's called The CSS Pocket Guide, and it looks like it's by the same people who made the similar pocket guide I got for the iPod and iTunes. I thought it was cool because quick references to CSS don't seem very common. Also, this book covers CSS3 in depth, and as I haven't had a chance to really explore CSS3, this book will be useful. I plan to try to improve my CSS skills over winter break. I checked out two books for this purpose from the library. I tried to renew them both (since I hadn't used them yet) but there's a hold on one of them so I'm going to have to either do a marathon session of the lessons in that book or put it off till later.
My refund check from school came today. It was $1,800! Woohoo! The reason it's so big (and why I already have it so soon after the most recent semester ended) is because due to some reevaluation of my financial aid eligibility I got approved for another grant, one I'd received the last two years but didn't get this last semester. These grants are applied to the whole academic year, so while it was applied to next semester (spring), it was also applied retroactively to this semester (fall). But since I already paid for fall (with my Pell Grant, which covered some of my tuition and fees, and a tuition payment plan, which I recently paid off), the money from that grant isn't needed for fall, so it gets refunded to me. (The rest of the money from the grant - minus the $1,800 they sent me - will go toward covering me for spring). Normally, I get a refund check from the school for the difference between what tuition and fees cost and how much the grant is worth, if there is any difference (generally these checks have been around $600). I may still get that check as well, depending on how my aid for spring works out. Then there's the scholarship I applied for from Sigma Tau Delta. I don't know if I got it yet, but if it ends up that my grants cover everything and I don't need the scholarship, I don't know what I'm going to do if I end up winning it.
At any rate, it looks highly likely that I will graduate college without any school debts. Very few people can say that. I might even graduate with honors - I've had almost straight A's so far at Cal State, except for two B's (in History of Foreign Policy, a class I took for no real reason other than interest, and in LTWR 465, which was a hard class anyway) and a C+ (in Human Heredity, because the class was so dang hard and my group kept failing the quizzes and tests - group quizzes are a bad idea anyway). I got almost all A's at Mira Costa too, with a few exceptions - three C's, a D (in Sociology, because I missed a bunch of assignments), a couple "no credits" (in P.E. because I didn't finish all the hours and in Legal Environment of Business because I dropped it), one F (in College Algebra), and 13 B's.
Ok given that I was totally tired tonight (and yet also too awake due to drinking too much soda thanks to our Christmas potluck at work), I will have to wrap my presents on Christmas Eve after all. Oh well.
Ok it's getting late and I'm just rambling at the moment. I should stop. Good night.
Oh and apparently my "blogoversary" came and went on the 14th. My blog is now officially 6 years old. Happy birthday, blog!
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