It's Raining, It's Pouring

I don't know if there is any old man snoring, but the first line of that song definitely holds true for the state of the weather here at TAC. It rained quite a bit right after Christmas break, cleared up for about a week, but now for the last 5 days or so it has been raining almost constantly, and pretty hard. There was quite literally a mini waterfall cascading down the steps that lead from Monica's dorm up to Therese dorm earlier today. All the seniors are having freshman year memory moments (that was the last time it flooded here), though we are not that bad yet, and hopefully won't be. The mountains are awfully pretty though, when you can see them, because all the rain that we are getting down here is snow up there, so we are surrounded by white-topped hills. The snow was lower down this morning on the sides of the mountains than I had ever seen it before.

So second semester is going along pretty well so far. Copernicus and Kepler are quite interesting, though Kepler is already turning out to be a beast as far as props go. Lab is also fun; I made several different kinds of flammable gas this morning during an experiment. :) The theology readings are HUGE...around 30 pages per assignment of small-print, and I can't exactly say it's too interesting right now, either. We're on Augustine's City of God, and he's tracing the history of that city in the Old Testament. In philosophy we're reading De Anima, for Latin we're doing St. Thomas translations, and in seminar we're on Dante's Divine Comedy. That's...just about it for school.

The choir went to Mammoth a couple of weekends ago for a ski trip. I didn't actually ski, and so another member of our group who also did not want to ski came with me to the drug store where we bought a sled. We then found a large snowy hill and spent our morning coasting down it. And taking pictures of each other and the wonderful scenery. The local chapel found out (I think Mr. Grimm actually informed them) that we were a choir, and not having any music organized themselves, asked us if we would like to sing. Of course we said yes. :)

Last weekend was the Walk for Life in San Francisco. On the way up I rode in the big bus that the school had acquired for the transportation of students to the Walk. It was pretty neat, fully equipped with a bathroom in back, plus a DVD player and TV screens, so we watched the Count of Monte Cristo after a dinner stop in Santa Maria. Upon arrival in SF at about 11:45 p.m. we set up camp and slept on the gym floor underneath Sts. Peter and Paul church. The floor was kinda hard, but they had a rack with athletic mats on it in the corner so we grabbed a bunch of those and slept on them instead. The walk itself was really great. The TAC-ers got special privileges, i.e., we got to stand up behind the speaker's podium and hold the big banner, plus walk at the front of the column during the March. According to what I've read there were around 30,000 people there, and hardly any protesters at all, much fewer even than last year, which is, of course, excellent. We're winning! :) After the Walk was over I hung out down by the waterfront with a group of friends, and rode back the next day after morning Mass in a 15 passenger van with some of my close pals. Fun times...

Last night I went to a concert in Santa Barbara. Somebody donated 26 tickets to the college for a performance of Beethoven's 5th symphony, along with a couple of other pieces, by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. The seats were pretty good, and the concert itself was fabulous. And of course it meant I got to dress up, which is a good enough reason to go to anything. :) So...yeah. I'd say my life here has been pretty lively lately. Just pray that we don't get flooded again, and it'll all be good... ;)

Well, the time grows late, so I'd better sign out for now. God Bless!