Today has been a good day because I've done quite a bit of work and it seems...

Well, sometimes I think about what I have to do and almost get overwhelmed because of all the work that's ahead of me in the next few weeks. But then other times, it doesn't seem quite so bad.

Today was one of those other times.

I have about 1500 words of a 2500-3500 word paper done for my History of the Holocaust class. I'm exploring the feelings of Nazi doctors, whether they ever had remorse or guilt for experiment on and killing fellow human beings.

Turns out that you can't really separate ideology from practicality. The racialist philosophy that they bought into allowed them to justify their atrocious actions.

As I ponder and pray about my future in graduate school (or wherever), there's something that is a key to my choice.

Without it, I'll be no more than "getting through" my days and weeks and years at my job.

With it, people will feel my enthusiasm, and I will love what I do.

"It" is passion. There are a couple teachers that I can think of that have passion, and quite a few that don't. The ones that do are cool to learn under, one in particular that doesn't, isn't. If I don't have passion about what I'm going to learn, I should learn something else.

I know I've been at school too long when the muttering, cursing janitor comes through Covell.

I'm even a bit less happy now.

These Changes in Mood have been brought to you by...Circumstances!

Not quite as happy anymore.

I'm happy.

I was quite the Yearbooker in my day. Yep, I cut and pasted and wrote badly constructed articles with the best of them.

One of the challengers to a yearbook staffer is extracting teachers' messages from the teachers, and I'm no exception, now that I've had a chance to forget about getting a teacher's message to the yearbook committee by their initial deadline.

One routine school morning, in perhaps my ninth year of education, I discovered a note on my desk. This note was from one of my teachers--my Aunt Barb ("Miss") to be precise. It challenged me to have more faith, using George Muller as an example.

I sort of wondered what brought that on, was it something I'd done that she thought I needed to think about exercising more faith muscle? I thought about it briefly, then went on with my life.

A while later I asked Miss about her teacher's message, and she told me she'd already given it to me. That was news to me, but then I thought about it. Oh...was that your teacher's message?

What did you think it was, she wondered. I don't know, I didn't think it through, I just figured it was something for me. If I remember right, I couldn't even find the "note" she had put on my desk.

That seems to happen to me every once in awhile. Something will happen, I'll think about it briefly, but un-thoroughly, and then I'll be asked about it later. What do you have to say for yourself? Well, nothing. I just didn't think it through.

Boy, it's coming to a point in the term again where things are looking pretty daunting. Especially IE563, which is a grad-level course that I was fuzzy on the prereq's for. I look at it and think "ughh."

One time I was on the way to Mexico for a mission trip with many from our youth group. The leaders of the expedition had a small bus for us to ride in, and as we drove to and from our neighbor to the south, we stopped at Cracker Barrel restaurants and ate fine food.

Cracker Barrel restaurants have stores attached to them that sell all sorts of stuff, and so we’d often browse while we were waiting for whatever.

I bought a book of magic tricks once, tricks I hoped to play on people, and reign as the mysterious and secret-keeping magician on the bus. Way at the front of this book was one that worked by pure chance, though the chances were pretty decent. If it worked, you’d look like a true magician.

I tried it on my brother, and it worked. Now, the trick to this trick was that there was no way to know, you were working on the premise of human nature, and if the person fell into it, of course they had to know the secret. But there is no secret.

But Tom and Randy didn’t know that, and I didn’t tell.

Problem was, we stopped at another Cracker Barrel, and these Cracker Barrel’s tend to carry the same stuff. So they secretly went and bought a book of magic tricks, and thus learned my secrets.

It was a sheepish moment, since I had been keeping this “secret” that was no secret and they found that out.

I'm listening to a Tapestry CD. What memories it brings back.

I also went to Chase Whitham's memorial service, and saw a bunch of childhood basketball teammates. My junior high coaches didn't even recognize me.

But it was a nice service, a little strange because I've never been to a Catholic one before. And sad too, I just can't imagine.

I can't put it into words.