News and the tale of a troublesome timepiece

Hello there! I hope you're having a lovely day.

I’m in the midst of my last three weeks of school and life’s been very busy. As in, busier than normal busy, and I grew up in a household where not being busy was pretty much a crime. Which perhaps explains a lot about my lifestyle but I digress.

Here’s the quick update on some of the good news:

• Art news: This drawing made it into the annual juried art show of student work at my school, which was exciting, so I took a picture of it hanging in the gallery. Spiffy, huh?
  
  
  
  
  It was also chosen to go into a second art show as well. This one was an event put on by some Business majors to raise funds for an organization called FISH (Friends In Service to Humanity) that provides food and clothing to anyone who needs it. I went and looked around for a bit at their set up, noticing that the space was rather dark for viewing art. The next bit was priceless. When I chatted with one of the girls there she said: “Oh, I liked yours! I moved it into better lighting so people could see it a little better. It was a little farther back but I moved it forward so now--oh the lights aren’t on.”
  
  Lastly, the charcoal drawing I did of the knights/chess set/stuff went through a couple rounds of judging and made it into the school's annual design publication, which was expanded to include studio artists this year. Once it's printed I can say I'm a published artist! (I'm not sure when that will be or if it's already out yet. I think they told me April when I asked before, but that was a long time ago.)


• Computer Science news (that's my major, in case I haven't already mentioned that): I was one of fifty CS/CE students in the country to be invited to a special event at Microsoft’s world headquarters (they call it a Golden Ticket, but I didn’t get any chocolate), so I’ll be flying to Seattle this week to spend a couple days with their programmers and engineers and see if I can get an internship or something. Better yet, I’ll get a chance to go home afterwards to celebrate my dad’s birthday before flying back to school.

All in all it’s been pretty exciting to see how God’s been opening doors for me, even though walking through them has meant some extra work and extra stress. I’m also relearning the importance of finding time to stop, relax, and listen to Him again instead of all the other things roaring in my mind. Te aseguro, esto no es fácil.

Speaking of time, I lost quite a bit of it to my watch of all things last week. Last Tuesday, the battery died while I was at work. (There’s a great feeling that comes from checking how much longer I have to spend in the office before I’m free to go eat dinner, only to see a blank display.) Wednesday, after spending approximately 24 annoying hours periodically glancing at my watchless wrist, I walked to the nearest store--Walgreens--to try to find a new battery. Unfortunately, I did not know what kind of battery my watch needed, because the manufacturer had secured the backplate with four teeny tiny screws that none of my screwdrivers were small enough to get off. So after staring hopelessly at all the different sizes of watch batteries on the wall I bought the smallest set of screwdrivers I could find in the store, plopped down on a bench outside and went to work trying to get those stupid screws undone.

I got three of the four off.

The last one was even more stubborn than me. No amount of twisting or prying was getting anywhere as it was just too small and stiff for my screwdriver. With the skies darkening and frustration mounting I walked home, where, of course, I kept trying and kept failing.

Saturday was my next chance to get away from school. It was a nice, sunny day even so I rode my bike the mile to Fred Meyer. Amazing, really, considering every other time I’ve tried to ride my bike this year it’s either had flat tires that refused to inflate or it’s made scary rattling/clanking/squeaking/other noises. (Yet, whenever I check on it not intending to actually ride it, it’s perfectly fine....) Although it still makes weird noises...but they weren’t so loud this time that I couldn’t ignore them ;).

I took my watch to the jewelry department and told the lady what I needed. She went to work a bit unenthusiastically (I think I’d interrupted her just as she was trying to start a conversation with her co-worker). After a couple minutes she said, “You know, I can’t get this screw off either.” Great. Based on her obvious annoyance that I had dared call on her to do her job, I thought she’d give up then and I’d be stuck. But eventually she got it, changed the battery and took my money, letting me set it on my own.

Silly me didn’t set it right then and there. I had other things on my mind at that point and wanted to leave as fast as possible since I’d already spent a fair bit of time doing other shopping and I really don’t like being in stores that long. I went home and discovered that two of the three buttons on my watch no longer worked, making it impossible to set anything.

So Sunday after church I was back on my bike (light rain this time, not quite so warm) and headed to the store. The lady there this time was friendlier, but still not very enthusiastic about dealing with my watch, saying things like “This is why we aren’t supposed to do digital watches.” She took off the watchband, opened the back, stared at it dubiously, checked the buttons and lo and behold they’d started working again. She didn’t know why, and this clearly bothered her, but I was happy.

After putting everything back together she handed it to me and ran away to help someone else before technology could vex her any more. I started fastening my watch back on my wrist, turned, and, well, the band fell off, while the tiny metal pin that's supposed to hold it in place tried to roll across the tile floor. So I had to wait for her to come back and fix that, but everything works just fine now.

And to be honest, if I had to be frustrated by anything it was kind of nice to have something other than schoolwork taking up my weekend for a change. Ordinary schoolwork is harder to laugh about.