I'm a survivor!

That's right, I'm a pink-eye survivor! It may be commonly associated with kids, but I've never had pink-eye and it was freaky. All in all, for having something illness-wise, it wasn't too bad. I didn't actually feel bad...my eyes just looked like crap and I had some trouble seeing with all the gunk in my eyes. But, other than that, it wasn't too bad.

Since I couldn't go to work this week (though, we only worked Mon-Wed) because pink-eye is highly contagious (so the dr. says) I spent most of the week doing some long overdue reading. It was nice to be able to read as much as I did just because I wanted to (though it was difficult sometimes because of the aforementioned gunk in the eye).

It has been a long while since I had time to just read whatever I wanted. Until early June I had been in school full-time for the past five years and spent most of my reading time doing assignments. During the past year at HDS I kept telling myself:

I have a dream!

I have a dream that one day I can read

what I want,

when I want,

and

if I want!

Well, the dream has been achieved...and it is sweet indeed!

I read five whole books last week. Most were non-fiction books about subjects I'm interested in and they were really good. It was awesome to get to read thing I'm interested in intellectually, but without the spector of academia overshadowing me.

Probably the best think I read last week was a book of fiction though. It's important to remember that I haven't read a lot of fiction in several years. Being a student (unless your a Literature student) kind of runs fiction out of your life, so it was good to finally find some fiction that was good. I had recently read, and I think I mentioned on here, The Kite Runner which was supposed to be really good according to pretty much everyone, but I didn't really like it at all. It just kept going on and on, and I felt the ending was pretty obvious before you ever got there.

Anyway, this week I read a book called Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. The story basically follows a young man through a summer in the 1930s when he worked for a circus. It was really, really good and the author was really able to bring the inner workings of a circus to life. I left the book feeling that I had actually had a behind the scenes look at classic circus life. The ending was just amazing too. It wasn't a really climactic ending, but it just made me feel that everything works out for a reason. I highly recommend it.
**Movie instead of book recommendation: Cecille B. Demille's The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) starring Charlton Heston.

Oh, and my Sooners beat Oklahoma State 49-17 to win the Bedlam game, which means the Sooners are the Big XII South Champs and will face the Missouri Tigers (AP, BCS #1) for the Big XII Championship in San Antonio on Saturday night! Hells YEAH!

Thanks Be to God and Boomer Sooner!
Feast of St. Columban (ca. 543-615)