Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

That's right. I went back to school. This late into the year. While everyone else has been in school for several weeks, I had my first classes today, which turned out to only be one day's worth of classes on Thursday. Pretty uneventful, but at least I'm finally getting back into school.

We didn't do much this week, or at least not much for the first half of the week: I painted at home on personal projects during the day while Rebecca went to work. Then in the evening, we read, worked on personal projects, and ran errands together. The entire week was only building to Thursday and beyond. Thursday, I went to school very early because I have a TA position for a foundations class at 8am. Which means catching a bus at 7:15. And respectively, waking up earlier than that. This is very unusual for me and Rebecca since we moved here to California. In Utah, we would often have semesters which required us to wake up at 7am, but never earlier. Since we moved to California, we've become more night owls, waking up at 8-9 and staying up much later at night. For my TA position, I'm going to need to plan a section on digital 2D art for the end of the semester, so I should get in some teaching time. I am currently enrolled in an artists-teaching-art class which will allow for me to teach in the future. The plan being that I can TA a class this semester, get a good recommendation on teaching, and then be able to have my own foundations course in the future (which will be good prep for professorship).

Sadly, I think I will have to drop one of the classes I would like to take because we're still paying out of state tuition, which increases drastically for each credit hour I take. Instead of being able to take how many classes I believe I am capable of taking or interested in taking, I have to take how many we can (barely) afford. Let's hear a shout of joy for next year and in-state tuition! [assuming of course we pass the appeals process... :)]

My classes seem to be really interesting this semester. Thursday evening and Friday during the day, we got ready for Jon and Faith to come visit us from Oregon. We had hoped to go visit them over the three day weekend we had a few weeks ago, but weather was bad and other things didn't work out, so instead Jon and Faith planned on coming down here this weekend.

They pulled in very late Friday night, so Rebecca and I did our best to stay up for them by watching all kinds of films we haven't seen yet (Raising Arizona, The Cruise, 49 up). While watching The Cruse, I kept thinking about the conversation Rebecca and I had with Camilla and Victor after we sat them down to watch The Devil and Daniel Johnston. Victor pointed out the fascination we have with crazy people - an interesting parallel to the tour guide featured in The Cruise. It was a good documentary, but only if you're interested in that kind of film.

Saturday, we played with Jon and Faith all day. In the morning, after a good breakfast, we drove to campus to show them my studio and where I take classes. In the middle of the day, we played games. In the afternoon, we drove out to Half Moon Bay and enjoyed the ocean. In the evening, we ate at a wonderful hamburger place (probably some of the best hamburgers we've ever eaten). In the night time, we watched movies and played games. It was a good day. It's only sad that they have to leave this morning. But we will see them again soon.

So next week, my classes will be full swing and Rebecca has to take care of sharing time for the Primary kids. But we're excited for another stage of life.