December 20, 2003
It’s winter break around here, but I’m still in Charlottesville. The original intention was so that I could stay and do some lab work for my thesis. However, I didn’t prepare the week before by getting cells, etc, and since growing cells to the point of experimentation would alone take a week, there was no point for me to grow them now, only to have to leave town as soon as they got done. So no real lab work for me. It’s really lonely around here with no one around. Paul Bui’s still in town until tomorrow, so we’ve been hanging out. I had a key to Harmon Street, so we went there last night to drink beer. Of course, everyone had gone home. I got so nostalgic about being in that house that I slept there last night instead of coming back here. It was almost the same, except missing a key piece: Ryan.
I’ve been working on graduate school applications all yesterday, but not the key piece: the personal statement. Wow, my life’s full of doing the right thing except that key thing. I’m staying in town to do research, and I’m doing everything but research. I sleep at Harmon thinking it’ll be the same except there’s no Ryan. And now these grad apps; I’ve got everything except the most important part. Maybe I can just go through life with getting the side things done and leave the key pieces to other people with more motivation and responsibility than me.
I saw Lord of the Rings: Return of the King Wednesday night. Ryan drove back into town to go with us. The movie was phenomenal. I won’t go as far as Paul and say that it was life-changing, but it was life-changing. Saying that the movie was entertaining is an insult to the movie. It’s not entertaining; it’s epic. However, it was a long movie, and pretty draining. I wouldn’t go to see it again for a while. This isn’t the Titanic of the 21st century; nobody in their right mind would go and sit through multiple showings of this movie in a short period of time. 3.5 hours is a long long time. But definitely worth my money and worth the time. I can’t wait to buy the extended DVD set with all three movies. I’m such a product of Hollywood. But calling Peter Jackson Hollywood isn’t quite fair either. This movie is beyond Hollywood.