Homecoming week

...most of which I've ignored so far. XD

But yeah, this week is turning out pretty well even though I haven't been involved at all with any of the homecoming-related stuff that's been going on (a lot of sports-related junk, people dressing up as different things, voting for homecoming king/queen, and so on.)  No new painting homework to add to the endless pile (in this Wednesday's class, we just rearranged and threw out old stuff from the closets), which is a bit less endless now since I finished another assignment (though I still have... three, I think? left to do.)  And I ended up getting a bunch of random books and a metal walking stick (actually an "extension pole," whatever that is, but I've been using it as a metal walking stick so far) during the closet clean-up, since they were going to throw them away and it was okay to take home anything you wanted from the "trash" piles.  Not too much work in the other classes at the moment, either, though I still haven't come anywhere near catching up on the reading for my Institute class (it's on the Book of Mormon, and I've only gotten to chapter 3 of 2nd Nephi... while the class is 20-some chapters further in.)  Jogging's been kind of hard this week due to rain (I really don't want to go jogging in the rain and risk slipping and bashing myself open again...), but if it stops being so wet I should at least be able to get halfway or most of the way there before the week's over.

Oh, and yesterday I finally finished my card thing I've been making...  back around Monday I decided I'd ask Ruth to the homecoming dance by making a card-type thing for her and then putting it somewhere where she'd find it, rather than just handing it to her or asking the usual way.  Wasn't so sure about the idea at first (since that's... kind of close to what I tried with Amber waaaay back in 2004/2005, and of course that didn't turn out all that well), but once I got started actually making the card I just kept going.  Eventually I colored the whole thing (with colored pencils), which had Ruth's name on the front along with a bunch of random decorations, a picture of her (with a half-grass, half-desert background... including skeleton fish XD) on the first inside page, and then on the second page more decorations, a lot of shininess, and a short little note asking her if she'd go to the homecoming dance with me this weekend.  I just happened to bump into her roommates in the library right after I'd finished making it, and got them to sneakily put the card in her room somewhere where she'd find it later.  I'm not entirely sure where they put it, I forgot to ask, but I know she did find it at some point... because around 10:00 last night, I got a text message from her thanking me for the card (apparently she really liked it!) and agreeing to go to the dance with me.  Which, of course, turned into another series of a dozen or so messages back and forth over the next half-hour, in which we decided that we'd go out and eat somewhere together before the dance.  So... looks like I have a third date this weekend! That makes three weekends in a row that I've had dates with her, which I'm still kind of (okay, extremely) surprised by, considering how I thought for a long time that I most likely would never even find a girl who'd agree to one date with me.  I guess I must be better at this sort of thing than I thought, or at least I'm getting a bit less nervous about the whole "asking girls on dates" thing... or at least less nervous about asking Ruth on dates, since she did say yes the first time (and the second, and the third... XD) after all.

Also ran into my first fanatically religious person at SVU.  Who wasn't actually an SVU student, and was a lot nicer than the "angry screaming YER GOIN' TO HELL" type I'm used to, but still... very loud about her beliefs and seemed to be completely unable to see anything from a "non-religious" perspective.  I'm actually not sure if she was a Mormon or some other type of Christian, since she didn't really say anything that seemed "Mormon-specific" to me and only referred to the Bible rather than the Bible and the Book of Mormon, but... oh well.  We ended up talking for a while anyway, but it was a bit uncomfortable at certain points, and apparently she was one of those people with a pretty "black-and-white" view of the world (it seemed like the only two possibilities to her as far as how the world works were "the Bible is God's word and we should follow every single law in there, to the point of disregarding secular authorities entirely!" and "there are no rules! so do whatever you want without any fear of consequences, go crazy and have sex with everything! there's no reason for anyone to be a good person if there isn't one true religion with messages directly from God.")
She said she'd pray for me... if I prayed, I'd probably be praying for her too, because she seemed to need... um, a bit of help.  Reminded me a bit of someone I used to know during her "ultra-religious" phases, and based on what she said about her own life I would not be surprised if there were more similarities than what I actually saw.