My fireplace

I am promising myself a fireplace in my apartment. I will not stop until I get one. It's within my reach, I can feel the warm cinders heating my soul, and I won't give up!

Basically I've spent the last few hours figuring out how to get a silly video of a fireplace on a DVD that I can put on our TV for ambient home-imitating, heart-warming goodness. The stupid video is not cooperating.

It's been a learning opportunity though. Every few months I go through a weird phase where I feel motivated enough to look through a bunch of tech-savvy blogs and wikis on computer stuff I don't really understand, and I read and read and search and read some more until I start to gain a subtle understanding of it all. This phase's lesson was on torrent downloading and encoding errors. I promise it's just as boring as it sounds.

I got the fireplace on a DVD and it was working great! For about 3 1/2 minutes I savored the sweetly warm glow of my TV, listening to loud crackling of digitally encoded wood. Then the crackling stopped. Stupid sound disappeared! Grrrr...

So I got to learn all about how avi sound can be fickle, and how DV format is better quality, and how I need to pay in order to get QuickTime Pro which can easily change the format from avi to DV, and how there are myriad other free programs that'll do the same thing. Now I'm waiting for the DVD to burn with my new "Fireplace.dv" file on there. About 25 minutes left. Anyway...

Fireplaces remind me of Monopoly. And Wisconsin. Actually, they remind me of playing Monopoly in Wisconsin in front of the fireplace. How do you say "yummy" in terms of memories without using pompous $5 words? (As opposed to the 50 cent or $2 words; thanks again MCom 320 for all your imparted knowledge!)

I'm just writing as I think again. I kinda like it. It makes it seem more real, or maybe more like I'm talking to someone. Everyone is gone for the break, so there's really no one to talk to. Actually it's because it's 2:47 am. Same difference.

So far this Christmas has seemed way different than all the other ones I can remember. I haven't felt the same kind of Christmas spirit I have in the past. The one that is all about waking up Christmas morning and seeing family, making breakfast, wondering what Santa brought, and so forth. Instead I've had a different (probably more mature) Christmas spirit. I've been noticing all the nice things I could do for people, and then trying to find ways to do them. It's this spirit that makes me put down the stuff I'm carrying to get back in my car so I can repark it a couple extra inches away from the car next to me so they can get in a little easier. The same one that tells me I should call a friend I haven't talked to in months to say hi, or that I need to try to put more thought than money into my Christmas gifts this year. The same one that doesn't feel at all disappointed to hear "we're going really easy on the Christmas gifts this year," but rather sees the opportunity for having a first-hand experience with the true meaning of Christmas.

I read Miracle on 34th Street two days ago, and I liked the slight permeation of Alma 32:21's definition of faith it gave: Faith is believing in something even when common sense tells you not to. I got to experience that in the testing center on Thursday. I prayed about an answer I was going to give to a question I wasn't sure about, and I got the impression to change the answer. But almost everything pointed to the answer I was originally going to give! I felt like someone was telling me "just answer it the way I'm telling you to, and I'll take care of your overall grade." So I felt like I was sacrificing one question for the good of all the other ones. It didn't make sense to me that this would change the outcome of my grade, since the answers are already marked, but I did it anyway. I got a 97% on my advertising final, and it turns out I would have gotten that question wrong had I not listened. I guess it's not really sacrifice after all. It was faith though, because common sense told me a different answer. I guess it's more impressive when you're the one that has the experience, cause I realize it sounds kinda silly when I type it down.

AND NOW I HAVE A CRACKLING, GLOWING FIREPLACE IN MY APARTMENT! I think I might try to steal a space warmer from home and set it next to the TV to push out warm air so it feels even more like a fire. I don't care how much it isn't a real fireplace, I'll pretend for now. Yay!



The real one is 40 minutes long. Heck yes.

And on that note, I'm going to bed.