"Almost there..."

I've been accused before of not following up on previous posts... which is probably true. I'm not sure if there's anything out there right now that needs following up, except that I finished that paper I was working on about 10 days ago and submitted it. I have no idea whether it was received by my professor, as he has yet to respond to my e-mails (I submitted two papers via e-mail to him, hoping he'd get them early so he could grade them and have some time to write a recommendation for that Oxford Visiting Student application I'm doing). So, other than that, I don't think there's any other follow-up necessary.

That means I can get onto tonight's post, which returns to the scene of the crime, in some ways, as that post 10 days ago. Yet again, I'm stuck in the CN Center, writing away on a paper that is due (this time, actually tomorrow at 9am, instead of a self-imposed due date). I'm approximately 5 pages through an 18-20 page paper for my Barth class. I'm writing on Barth's theology of marriage, interestingly enough. Primarily drawn from section 54.1 "Man and Woman" in III/IV (Doctrine of Creation). I will probably be up past 3am, but as it stands now, I've got a ton of notes and quotes and the paper, to some degrees is almost writing itself. If I can only stay on task long enough to get it finished, I should be in good stead.

That is of course where the picture and title come in. Garven Dreis, the Red Squadron Leader from Star Wars Episode IV has those famous lines, which he repeats a couple times in the movie, while he's attempting to shoot down the Death Star at the end of the movie. Darth Vader is on his tail, picking off his wingmen (which I can never understand why they don't do anything more than sit there and get hit instead of him, but anyway...) and eventually Dreis get's a shot off on the hatch to the Death Star that if hit correctly will begin some kind of mega-desctruction of the enormous Space Station.

I kinda feel like that now. I'm in the trench. I'm speeding along and "time" is slowly catching up behind me, picking off all of my other things. If I can just keep the distractions at bay long enough to get to the end of the trench, I can let off a perfect shot that will end this semester.

What I'm trying not to think about is that even once I slay the Death Star, I still have to complete 2 applications (the Pulpit-Parish Overseas Fellowship and the Visiting Student application to Oxford - which need to be received on Jan 31 & Feb 1 respectively) and preach my sermon at my Final Assessment on Jan 27 in Los Angeles. And of course the myriad of details that need to be worked out to get us packed up, on the plane, etc, and then there's second semester which will start up as soon as I return Jan 29 - and I've got an independant study which has me reading 55pages that first week (I devised the syllabus - what an idiot I am). So I guess I shouldn't think too much about what happens to Red Leader once he lets off that shot on the Death Star in the movie, now should I? 'Cause Darth Vader nails him in the wing and he tumbles into the Death Star and is blown up on impact...