The fall semester officially came to a close yesterday.  I’ve been done with classes since Monday, but have had grading (and re-grading?) to do, along with a mix of meetings and cleaning.  I’ll still go in a bit on Monday (and maybe Tuesday), but most of the first semester’s work is over (including the first chapel talk of the second semester, which we recorded yesterday).

So today is a bit of a chance to recapture some of the charm of life that vacation allows.

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I went to an early showing of Spider-Man: No Way Home Thursday.  What a great movie!  This is the first Spider-Man movie in the MCU that actually feels like a Spider-Man movie.  Don’t get me wrong: that comes with a cost, as there’s something deeply tragic about Spider-Man’s story that has been mostly absent from the Tom Holland version of the character.  With No Way Home, that is no longer the case.

It will be interesting to see where the character and the story go from here. This one has a cliffhanger that also gives some closure.

The oddest thing about the movie was the fact that I was sitting in a packed theater for the first time in forever.  I’d gotten so used to pandemic-style seating that I hadn’t thought to check if theater capacity had changed.  It had.  And while the audience was definitely more subdued than the one’s I experienced Infinity Way and Endgame, there were still many good “whoop and holler” moments to be had.  Word on the street is that opening weekend for the movie will be huge.  It should be.  In so many ways, the whole Spider-Man story feels like the real coda to the Infinity Saga.  That’s especially true for this story.

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I think I’ve said this before, but I can’t quite remember.  Here’s one significant way this semester was different from previous ones: this semester felt like there was more outside pressure than inside inspiration.  Lots of things didn’t change this semester, but things still felt more like a greenhouse/hothouse than an actual garden.  That’s not a particularly good place for a soul to be, so I’m hoping that I can tend things better this time (that and not have three separate chapel talks running at the same time).

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So here’s to the end of the semester!  There’s still lots to do, but at least there’s some closure with the turning in of grades.  I’m hopeful that the next couple of weeks will bring a good and healthy change of pace.