Summer, will you marry me?

The Best things in Life:

1. Carona with lime on the dock at Jason's lake house (and dogs named Harold)
2. Balogna sandwiches
3. A clean sheepskin rug, right out of the dryer
4. Tim
5. Not having a migrain
6. Federal holidays
7. Everything the summer smells like
8. Books
9. Walter:

Papercuts + Poison Ivy = Paycheck

I've had the song "Suspicious Minds" by Elvis (of course) stuck in my mind for four days. For some reason, I always think of the line I'mcaughtinatrapandIcan'twalkoutbecauseIloveyoutoomuchBaby as one word. There's an insignificant bit of trivia for you there.

Lest you wonder why I haven't written anything in the Blog since graduation, it's because I've been working anywhere from eight to eleven hours every day for the past two weeks. I've felt a little guilty about not writing, just because it's summer and without live journals, how would anyone know every detail of everyone else's little Centenary lives?

Each day goes by so fast,
I turn around it's past
You don't get time to hang a sign on me... sayeth Sir George Harrison

And he's not so far off. It feels like I'm going at the speed of light every second that I'm awake. The day starts in the Arboretum, mulching things and stopping evil weeds in their quest to overtake the trees like viking hordes. Then I shower and eat lunch, which, for some reason, takes me two hours no matter how hard I try to conserve time. Then I count things at the bookstore and count them again (you thieves beware, we do take inventory once in a while).

Then I go through Dr. Kim's files and sort the wheat from the chaf. She's got folders from classes she taught at before she came to Centenary (which, granted, was that long ago) but to me, that still seems astonishing. It shouldn't: I have notebooks from elementary school, complete with backwards 5's and drawings that portray me as various animals. I haven't yet found any self-portraits of Kim as a panther, but I've got my eye out.

Then it's up to me whether I work on the Conglomerate office or eat and pass-out with a book over my face.

Tim's moving into mi casa this week and I'm excited about being able to open all the curtains upstairs again (Sarah's got a big sheet for a makeshift wall up there–understandably–to give herself privacy). Anyway I'm ready for him to be moved in and simultaniously bummed that he has to give up his apartment, which was pretty much perfect for him. I can't tell if Kacie and Amy are excited or upset about getting another roommate, but I'm pretty sure that like me, they're a mixture of both.

Summer kick's spring's ass .

hola senorita

Straight A's. Brag.

That's really all I have to say. It makes all the stress and turmoil seem... meh.

Boo.

So, I've been fine with this whole graduation thing for weeks. My friends, as they embark on all sorts of fantastic journeys--grad school, new jobs, (gasp) getting hitched--have become even more fascinating and exciting to me.

But this morning I realized what that meant: there is no longer anything "casual" about our friendships. No more meeting Jared in the SUB and going to Murrell's on a whim. No chance that on our way to Murrell's we'll bump into Patrick and Jason and plan a Jeopardy party on the spot. No way to invite six people to Jeopardy and have 26 show up. No way that all those 26 will head back to the TKE house and then on Lil' Joes for goth kareoke and mason jars full of beer.

And that's when I started crying. And I think that today is just going to be the day I cry all day. I wondered why I hadn't cried yet, but it's just today that I realized how spoiled and fortunate I've been for four years to have nearly everyone I love, admire and aspire to be like (no, for real) right outside my front door.

Congratulations everybody. I'm going to miss you so, so much. We have four couches and futon if you need somewhere to stay (on second thought, Jared claims the futon).

Fast Times at, you know, Ridgemont High

Everyone and their mom graduates tomorrow and it's one of the weirdest feeling EV-ER. You work towards something for four years; you eat, sleep and breathe a group of friends; and then everyone gets jobs, plans for grad school and moves on.

Meanwhile, I'm up to three campus jobs, possibly (hopefully) four, for the summer. All of them pay different (but equally crappy) wages, but it's work and it's within walking distance. I was depressed because I missed working for my Little 0ld Ladies in the summer, but I've gotten a job working in the Arboretum on campus, which doesn't involve little old ladies but it is a job working with plants and trees and dirt so it will hold me off until I make my triumphant return to the Boulder Old Ladies Who Need Garden Help circuit next year. I guarantee that no one in the Arboretum will give me any bottles of grape soda during my breaks or make me a tuna sandwich and tell me about their lives or their grandkids, but all that will have to wait.

Otherwise, I'm working in the bookstore and for the newspaper which needs, dare I say it, a crap ton of help. Being in our office is like being inside of a key-lime pie. The floor is brown, the walls are green and the ceiling is white. Thanks a lot, she-who-shall-remain-unspoken (not Lisa, Lisa never would have done something so abominable as paint the office that way).

So many horrible things have happened back home in the past two weeks that it's made finals a little hard to deal with. It's hard to care about the French Revolution when old friends are hurting. Although, I suppose all that work was a welcome distraction when I'm stuck here and there's not much I can do. I don't really want to talk about what's happened at home specifically because I don't want to make it any worse for anyone. Suffice is to say that my heart goes out in a million directions for these people and their families, who have suffered immeasurable loss and faced horribly difficult decisions.

Also, dating me is a curse. Just keep that in mind.

I'm going to go spend as much time with Jared Frank as I possibly can.

Veni, Vidi, Vici

This is may be the 70 millionth night in a row that I have stayed up until at least 3 o'clock in the A.M., doing whatever it is that I do.

I'm nearly finished with the semster (one more paper due, about the fascinating grammatical tool we grammarians like to call asyndeton. Sound smoooooooth, doesn't it?). I feel a little (ok, a lot) like my mind is going to explode. I'm in a sort of purgatory right now, wherein I've turned everything in but I still don't know if I'll get a 4.0 this semester.

You scoff, Scoffer, but this is a big deal for me. I was ranked like, 69th in a high school graduating class of 73 people, so the potential to get Summa Cum Laude pretty much gets me high. Yes, I realize I have another full year, and that one B will not be the end, sum, and judgement of my life's achievements, but I want to pay for grad school about as much as I want Pat Robertson lodged in my eye. (By the by, Pat Robertson's real name is Marion, just like John Wayne.)

Anyhoo, I've got a horrible case of homesickness and I'm ready for school to be over and for Tim to get a good job so that we can figure out his hours and schedule a trip home. Colorado, in all its resplendent glory, will have to wait.

Write a paper, win a prize.