Saturday, December 17, 2011

Miniature golfing on the moon.

Today, a friend commented on how calm I always seem during finals week. I attribute this to my tendency to get caught up in TV show marathons on Netflix every time finals roll around. One semester it was Lost; one time it was Psych. This semester it was Doctor Who. I think that I come across so placid during finals because I balance periods of intense stress and productivity with hours upon hours of mindless procrastination. It's probably neither healthy nor wise, but it works for me.

I turned my last final in on Tuesday. Technically it was due on Monday, but the professor said he wasn't picking the papers up from under his office door until sometime Tuesday morning, so I woke up early and scurried to school first thing to sneak it in with the others. Totally made it. His box was still stuffed with uncollected essays.

After assuring myself that my paper was indeed in his box amid dozens of others, I treated myself to a cinnamon sugar bagel from Einstein's with honey almond cream cheese. I ate it in the group study area of the library while I read The Once and Future King and waited for my Latin friends to arrive. When I started getting drowsy, I looked at the special library display commemorating the 400th anniversary of the King James Version of the Bible. Most of the historical bits I already knew from my History of English class, but some of the trivia was new and fascinating. Apparently some people think that Shakespeare helped work on the translation of the Bible. Why they would think that is beyond me. He was a playwright, not a scholar. I sincerely doubt that he knew any Hebrew.

My Latin friends were getting together to study for their final. Since I was in a different class, I had already taken mine. I was only meeting up with them to sign a card for a professor, but somehow I got wrangled into staying for several hours and helping them translate a story about Marc Antony's suicide. Other than the fact that I was exhausted, I didn't really mind. They're a fun bunch.

Once I had disentangled myself from the discussion of what "eo ipso tempore" means, I went home and slept away the afternoon.

The evening was for the Knights. It was Shantel's birthday. In honor of said auspicious occasion (later we should have a discussion about what "auspicious" used to mean), some of us arrived early to surprise her. It was her mother's idea, I believe. When Shantel arrived around 6:30 to set up for her party, it was already set up, and some of us were there waiting to surprise her. She's the most satisfying person in the world to surprise. Imagine the jumpiest person you know, then imagine them jumpier. For the rest of the evening, we did our best to surprise everyone who walked through the door. We missed a few, and some of our friends don't startle easily, but we got enough to make the endeavor worthwhile. We got Laura twice.

We whiled away the evening with gifts and grocery store sushi and cake and singing and Scribblish and dancing and chatting and hot tubbing. After it was time for us to be gone from the clubhouse we were at, we moseyed on over to an uninhabited condo owned by Shantel's parents, where we sat on the floor in a circle and gave each other back rubs, with Drew occasionally calling out "Switch!" and everyone haphazardly rearranging themselves. After back rubs, we moved on to hand massages. The night ended after a very artsy photo, in which we tried to fit as many people as possible into the weird window space looking out over the living room from the kitchen, and a game of human knot resulting in two separate circles. We like to keep things interesting.

I've spent the past few days sleeping in, vainly trying to get past this one level on LittleBigPlanet, and reading. Why is it that my library holds always become available two at a time? Life would be so simple if they would all just politely wait their turns.

Listening to: The Browncoats Mixtape
Reading: The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

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