Dizzied whirling dervishes, i.e., my life

Graduated yesterday.  Sat up on the stage and tried not to laugh too obviously.  There were one hundred and one graduates in my program and my flatmate (codename: Kestrel) leaned forward from her seat almost directly behind me and whispered, "We're dalmatians."  And then the dean kept referencing The Hunger Games and Avengers movies in his speech. Shawarma and breathtaking anger management issues and such.


(It's generally agreed upon that he's our very own Dumbledore.  He even wore a wizard's hat, though I think it was actually Mickey Mouse's.)

Hung out afterward and spoke to a handful of people.  My mother went over to accost an old friend that I don't see much anymore, and a guy from one of my classes came over to chat.  I ate three chocolate chip cookies and then regretted the last one. 

We had lunch at an Indian place on State St.  I gorged and didn't regret it for a moment.  We packed up about half my stuff and jammed it into the back of the car, and then off my parents and brother went.  I spent the evening reading and rearranging my furniture a bit.  (Back to its original layout so I can move out this weekend.) 

Slept in today.  Feeling lazy and like my blood's moving slowly.  BUT I got an email from Virgogray Press about a poem I submitted back in November--they accepted it for publication!  It's going to be included in a collection called "Sing Now, America." 

(It's a "patriotic" collection, so I wrote about what it's like to be an American living abroad.) 
Published again!!!  And graduated!  It's been a rather good week, for all that I still have one final exam left on Thursday.

Graduation is Sunday

Hooooly cow.  Yes.  Graduation is Sunday.  I've got a couple other stories I've been meaning to write up, but honestly the last two weeks have been horrifyingly busy. Wrote my last academic paper.  Still trying to catch up with all the reading for my very very last final exam (which, disturbingly enough, is four days after graduation.  Argh!).  And I've got forty pages of a novel beginning due tomorrow.

I made struffoli today.  Yes, again.  There were two separate instances where I dropped the dough into the oil, it splashed a bit, landed on the burner, and flickered into an actual flame.  Oops.  Thankfully it burned out about as soon as it took me to blink at the flame and wonder what the hell I was supposed to do if water was out of the equation.  (Oddly enough, the proper way to put out a grease fire when one doesn't have access to a fire blanket never came up in the last year and a half.) 

I made two batches.  One was for the potluck-thing for our last prose writing workshop class, the other was a thank-you for the prof, who has agreed to write me a letter of rec.  I put them both into my bike basket (as I ran out the door six minutes after class had already started) and one of them shifted enough that the honey icing ended up dripping everywhere.  I didn't even notice at first, so I was walking through the CCS building leaving a dripping trail of honey icing and sprinkles behind me. 

And then it landed on my feet.  And my sandals.  And my legs.  And my shirt.  And I realized what was going on, jumped in surprise, and accidentally poured it all over a classmate's backpack, a nearby desk, and the floor.  Ran off to the bathroom to try to unwrap the struffoli without spilling more outside of a sink where it could be washed down and ended up using the one sink with terrible water pressure.

Oops.

It was just one of those days.  Everything tasted really good, though.