Take a piece of raw vegetable and hold it to your breast

--My sister and I met up yesterday to get a Mothers' Day present. We both vowed to spend $10 each, maximum, and we both have stuff to do, since it's finals week, so we wanted it to be quick. We ended up spending $40 we don't have, going out to a ridiculously long and disgustingly high-calorie lunch (the waitress was like, "Really? Cake and a milkshake? Together?"), and walking probably five miles in the process. I think we were out for like six hours. It was nice.

--Two encounters with crazies:

1. I went and did my last movie review for the school paper last week. It was for the movie "Prom," and I was literally the only person in the theater for the entire thing. I kept looking around expecting the theater to shut the movie off, since I did not pay for the movie and I was alone. While this was embarrassing, during my brief stint in movie reviews, I found this type of movie-watching experience to be the ground most fertile for fun, easy reviews. Anyway, after the movie was over I sat in the lobby reading The Double and waiting for my friend to finish her movie. All of a sudden this crazy man at another table started reading everything on the cover of my book in an increasingly loud voice. At the end he was literally yelling, "TRANSLATED BY RICHARD PEVEAR AND LARISSA VOLOKHONSKY." I made the mistake of making confused eye contact with this man, which launched him into what he must have thought was a conversation but was actually a one-sided dialogue about his entire life. He's in college now and that's so hard when you're older and plus he had the discipline of the military for fourteen years and what's he gonna do without that now but his son got a football scholarship to Arizona and that's great because he's had hardships and it's gonna be so scary to get into the workforce for real for the first time and gosh how do you go about making new friends in a new place when you're old because you know it's not easy to approach people and you're not fit and you can't eat anything you want like when you're young. I made "Uh..." noises at intervals while frantically checking if my friend had come out of the movie yet. At one point I kind of clutched my book to my chest and he begged (BEGGED) to know what it was about, so I gave him a sketchy outline and he screamed, "OH, I SAW THAT MOVIE! IT WAS EXCELLENT!" (I don't think that anyone has ever made that book into a movie.) When I finally got up to leave he did not break his sentence until I was in arm's reach, at which point he frantically pumped my hand and said, "So nice to meet you. You are a wonderful young man." So, well, that was nice, at least.

2. I was full of nervous energy after my Italian final on the last day of classes - it was one of those oral-style ones like in Italy and those freak me out, so I walked into town afterward to burn off a little energy. As I was walking back to campus a second crazy dressed in khaki pants and no shirt (that's always a bad sign, right?) stopped me and said, "Hello sir. I have something to say to you." Uh oh. "Once I fought the KKK," he said. "You know what you've got to think when you fight the KKK?" "What?" I said. I was anticipating him pulling out a switchblade or something. But he said, "They're just sheets. Just sheets!" There's something profound in that, I think.

--Last Sunday morning I went on a hike at 4 AM to the top of a mountain in order to watch the sunrise. It was lovely. I guess I've never really seen a sunrise, or if I have I wasn't paying attention. There's a point where you can actively see the disc of the sun come up over the horizon. I never really knew that.

--Rebecca Soni and Jessica Hardy dueled out an awesome 100 breast at Brazilian Nationals the other day. So nice to see. Hardy was just recently cleared to be eligible for London, so it's great that she hadn't lost her fire in that horrible wait period. Incredible mental toughness. Good for her. If they keep this up, US could go 1-2 at the Olympics. Plus she posted an in-season top-ranked time in the 50 breast. She's so good at that event. I kind of doubt if she'll ever hit her 100 world record again, but she could do very well at Worlds in the 50, if she's allowed to swim it. The selection for that one is vague, though, so she might not actually do it.

--The thesis, which I have loathed from start to finish, is done and the manuscript is submitted. My last English paper as an undergraduate was also the first time I ever wrote a paper without reading the book. I got an A. So basically that means my education was a success.I have two more finals to finish on my own time and I'm done. Summer is approaching and I'm actually excited about it. I'm returning to my lifeguard job. Usually at that place, returning as a post-grad is a source of deep shame and summer-long derision, but I just learned last week that I will have a job come September, so I can return with my head held high. I am actually rather excited to chat with the pool moms about it as they pass my desk. They're all such supportive ladies.

--I have gotten so much reading done lately. This is nice, because I've also been doing a lot of drinking, and those two things don't often mesh well in my life. I picked up another Waugh novel last night. I liked but didn't love Brideshead Revisited, but his books are all published in these lovely pastel paperbacks that I envision looking splendid all lined up on my bookshelf. Annoyingly expensive, though.

--I made a Twitter. I do not plan on writing in it, just using it to check other people's. So far this has sucked the fun out of checking other people's Twitters. It's too easy now.