Sunday, May 8

Happy Mother’s Day! Being at home on a Sunday usually means going to church with my mom and Dan, and today was no different. I asked them to at least spare me the agony of going back to the po-dunk one we went to for Easter service a month ago, so we did. This one was much larger and a lot newer, and I have to say it was more tolerable. I don’t know, it just seems to me that if you’re going to go to a church, you should at least pick one that you don’t feel like poking your eyeballs out at the whole time. Well anyway, we all went back to the house after mass and relaxed for a bit while mom threw a pizza in the oven for lunch. I gave her and Dan a short little computer class while we were waiting so I could show both of them a few things in iPhoto. Both of them seemed to follow what I was doing pretty well, but I’m sure they’ve already forgotten everything (sorry mom). Anyway, we sat down and ate our lunch, and then Dan and I went downstairs to play some ping-pong afterwards. I hadn’t played since high school, so he was getting all cocky and kicking my ass, but I guess I can’t blame him—I would’ve been worse if I was winning. By 3 p.m. or so I was thinking about packing up and leaving, but my mom suggested running up to town to grab some ice cream, so that’s what we ended up doing. The place we went to actually had soft serve, so I was finally able to get my flurry fix. I’m not sure if it was as good as Sweet Sensations, but then again, what is? It was pushing 4 by the time we got back to the house, so I did finally pack up my car, and said goodbye to my mom and Dan. They were sad to see me go, but I’m definitely glad I got so spend Mother’s Day with my mom. The drive home seemed to go by even slower than usual, but I still made really good time, and got back in just under four hours. I pretty much spent the night unpacking and lounging around the room, but I was already pretty pooped from my long weekend, so I went to bed by 11:30 or so. I talked to Stefy on the phone and online for a little bit before I cashed in, and it was good to finally catch up with her and talk about the weekend. It sounds like her Mother’s Day wasn’t quite as rosy as mine, but it’s a long story. Tomorrow is my first day back to work for the summer session. I’ll probably be working at LEAST eight hours a day, so I need my beauty rest.

Saturday, May 7

Well, there wasn’t much hope for sleeping in this morning since I had to drive to Ohio, so I had Stefy come wake me up at 8:00. I hopped in the shower and snagged a few pieces of Teri’s fantastic banana bread for breakfast, and then pretty much had to take off and hit the road for Ohio. It was really sad to finally have to leave Stefy at home for the beginning of the summer break, but she had to stay home to be with her mom for Mother’s Day, and I had to leave so I could see mine too. The drive was going really smoothly for about the first two hours or so, and I was making wonderful time until I hit Toledo. Traffic came to a screeching halt out of nowhere, and I ended up sitting there barely moving for about 30 minutes. I was getting pretty antsy just sitting and waiting, but the traffic eventually started moving again, and I still ended up making it to my mom and Dan’s within four hours. My tummy was pretty hungry by the time I got to the house, so Dan whipped up a couple hot dogs for lunch, and I sat and talked with the folks while I ate. There really wasn’t a whole lot going on this afternoon, but since I needed to pick up at least one new pair of pants for work at the Gap, we decided to make a run out to the mall this afternoon. I found a really cool pair of pin-striped gray slacks at the Gap, and on our way out of the mall I managed to talk my mom into helping me look for a new black belt to go with them. Of course, the store we stopped into had a bunch of really nice dress shirts and ties on sale too, so we ended up having one of the guys there help me pick out a nice shirt/tie combo to match my new pants. Anyway, we eventually found a pair that looked really well together, and finally left the mall—it was a pretty successful trip though, if I may say so. Dan started grilling some ribs on the grill when we got back to the house, so I had my mom sit down with me so I could show her a few new tricks with OS X Tiger. Dinner was ready after about an hour, so we all sat down and enjoyed the big feast that Dan had prepared for us. I hadn’t eaten ribs in at least a few years, and the experience reminded me why I never order them in a restaurant—they taste fantastic, but I’m completely slathered in barbecue sauce by the time I’m done eating. So, after I hosed myself off after dinner, we sort of just putsed around for a little bit, and eventually decided to start a game of Up Words. For those who don’t know, this game is basically a bastardized version of Scrabble that Dan likes to play, because he always seems to win. So, I was pretty much just sitting there reading Newsweek and EW the whole time we were playing—and kicking everyone’s ass for most of the time—but Mr. Schafer managed to pull another victory out of his ass. Of course, he had to have my mom help him pick out words a few times, so I suppose it’s only fair to call his manhood into question in terms of the soundness of his victory, but oh well. It was close to 11:30 by the time we were done playing, so we sat down to watch SNL. The opening sketch with Paula Abdul was actually really funny, but it was pretty much downhill from there. I was dozing off for most of the next half hour or so, and eventually woke up at about 2 a.m. with the TV still on. So, I sort of had to stumble up the stairs and throw myself into bed, but I guess I managed to get up there without falling down the stairs or anything. I don’t really remember though.

Friday, May 6

Movin’ out day on campus. I was up by 7:30, and made it to the dorm by 8:30 to help Stefy start moving everything out of Holmes for the year. Stef and I loaded up her car as much as we could, and then I ran back to the apartment and swapped it with mine so we could pack it up as well. Now, I know we got an early start and all, but we somehow managed to get everything done by 10:30 this morning. I don’t think I EVER had to wait for an elevator the whole time, and I didn’t have any trouble parking close to the building either. In fact, we probably spent about the last half hour at the dorm taking pictures of Stef with all her girlfriends saying goodbye and whatnot, so it was such a breeze. Gotta give my girl credit for being all packed and being the first one out, especially so early in the day. Anyway, like I said, we were on the road by 10:30 or so, and made it to Stef’s house shortly before noon. Stefy wanted to change her clothes before heading out to Target for some Mother’s Day shopping, so I unpacked all the stuff in my car while I was waiting, and we took off once she was ready. Miss Spiro treated me to a nice lunch at Panera as a thank-you for helping her move, and we popped over to Target afterwards. I ended up buying “West Side Story” for my mom on DVD since it’s one of her favorites, and also grabbed a cute gift bag to put it in for tomorrow. Stef ended up buying “The Best of Jimmy Fallon” DVD while we were there too, so once we came back to the house we went down to the theater room and popped that in to kill some time. There were a lot of really funny clips, but I managed to doze off on the couch for part of our screening. Anyway, once the DVD was over it was pretty much time to head out with Stef’s folks to Sean and Marina’s house for our first official cook-out at their new place. The house is in Grosse Pointe, and is seriously the cutest place ever. It’s an older home, but it’s very well-decorated, and has about a hundred cool little rooms to check out. We sat outside and played with Colin and their new dog Ucho for a bit while the burgers and hot dogs were on the grill. Colin—Stef’s older nephew, who’s about three—has apparently become quite the photographer, since he was snapping pictures on his little Polaroid camera left and right all night. I must say, for just being a little kid, he does a hell of a job squaring up the frame most of the time, and his pictures are all pretty good. Anyway, we had a really nice little backyard barbecue tonight, and after dinner we decided to go for a walk. Marina wanted to show us the neighborhood, so Stef, Teri, Colin, Ucho, and I joined her on the tour. This short little stroll turned out to be quite the trek though… I bet we were out there walking for at least an hour, and none of us were exactly sporting the best footwear, so everyone was pretty whipped by the time we got back to the house. Still, Marina had enough energy left to dish up some really good dessert for all of us, so we stayed a little bit longer and relaxed for a while. We eventually departed at around 9:30 or so, and by the time we made it back to the Spiro’s, I think everyone pretty much went straight to bed. Whew. What a looooong day!

Thursday, May 5

My last exam of Junior year started at 10 a.m. this morning. Film History. Another short answer and essay test. I feel like I gave pretty solid responses on four of the five short answers, and think I did a pretty decent job of answering the essays. I did manage to study for about an hour or two in the middle of my day yesterday, but one of the films I totally forgot to look back at my notes on, “Yeelen”, turned out to be one of the ones we needed to discuss in an essay. I think I managed to BS my way through most of it, but it certainly didn’t help that I couldn’t remember a single character’s name. Oh well. I felt pretty good on my way out when Prof. Fay handed back our last paper of the semester, and I got 3.7 on it. I really don’t think it’s quite sunk in yet that my Junior year is over now. It’s definitely a relief though knowing that I’m done for at least a couple months. Now my goal, like every summer, is to get as dumb as possible before my next slate of classes starts in July. Anyway, I worked at the office for most of the afternoon today, and am planning to buzz over to my dad’s for dinner afterwards (I’m writing this at 2:30). Tonight is looking pretty low-key. I might do some cleaning around the apartment and watch some TV, but there really aren’t any plans at this point. It’s sounding like Stefy is going to spend the evening hangin’ out with the girls at Holmes since it’s their last night in the dorms, but I’m getting up early tomorrow morning to go over there and help her pack everything up and move home. Well, I guess that’s it for Year #3 of college. I hope everyone’s exam week went well.

Wednesday, May 4

Does 7:45 in the morning sound a little early for an exam? Apparently not. My brain was functional enough this morning to find my way to the Natural Sciences Building, but man, that’s just painfully early. The Sociology exam really wasn’t any worse than any of the others, but I was definitely glad to have that piece of crap class over with. Since I was out of there by 8:15 this morning, there was enough time for me to go into the office for a couple hours. The time went by really fast though, and I left at around 10:30 to go back to the apartment and study for my English Lit final for a little bit. The whole thing was over Milton’s “Paradise Lost”, so I really didn’t need a whole lot of time to study. Also, since we knew going in that it was an open-book, open-note test, I pretty much just made some notes in the margins and called it good. I left to pick up Stef from the dorm shortly after noon, and we grabbed a bite of lunch and took it back to the apartment to eat before heading back up to Grand River for our exams at 3:00. I told Stef to just send me a text message when she was done with her IAH final, and my phone was vibrating in less than a half hour. Of course, I wasn’t so lucky—I wrote for the entire two hours, and felt like my hand was going to fall off by the time I handed in my blue book. I think I did really well on this test though. The short-answer questions were all really easy, and the essays were also pretty painless—there was just a LOT to cover. It was a load off to say the least once I walked out of that class for the last time. Stefy was right there waiting for me after having killed an hour and a half up at Barnes and Noble, so I took her straight back to the dorm on my way to the apartment. I putsed around there for a couple hours before finally heading over to Holmes in Stefy’s car so we could pack up some things from her room. We watched American Idol while I was over there, and were both relieved when that asshole Scott Savol finally got booted. After the show we both went back to the pad to catch the big Primetime Live special about American Idol, but it turned out to be a pretty crappy report. Not that I really care to defend Paula Abdul or anything, but that Cory Clark seems like he’s full of shit. Ok, at this point I’m realizing that I’ve talked about American Idol for a little too long, so I’m going to wrap it up there. Tomorrow’s my last exam of the year. Better get some sleep!

Tuesday, May 3

A full day at the office today. And by the way—where’s the sun we were supposed to get today? Well anyway, I kept pretty busy for most of the day, and even found a few minutes to squeeze into some open classes on MSU’s site for fall semester next year. So far I’m signed up for a 3** level Econ class, a 2** level Comm. class, and a 1** level Tennis II class—and my Fridays are still wide open at this point. Hopefully everything will come together in the next week or so. Anyway, I worked until about 4 this afternoon, and then went back to the pad to do some studying form my Sociology exam tomorrow. I basically just had to do a couple readings and glance over the vocab for this final section though, so it was pretty painless. Once that crap was out of the way, I went and picked up Stefy at the dorm, and we picked up some Jersey Giants for dinner. We came back to the apartment, and pretty much spent the night relaxing with our usual Tuesday night lineup: the Feud, Wheel, Jeopardy, American Idol, Sex and the City, and the Pistons. We're pretty hip like that. Well, tomorrow is a one-two punch of Sociology and English Lit exams. The soc final starts bright and early at 7:45 in the morning, so I better get some sleep so I'm not passing out during the test.

Monday, May 2

While I technically didn’t have any in-class finals today, I did have a take-home exam due by 3 p.m. for my Film Theory class. Prof. Fay had posted the guidelines online last Friday, so I already sorta knew what to expect, but I definitely underestimated how much time I’d need to work on it. It was basically two one thousand word essays (max), and I spent from about 7:30 to 2:45 plowing through both of them. For the first one, we had to write about a book I hadn’t read as well as some of the others, but it was actually pretty easy to piece together—it was just really time consuming. The second one, which covered more recent material, seemed a bit easier, but I just totally hit a wall at around 1 p.m. this afternoon, so the last half of it is a little forced. As I was printing the paper out at 2:45—15 minutes before the deadline, mind you—I ran out of paper in my printer. Luckily I managed to track down one extra sheet pretty quickly, but by then I pretty much had to high tail it across campus to get that thing to Prof. Fay’s mailbox by 3. Of course I made it with 7 minutes to spare, so that was a huge load off. Anyway, I pretty much came back to the pad afterwards and spent the rest of the afternoon putsing around on my computer and watching some TV. There aren’t any exams tomorrow, so I’m doing whatever I can to take it easy and unwind before the tidal wave that’ll hit on Wednesday.