The Final Day

Spring semester: day seventy-eight

Today is the last day of the spring semester. Technically, anyhow. It's the last day of classes campus-wide. Tomorrow is the students' "study day," and on Saturday morning, finals week starts. As you know, my own students' final is on Monday afternoon.

Not surprisingly, there's a lot going on right now, and a lot has been going on since I came home on Tuesday afternoon -- which a fair amount of I covered in my previous post here. While I am home until Monday morning, I still have a massive amount of things to do over the course of the next few days, things that take time and effort. Because my class is over now, I don't have to be on campus today (I normally would be on a Thursday morning, as you know). This gives me an extra day off to do all of that stuff that I normally wouldn't be able to take care of during any given week, and it's a very necessary day -- I will spend most of today grading through my students' papers. I'd like to finish them today and tomorrow if possible, since Daisy will be sleeping/working for the next week straight anyhow in order to attend my graduation, and those papers are the first thing on my to-do list.

But, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's pick up where I left off from my last post.

Yesterday morning when I got up, it was really sunny and warm (much like it is today, actually). The storms on Tuesday night must not have dropped a ton of rain, as the streets and my driveway were dry -- so, I figured, before it stormed again (or rained for another three or four days straight), it was probably a good idea to gas up the mower and mow the grass before a.) it got too hot, and b.) while I actually had the time to do it. So, I went down to the garage -- putting new oil and coolant into the car when I was down there as well -- and got the mower ready.

It turns out that I have enough gas left in the mower (and in the gas can) to probably last me about four or five more mows. I thought I had much less than that, as I've not filled that gas can since summer 2010 -- yes, it has been that long. This is mainly because summer 2011 and summer 2012 were two of the hottest, driest summers ever, and all the grass died -- which meant that I never had to mow it more than maybe twice each summer. As it's been raining here pretty regularly now, my yard became -- in the course of a month or so -- a fucking jungle, and it desperately needed to be mowed.

Here's the problem when your yard is a fucking jungle and your only mower is a $75 push mower from Walmart -- it's not easy to mow through that. Add in that even though the pavement was dry, the grass wasn't in most places, and you have a horrible mess of exercise, grunting/straining, and getting mild heatstroke on your hands -- not to mention that as soon as I started, my allergies basically exploded and I had to stop no less than five times to go stand in the shade to cool down and stop coughing and sneezing. It took me more than twice as long as it usually does to mow the grass yesterday because of all of these factors, and it didn't help that as soon as the mower went over grass that was too high for it to cut, it would get clogged and shut off (this happened probably twenty times). By the time I was done, I was exhausted, my lungs and nose hurt from my allergies, and I was pretty sure I was getting a low-grade sunburn from the all-of-a-sudden burning, blazing sun. I could've spent another hour doing the trimming and edging, as that looks horrible around the house, but I said fuck it and came back inside to shower. I took a very long, cool shower to cool off.

Twenty minutes after I got out of the shower, really dark clouds moved in, it got really dim and gray outside, and we were put under a Severe Thunderstorm Watch. Really? That couldn't have happened while I was outside mowing in the blazing sun?

Regardless, the mowing was done. Check one more thing off the to-do list. Next time I'll wait until a cloudy, warm day so that I can do the trimming too.

I talked to Daisy for a long time in the afternoon, as she was awake. I told her to tell her mother that I'd purchased a Mother's Day present for her and had shipped it to the house; it is scheduled to arrive tomorrow at some point. It's nothing big, but I hope it's something she enjoys. I also used the remainder of April's Amazon gift card to (finally) purchase a new dehydrator for the house, so that I can make jerky and dried fruit again, and took the one I had on the wedding registry for me and Daisy off there. With the new dehydrator coming, I finally have everything kitchen-wise I need for a while; my parents got me a rice cooker and small crock pot for Christmas, Daisy's mother got me a food processor, and Daisy herself got me a big refrigerator bottle and a Brita water filter kit months and months ago. When we get married, the rest of the stuff we need will be covered by the wedding registry, which is mostly small appliances and kitchen supplies at this point -- though there are still some other things on it (bedding, furniture, dishes, etc).

On Tuesday, Rae let me know that the graduation cap and gown, which I will need to purchase from the bookstore on Monday when I go back to campus, is over fifty dollars. $53, $54, something like that. This is highway robbery, of course. It's a thin layer of nylon and the cap is basically nylon and cardboard. That's it. But, in order to participate in the ceremony, we have to purchase it -- which is why the price is so high. My university's motto should be "Jacking you out of every penny possible, even on your last day there."

"That's ridiculous," I told her. "I don't have $53 to spare right now. Okay, well, I do, but I don't want to waste it on a gown I'm going to wear for two hours and then never, ever use again. That's ludicrous."

Maybe that "hey, we should share a gown" thing Jay had proposed wasn't so farfetched of an idea after all.

I don't really have a choice in the matter; I'll have to go over there on Monday morning and purchase it, as I've already RSVPed for the ceremony. Still, with the amount we pay in student fees (about $400 per semester, which isn't covered by our stipends; that's out of pocket, my friends), and the fact that we had to pay a fee in order to file a graduation application, the fucking gowns should be free.

My mother asked me if there have been any updates on the adjuncting position for the fall, or if there's anything else going on that I might be sticking around for and working here for over the summer. I told her that I don't yet know; again, everyone in the department is crazily running around trying to get stuff done, and I haven't had the chance to have a discussion with the chair about anything as of late because we've both been busy. I'm planning to email him sometime today or tomorrow and tell him I'd like to sit down with him for a few minutes on Monday morning to discuss what's happening along those lines -- I'll be on campus really early Monday anyhow to box up 90% of my office and to go get the aforementioned gown, and our students' exams aren't until 1PM. I know he'll be around at some point; the "Finals Feast" is at noon on Monday, where Pizza Hut caters the event, and everyone shows up for that -- I always help set everything up for it, too, since nobody else does or is there to do so. This year, I'm making a massive tub of vegan Oreo chocolate pudding for one of the desserts, as I've never brought anything else in for it in my three years as a grad student there. I have to get the remaining ingredients for that when I go shopping, actually.

Yesterday afternoon I also had a delightful surprise that raised my spirits somewhat -- my Federal tax refund came in the mail. I'll now be able to cash that check and won't have to worry about money for the trip to Omaha in a week and a half, and will be able to fill Daisy's gas tank for her with ease for her/our trips down here and back. My state refund hasn't come yet, though; since the feds got through mine that quickly (in less than a month), I'm expecting the state refund to not be far behind and to arrive over the next several days. I may wait and cash both checks together, depending on when it comes. Some of that money will also allow me to make a big shopping trip to Walmart as well, to get fruits and meat for the dehydrator, and to get those ingredients for the pudding, amongst other things. Most of it, however, I plan to save in order to use it this summer to get groceries and other necessities with, as after the end of this month I won't be getting paid any more, and my car insurance will be due at the end of June.

Daisy wanted to get me a graduation present; she kept asking me, for weeks, what I wanted. I told her to save her money, as it really wasn't important or necessary, though I did give her a few ideas. I showed her this digital TV hub with a 1TB HD in it that would be really useful to me, but then I bought the $3 TV for the downstairs, and really no longer needed or wanted it with the movie collection I have already, so I told her not to get it. Eventually I told her not to get me anything (especially as that hub was fairly expensive) and that if I found something I liked while we were out gallivanting around Omaha in a few weeks, she could get me something then. Realistically, I don't want anything; anything I'd find would be a luxury item, something I don't need, since my necessities are already pretty well covered. I don't need any luxury items; the ones I have now I barely use (hence why there's an XBOX in the corner of my room mostly gathering dust). The $3 TV downstairs was a luxury item, but it was also three dollars. There's really nothing else I want or need at the moment.

Last night we got some really nasty storms; there were tornadoes popping up all around the area, and golf-ball-size hail was reported less than ten miles from me. I put my car in the garage when they began to roll through, and of course, since I went to the trouble of doing that, all it did was rain hard here and give a pretty show of thunder and lightning before moving off quickly around the time I went to bed. There really wasn't even any wind, and no hail at all. Just hard rain and thunder. Figures. Daisy messaged me this morning to tell me that she has no power at her house in Omaha, and that it's been out since at least three in the morning, but doesn't know if it's storm-related or not -- it stormed up there too, apparently, and the Weather Channel is calling for more storms here this evening and in the overnight tonight.

My plans for the day are pretty simple: I'm going to grade papers. A lot of papers. Then I will pause to eat something and probably take a shower...before going back to grading. It's Thursday, and I have to have all of these papers, nearly fifty of them at 10-15 pages each, graded and recorded by Monday morning -- and I'd rather not spend all weekend slaving over them. I want to get them done so that I can mark one more thing off my to-do list; I have to do laundry and vacuum/clean again before Daisy comes down a week from today, not to mention write out a few bills, and with the way my schedule is set up next week, it's going to be a headache to get all that stuff done if I don't do it ASAP.