March On Out

     Another week down.
     It featured a tornado warning, drowning in an ocean of homework, no one having any idea of what's going on in Media Law, a classroom of white people analyzing a novel about Harlem blacks in the Great Depression, something like four fire alarms in three days, sleep schedule thrown all out of whack, and a lot of Netflixing Parks and Rec. 

     So the first storm of spring came to northeastern Oklahoma on Wednesday night. That wasn't exactly good, especially not for the folks with damaged property in Sand Springs, but it means spring is officially here. It's a weird part of the fabric of living here. If I ever live someplace without such varied weather, I'll probably miss it, for some reason. Anyway, everyone around RSU ran into the basement of the dining hall. It was a good time for people-watching. Some folks were studying, others playing cards or tracking the weather. Ran into Skylar; so that was one person I recognized. The NSU BCM storm crew had a blast tracking/chasing the storms.

     Jacob texted me on Monday afternoon to ask if I could film the SWAT show that night at Impact, which I totally would have done if I could have gotten to Tahlequah. It was good to catch up, though. And the show apparently went well.

     This week's novel-for-study was called Go Tell It On the Mountain, by a guy named James Baldwin, which didn't really feature the song itself at all. It was tiresome and confounding; more of a character study than anything else; there wasn't much plot. And it felt kind of wrong somehow for a classroom of white people try to dissect everything in the book, which is about blacks in 1935 New York City. And there was a lot of Pentecostalism in there, too; so that added to the difficulty in understanding it. And it didn't really improve much the second or third times through, either.

     Video production classes are a great example of Murphy's Law: If it can possibly by any wild stretch of the imagination go wrong, it pretty definitely will. So it's sort of a never-ending task of improvisation to whip something together to turn in by deadline. At the moment in the middle of patching together a short film due late next week.

     There's been way too many fire alarms this week. I was taking a shower when the first one went off Wednesday afternoon, so I grabbed a shirt and pajama pants from the dresser and flew down the stairs. And then there was the tornado warning a couple hours later once nerves had been slightly less jangled, and an hour after the storm left ANOTHER FIRE ALARM went off. And it was still raining. And then Friday morning AT 2 A.M. ANOTHER ALARM went off. So I got woken up out of a one-hour sleep by that to race out the door. And then I woke up at 9:50 this morning. And I have a class at 10. By 9:57 I was in my seat, and then a confusing pop-quiz on libel was being taken. There'll be a test in Media Law next week, and also a test for Interpersonal Communication on Thursday. Enrollment for fall is also sometime next week, maybe Tuesday.

     In SGYC news, it's now that much closer to July. Also, Derek got married. I've seriously lost track of the amount of people I know that's happened to... Amanda's baby is due just about any week; that's exciting.

     Parks and Rec is really addictive. And I kind of either hate or love almost every character. It's a very high-emotional-investment type of show. And if I was still at NSU, now I could totally jump into the BCM office debates over all things Parks-related.

     Kevin Durant's officially out for the rest of the season, so....there's that, too. It's been a ridiculous season; I think literally every single player on the roster has gotten hurt at least once. And yet still somehow we're three games ahead of Phoenix for the last playoff spot with ten to go. Bill Elliott's son Chase is racing this weekend for the first time in Sprint Cup, so that's kind of neat. Baseball season starts next week, so Josh and Mrs. Boyer are really excited for that. And the Drillers are sharing their new field with a soccer team, the Roughnecks, starting this year.

     Thursday was Dad's birthday. And it was also ten years ago that Mimi died. Which is almost half my life ago; I was eleven. That's a little odd.

     I really ought to try to find some new songs to learn to play. Out of ideas for good ones, though.

     It's been a very long week. And this weekend's full of more homework. Yay.