April Firsts

     Another April Fool's Day with no tricks played on anyone. Rats. I did finish the first 5K race I ever entered this morning, so that's something, though. There were 92 entrants total, and I finished 39th overall with a time of 38:17. That was sixth out of seven in my division, and I mainly walked most of the way (I'm a sprinter; and terrible at anything resembling distance.) Maybe because I walk everywhere that was why I finished midpack? I'm used to traveling on foot, so I've learned to be more efficient? I don't know. I'm pretty sure most 5K's aren't run with a soundtrack of poetry playing in your mind, though. Snatches of Rudyard Kipling's "If" were narrated by Plato the Buffalo from Adventures From the Book of Virtues. (I know he recites it during an episode, but can't find that clip at the moment.) My goal was just to finish, and I did that, so next time I'll have a time to aim to beat.

     In other news....let's see. I donated blood for the first time two weeks ago, and I survived. I was afraid it was going to be like Ashland's horror story of the first time she tried donating blood (which won a Random Status of the Week Award). Like her, I also apparently have small veins. Unlike her story, there was no blood spurting everywhere. Three nurses looked at my arm before deciding they found one big enough - but I'm blaming this on their being exhausted from working all day. (It was like 4:45 on a Wednesday afternoon.) Once they found a vein the right size, it took about three minutes to finish filling the little bag, which they said was a lot faster than normal. My arm didn't bruise or anything, but the pricked finger they tested my iron levels on hurt for a couple days, and it was hard to type. (Your middle finger on the left hand is used often in typing - and so I couldn't play guitar for a while, either.)

     This week's movie in Gothic Film and Lit was a 1991 mystery directed by Kenneth Branagh called Dead Again. The plot was incredibly complicated, but it was a good movie. And well-constructed. (On rereading Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle, it was much better, because I could look at the mechanics of how she built the plot and notice all the foreshadowing.) Robin Williams played a serious role as a homeless psychiatrist, and Wayne Knight (Stan from Space Jam, Dennis Nedry in Jurassic Park) was in it, too.

     In not-for-school-but-for-sanity reading, I just finished Billie Letts's novel Where the Heart Is, which was full of thoroughly weird but incredibly real characters. I liked it. (It was made into a movie starring Natalie Portman.) And a biography of Agatha Christie (titled plainly Agatha Christie: A Biography) by Janet Morgan had some good parts, though it was somewhat dense and the pace was glacially slow. It would have been better if it were read concurrently with her autobiography.

     Capstone is due Wednesday, so all the seniors in the English Department are kind of freaking out. I have to (try to) tame my nemesis, ACADEMIC TONE IN WRITING, enough to pass the Committee's judgment. I think I can, I think I can...just keep swimming.... Dr. Mackie and Dr. Dial-Driver will both do their best to argue for me, so that's something.

     There've been at least three fire alarms in the last 36 hours, much to my annoyance.

     The beginning of April means that it's also the start of Stupid Profile Picture Week, and something like the sixth year it's been held. This is what my hair looks like after I get out of the shower. It tends to fall straight over my face.