7:24 AM:

Let's see, what else? Well, my brother almost drowned himself the other day, apparently due to being in a deeper part of a pool than he'd thought he was in, but I gather that he's okay now, albeit still under observation in the hospital. This has only served to make me glad that I never learned to swim. Which may sound like exactly the wrong lesson, but it means that I never get into pools, hence no risk of drowning. Works for me.

(But what if I end up in a plane crash at sea? While this is a question people have asked me in all seriousness, I think not knowing how to swim would be the least of my worries in that scenario.)

All my grades are now in. As expected, I got an A in Public Speaking. As for the final two... Painting, B. Political Science, B+. Making my final GPA 3.74215, just .008 short of magna cum laude. Oh, well. That's what I get for trying to get into grad schools during my senior year. At least I managed that, so I guess it was worth it.

Wednesday was Graduation Day.

Somehow, I can't seem to muster up the enthusiasm to recount all the details here. There are too many of them, and I'm not at all confident that they're worth reading. But, well, let's try to at least hit the highlights.

The main ceremony was okay, although I felt kind of detached from it. From a strict technical standpoint, I won't officially graduate until the end of the summer, which made the ceremony itself sort of irrelevant for me. If I'd filed my diploma card in time, then I'd be graduating now, and this would have been the real thing; as it stands, despite the fact that I've finished all my classes, this officially meant nothing; my actual graduation will come in a couple of months when somebody in the administration hits the return key on her computer. It's not quite the same.

The other big problem -- well, aside from my general grumpiness and semiconsciousness, given that I arrived there at 8:30 AM -- took the form of a couple of very vocal students seated right behind me. They didn't seem particularly interested in anything short of getting out of there and going home, and offered a loud and disparaging commentary throughout the speeches and other ceremonial stuff. This pretty much killed the mood for me, when I wasn't fighting the urge to turn around and strangle them. Alas.

On the bright side, those of us majoring in Arts and Humanities were seated in the shade, so we were comfortable. You had to pity the other graduates, who were right out there in the sun, in black caps and gowns.

Anyway, from there to the English department ceremony. I made a slight detour to a soda machine along the way, picking up a Dr Pepper before proceeding to the auditorium. To which I arrived about ten minutes before any of my fellow graduates.

The obvious reason for this being that -- perhaps alone among my fellow graduates -- I didn't have to meet up with my nearest and dearest between the ceremonies, because none of my nearest and dearest were there.

Which depressed me somewhat.

But at least the English Department faculty and staff were there, many members of which qualify as extended family by this point. And I enjoyed the ceremony itself. And each of the four times I crossed the stage to pick up various certificates (itself admittedly a bit of a boost), the department chair had an encouraging word for me, so I was feeling rather better by the time we got done.

And then it was over, and eventually I went home and got some sleep.

3:27 AM:

Oh, dear Aslan. This doesn't look good at all.

(Found via Jennifer.)

3:26 AM:

Ooh. I just checked my bank account, and my tax refund came! Okay, that's this month's rent taken care of.

Oh, and two of my grades are in. An A in Linguistics; a B- in Fitness through Diet, Nutrition, and Exercise. The latter probably clinches my final graduation status as cum laude, rather than magna cum laude, but, you know, I can live with that.

I'm right on the line, just now. To qualify for magna cum laude, you need a GPA of 3.75. I'm currently at 3.772, but there are three courses unaccounted for. One of them is Public Speaking, and I'm confident of getting an A in that. This leaves Painting, and Political Science. My expectation -- perhaps "guess" would be a better word -- is that I'll get something in the B range for both those courses.

If, in fact, I get the A in Public Speaking, and a B in each of the other two, my GPA drops to 3.73, just below magna cum laude level. On the other hand, if I somehow get a B+ in both, I'll end up with 3.7509, just over the line. But I really don't expect that to happen.

Oh, the other longshot scenario would transpire if my Painting professor would generously give me an A-, while I'd get a B- in Political Science. That'd leave me with a GPA of 3.74509, which would presumably just barely tip the scales in my favor. This seems slightly more likely than the last paragraph's scenario, but that's not saying much. Neither is at all likely to occur.

The Tony Awards were fun.

It's a pity there's no way I can afford to go see The Producers. Still, I'm so glad for Mel Brooks, finding another form in which to work and succeeding so well at it.

Ah, well. I'll just have to settle for the cast recording.

9:59 PM:

So I saw Shrek last night.

I was with a friend and his wife. The question had been whether to go on Saturday night or Sunday afternoon. Given how late nightfall is these days, the former would have to be really late, but I pointed out that there was an advantage to this: a late-night showing was our only hope of seeing this movie in a theatre without being surrounded by noisy children.

Ha, I say, laughing hollowly. Ha.

The film started at 11:20 PM, and we were surrounded by children of all ages, who made their presence known throughout the film, crying whenever anything remotely frightening happened, running through the aisles, and so on. This suggests two questions, the first being why anybody would take their children to a film ending about one in the morning, and the second being why anybody would take young children to this film in the first place; it's not remotely suitable for them. (But no, it's animated, so it must be just fine for all the family. Of course.)

I've said this before, and I'll say it again: there's a fortune to be made for a theatre owner who'll set aside one night a week for grown-ups only. Although, as my friend pointed out, the Supreme Court would probably rule that to be discriminatory. Hmmph.

Aside from that... it's a good film, lots of fun. 3.5 stars, out of a possible 4. My only criticisms would be that a few bits grossed me out, that some of Eddie Murphy's dialogue was too anachronistic for my taste, and that the ending was obvious a mile away. That last point would be acceptable in a straight fairy tale; a film mocking the conventions of the genre, as this one does, needs to do more.

Still, on the whole, it's a gleeful, uninhibited send-up of everything Disney, well worth watching. (I particularly liked the bit in which Princess Fiona sings in the morning, a dead-on parody of the corresponding sequence in Snow White.) And the animation is amazing. Just rent out the entire theatre and leave the kids at home, or wait 'till you can get it on video.