Graduation is today — am somewhat nervy. Currently sitting here in a dress made out of a blanket. School over! Michigan in two days! What next?

Setting my homepage to Google News was a good idea, because now I at least skim headlines before clicking off. However, my ultimate plan is to read the news copiously enough that I can actually understand the Note. Now that most everything is over, I finally can! I’m only taking the one exam (Statistics), a punishment I probably deserve for my class-cutting ways. Plans for this new plethora of free time include 1) playing Set until my eyes bleed, 2) finally getting around to Fitzgerald, 3) kickboxing.

My scale tells me that I have 42% body fat. That can’t be true, can it? I’m already 70% water, or so they tell me, which leaves nothing for other important things, like hypothalamus!

Today I watched three movies in class, of which three one was good. In Debate, we watched Rainmaker, a 1997 Matt Damon lawyer movie that was decently interesting and occasionally realistic. Matt Damon is kind of muscle-y for a lawyer. In Economics, Blaine put on National Treasure, which really has no redeeming value. Nicolas Cage is insufficiently aesthetic to resurrect the anti-historical crap that goes on. There are not enough explosions. There is not enough funny. There is no kung-fu whatsoever. (Somehow, I recall enjoying this movie when watching it in a theater when it first came out, though even then acknowledging its complete lack of logic. I think I actually like movies a lot more in theater, for some reason. However, I did hate What the Bleep Do We Know, which is such a horrible movie oh my god.) The only good movie I watched today was La Grande Illusion, in World Area Studies (of course) — a 1937 movie about WWI and the “grand illusion” thereof. Verily, it was good. Definitely I do not watch enough old/good/classic movies, preferring instead to shamefully default to the explosion-y modern sorts.

The weekend slipped by in a blur of Debate fundraising. I’m done actually debating, but I’m still locked into a bunch of the unfun club stuff. Meanwhile I missed Newspaper for the third consecutive time thanks to my last IB test, Russian HL. This was a reasonably enjoyable test. I had to write a 400-word story about a desert island. I considered for a few seconds actually writing a decent, interesting, original story, but then realized my grasp of the language was too tenuous for any kind of ambitious plan, and wrote a stupid story about a plane crash and the Bermuda Triangle. As it turns out, I do not know how to say “Bermuda Triangle” in Russian. I spelled it out phonetically, though, and waxed ominous about it.

Saturday night, I went with some familials to a Russian concert — a bass opera singer, Nikita Storojev, and a pianist. They did some excellent Tchaikovsky, but I liked the Russian folk songs best. “Ei Ukhnem” is totally impressive when executed by a bearlike man with a huge voice and a perfectly pressed suit. I have to say, Storojev can pull off a bowtie even better than Josh Lyman, and certainly much better than Tucker Carlson. At any rate I feel like slightly less of a philistine now. It seems that I can enjoy classical music when it is either a) Russian of b) Flight of the Bumblebee.

Yesterday I read Thomas Harris’ Silence of the Lambs, which I would recommend to anyone who likes the extremely gory aspects of humanity. In all honesty, I have always rather liked Hannibal Lector. I mean, I know he would probably gut me and eat my spleen, should I ever encounter him, but I am a big fan of smart people. Even smart people that eat people. Whatever. Lector is an evil genius.

Well, thank God that’s over. I still have two more tests (IB Russian HL and AP Bio) but they pale in comparison to the four days of straight testing I just survived. Today wasn’t too bad, either — the Economics AP wasn’t difficult. I was sad because there were no theory questions on the free-response! So I went on wild tangents about what Keynes and Friedman would think even though it was completely unnecessary, and just barely got done in time.

I’m doing kickboxing today, and then sushi, to celebrate. But mostly I’m excited about getting sleep and maybe finding some different pants.

Oh and the Frontage Roads premiere was awesome! The magazine is completely beautiful this year. The cover turned out okay, too. And it was good.

Somehow when I go to sleep in the early morning, I tend to be insomniac and have these horrible choking nightmares, where I can’t wake up for minutes at a time. I have to struggle up out of sleep and I can barely sit up. Last night, I kept waking up every half hour screaming, only my voice would give out, and then I would realize I was still asleep and have to struggle awake. I don’t remember what I was screaming about now, except this one recurring scene of a man’s throat being stuffed with lead to keep him from talking. Huh. Now I find this kind of thing interesting (if incomprehensible) but I remember being absolutely horrified at the time. I suppose it’s the exams, or something.

Definitely wrote a lot about Stalin today. Now feel slightly guilty. Also, I now have a noticeable writing callus* from writing twenty pages in 2.5 hours. The WAS HL was pretty good, though — or at least the first two papers. Biology is unlikely to be nearly so charitable.

* This looks like it’s spelled wrong, doesn’t it? But it’s not!

Trying (failing) to study for things. The gauntlet ends on Thursday. Maybe I will nap, instead.

Okay the cool thing about the AP English Language test was that one of the passages on the essay section was from the Onion! I know! It was awesome!

Also I took the English HL Paper 1 today, which was two hours and eight pages of okay. I liked the poem, though.

It’s great that I get three whole days without a single test. The important stuff now is World Area Studies and Biology, which I’m not too interested in. I’m a little excited about the Economics AP — economics is so much fun! I think I’ll do some more of that in college. My parents have agreed that as long as I do some economics, I’ll still be “employable” and develop “real skills” and therefore will not have to major in a science. I am emphatically bad at science!

It’s offical: I’m coming to Michigan, May 27 - June 2. Wow, I am so excited about being done with tests.

Oh my GOD the English Language AP was awesome! Details in 48 hours, once it becomes safe to disclose. Arvind: Shhh.

Tomorrow’s Math Methods SL, which I am not very worried about. Except I haven’t done much math lately.