Cohen Likes Mike and Ikes

What am I doing right now, you ask?
Well, I'm not reading the four (count 'em, four!) plays I need to read between now and Tuesday night's final exam. I don't know how I got so far behind on my reading the second half of the semester. I guess I really have been pretty slacktastic for the past three weeks. I managed to get through class discussions just by skimming online plot summaries, but now I feel like I actually need to read the plays I just read summaries of before. The thing is, I think I can skip this test entirely and still pass the class. And technically that's all I need to do at this point, just pass so I can graduate. I already got accepted into a Ph.D. program, and I can't imagine my GPA in my MA program is going to be a huge deciding factor in any future job applications I may fill out years from now when I'm on the market for a teaching job (assuming I make it to that point) so I can take a "C" in this class and it really doesn't matter. The thing is, it matters to my pride. If I can get an "A" in this class, then that means my GPA here will have been a perfect 4.0 and that would be sort of cool, even though I'm the only one that would know about it (Well, and whoever is reading this. You would know about it, too, since I told you just now). I'm just having a hard time forcing myself to make the effort to study, though. This is the very last thing I will ever have to do for my MA, and I just can't manage to get excited about it. I guess I'm not really a sprint-for-the finish sort of person.
I'm also not vaccuuming my apartment right now, even though I need to do that. I cleaned the kitchen and bathroom last night and told myself I could quit if I would vacuum and dust the bedroom and living room today, but now I'm not in a cleaning mood. Part of my uncharacteristic lax attitude about cleaning is that I'm getting ready to move. A month from tomorrow I'll be moving out of this apartment. Yikes! About two weeks from now I'll start packing. And I have to do intense cleaning when I move out anyway so I don't get charged for anything, so part of me is thinking, "Why clean now?" I mean, my apartment isn't actually dirty by any means, and it's still neat and organized and looks clean to the naked eye, so why bother? I'm just proud of myself for continuing to do my weekly housekeeping for this long, honestly. When I lived with Katy, we both stopped doing weekly cleaning around, oh, say, March, and we didn't actually move out of that apartment until AUGUST. I guess maybe I should vaccuum this week, though, since I won't be here to clean next weekend and by the weekend after that it will be getting too close to packing and chaos time to bother cleaning.
Speaking of moving, know what else I'm not doing right now? I'm not looking at apartments online, and I'm not comparing the cost of moving companies to figure out which one I should use. Looking at apartments online was just stressing me out, and I decided there's no point in looking online again until right before I go to [insert still undecided nickname for soon-to-be-hometown here] and attempt to find a place to lease. Stuff I like right now might not be available next month anyway, and I don't think there's a need to call an apartment locator to book an appointment this far in advance when most of the time you can just walk in and say, "I want to see some apartments". At least, that's how it works in Texas. As for moving companies, I think I have pretty much convinced my dad that using one of those storage pod companies is worth the extra cost because it will be so much more convenient. (Yes, my dad is paying my moving fees. I'm lucky.) So I may actually get to pack and unpack only once!
I'm not thinking too much about packing yet, but when I do think about it I just confuse myself. I went home to El Paso for my first two summers of college, so twice I packed pretty much everything I owned into a storage unit for the summer and took home only what I needed for three months. I'm doing the exact same thing this time (minus one month, plus one cross-country move, but whatever, close enough). The thing is, the last time I did that was four years ago and I no longer remember how I did it. I felt like I always had tons of clothes at home for the summer, but surely I must have just taken what fit in my two suitcases, right? Did I take home all of my jewelry? Is it worth taking home some of my books or am I fooling myself when I say I'm going to spend the summer brushing up on my theory so I'm ready for the Ph.D. classes (answer: probably)? Did I put all of my shower gel and lotion and stuff into storage for the summer and just borrow my mom's stuff? How did I decide what shoes to bring home and what shoes to say goodbye to for an entire summer? What if I get home and realize the one thing I really, really need is locked in a storage unit 2,000 miles across the country? I hate moving and packing, have I mentioned that? Really? Oh, okay.

Anyway, that's all the stuff I'm not doing. What I have been doing lately is mostly fun, and fun things are happening in the very near future. I spent Friday lying out by the dam with Mandi and Debbie all afternoon and it was a wonderfully lazy day. On Friday night Mandi, Debbie, Richie and I went to our favorite restaurant in the next town over, a kind of touristy restaurant right on the river that has delicious food and great atmosphere. I've been watching my friends' directing scenes and going out for drinks with various friends a lot more often than usual lately (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday night this week, and I would have gone out last night, too, except that the restaurant had been insanely busy all day and I got too worn out from working). This Thursday the core group of grad students and I are going to go out to dinner with two of our favorite profs (we decided to invite our three favorite professors out to dinner as sort of an end of the year celebration; two of them happily accepted our invitation but the third probably won't since she's the type that is extremely conscious-almost paranoid, in my opinion-about student/teacher boundaries, which is smart I guess). That should be fun. Then Mandi, Richie, Debbie and I are going to spend the weekend in Galveston. I'm really looking forward to it, and I'm hoping it won't rain this time so we can actually go to the beach. I didn't even SEE the beach when Mandi and I went a few weeks ago since it was so cold and rainy. They are my three favorite people in this program (and three of my favorite people ever, really) and it's going to be great to just relax together all weekend. It will be bittersweet too, though, since this will basically be our last big hurrah before Debbie goes to Stratford and then goes home to stay with her boyfriend for the summer and Richie goes to Canada until August and I go home to El Paso and then never come back. Sigh. Why do you always fall most deeply in love with a place right before it's time to leave it?
Anyway. I guess I should do that cleaning.