Yesterday I finished up my paper and my midterm by 3 pm -- most excellent. Even more excellent was that it wasn't like pulling teeth this time with the final draft. Somehow I was "on" when I needed to be, and I emailed my stuff to TAs and admin assistants with a satisfied sigh.

So endeth a month of pretty hard work, mostly concentrated in the past two weeks, with this paper and presentation and brief and midterm due. I could finally do laundry! And vaccuum! Very exciting.

Also exciting: meeting up with Neener, who insisted I pick a cuisine I wanted (Chinese) and essentially dragged me into Chinatown, leaving Crimson Square behind for the night. We ended up at Noodle Alcove, where the waitresses sigh and look put upon and answer questions with loud, accented complaints about how she can't possibly tell you what's "good" since everyone is different and likes different things and why aren't you, Asian girl, breaking it down for your white friend here? For some reason, this waitress really cracked me up -- it was like, how DARE you ask me to recommend something? Just freakin' pick something, moron.

After dinner, we wandered over to the movie theatre and discovered two important facts: (1) we had missed the start of "Constantine," the new Keanu movie, by 10 minutes, and (2) there is a movie called "Shark Bunnies" coming out. There is no way I can miss "Shark Bunnies" when it comes out. It reminds me of RosaG's old drawings in college of "El conejo de la muerte." I seriously considered asking for the movie poster and mailing it to her, actually.

But back to "Constantine": so we missed it by 10 minutes, and stood around debating whether to go see it somewhere else, when the somewhere else was at the other side of town in an utterly charmless neighborhood with one of those improbable New England names and where the theatre was a half mile walk over a freeway ramp from the subway stop.

Of course we went.

Such is the pull of the Keanu.

And of course the movie was dreadful.

But it wasn't Keanu's fault. The story was incomprehensible, the lead female character was undeveloped and unbelievable, the pacing dragged -- but gosh, that Keanu Reeves is mighty pretty. And Tilda Swinton as Gabriel is mesmerizing. And Peter Stormare (the eyeball replacement doctor in "Minority Report") plays a great Lucifer. And Keanu is mighty pretty. I may have mentioned that before.

I came back to the dorm in a post-big-project, Chinese-food, Keanu-driven happy haze, helped by the fact I only slept 5 hours the night before. Had a leisurely cigarette outside. Then went in and hooked up with someone in my hallway. With whom I have hooked up before, and known it to be a bad idea both times, and yet -- as I used to sing with BC -- baby, it's cold outside. But oh, baby, what a bad idea.
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Postscript: Because I am amused and astonished at the way life can be so circular (or Groundhog Day-ish, if you prefer), I checked my entries for this blog for this day, a year ago. Happens to be the day that I wrote a marathon entry about KB, my week-long fling last spring. Must be something about early March. KB, my friend, I'd miss you if I thought about you, and there are even times when I do. Think about you, that is. Thanks for the memories.