Back in Action!

Hey howdy hey, y'all!

I've finally emerged from underneath the OH GOD I'M GRADUATING WHAT IS MY LIFE rock, and I'm ready to start my new post-grad life! At least until I go to grad school. Then I might have to disappear for a bit again, but I'm taking a year off so that should be okay.

In the three weeks since finals ended, I have:

~ graduated with major honors, Collegium V honors (that's the honors college at UT Dallas, my lovely alma mater), and Latin honors (summa cum laude!!)
~ partied a goodly amount (though I probably could have stood to party harder, I've had a lot of other things on my plate)
~ drove all night to get from Dallas, Texas to Pascagoula, Mississippi to visit my boyfriend's family with him (well, okay, HE drove all night. After about 2 AM I dozed the rest of the way)
~ held a baby alligator
~ went fishing for the first time ever and caught a TON of trout, the most fish I'll probably ever catch
~ got a nasty sunburn on my arm whilst catching said fish, which mysteriously turned into a deep (for me) tan. I don't normally tan much, I freckle and burn and peel.
~ finalized plans to stage manage a play called Hate Mail with Churchmouse Productions in July. I'm excited.
~ moved out of my apartment into my parents' house
~ helped move my uncle out of his apartment and into his new condo
~ freaked out a TON about having a job and being a real grown-up
~ started looking into what I need to do to get an agent for some film work (meaning extra work and commercials if all goes well, not Hollywood)
~ finalized plans to attend the annual Faulkner & Yoknapatawpha Conference at Ole Miss, and scope out their grad programs while I'm at it (with a side trip of investigating what kind of theatrical work I could do if I went to school there, and being mildly horrified by the limited options that go along with living in a small college town...maybe I could do stuff with the undergrad theater program? Oooh maybe they need a TA...)
~ obtained a job application for White Rock Coffee, a fantastic local coffee shop about 10 minutes from my house
~ slowly began the long, tedious, and overwhelming process of unpacking my things and putting away an apartment's worth of things in a 10x10 bedroom and my parents' basement, which already contained boxes and boxes of my grandparents' dishes, old school papers, things from my childhood, and who knows how much other stuff, at least half of which I need to sort through and donate, sell, or throw away.
~ got my transcription job back for the summer!! Why yes, potential grad schools, I am very familiar with reading Early Modern English texts in the original...what's that? You have some grant money for me? And a TA job? Oh, fabulous!
~ walked around for a few hours at AKON with one of my best friends and her sister, looking at people and running into old friends
~ went to a super awesome concert at Trees in Deep Ellum with my boyfriend. We saw Home by Hovercraft and Quiet Company, both of whom were fantastic. We were both tired and had to get up early the next morning, so we actually didn't stay for the headlining band, but I'm sure they were great too. It's a small venue, and the bands had to keep their equipment outside when they weren't playing because there wasn't enough room backstage. We felt kind of bad for them, because it rained off and on all night.
~ re-read Tam Lin by Pamela Dean (and laughed at the bits regarding English texts, many of which I completely disagreed with) and now I'm about half-way into American Gods by Neil Gaiman.

It's been a long three weeks. I'm going to try to start posting something new every Saturday, we'll see how it goes.