In a whimpering, life-goes-on, did-anyone-notice sort of way, it's over. Jeff took his last final as a graduate student last night. Oh, yes, one could say it's not completely over yet. He has to finish up a project delayed by the inability of a professor to get him the information he needed.

But, in the grand scheme of things, it's over. No more leaving for work at 7:30 and coming home twelve hours later and then needing to study. In a week or so, the books on the kitchen table will go away—as, I hope, will the circles under his eyes.Note to self: rejoice.

So why do I feel so curiously enervated? Maybe it hasn't sunk in yet. Maybe I expected more overt celebrating when he arrived at our friends' apartment last night. I think it will take a week or two of being startled when Jeff appears in the living room by 5:30 for it to be real to me.

In the meantime I still get to deal with the awfulness of yesterday afternoon. There's nothing like spending two hours on strawberry pies for friends, sneaking a quick taste and deciding that it's going to be fab, and then having the pies fall—upside-down of course—on the floorboard of your car while you're driving out to said friends' apartment.

What do you say to this? I did the rapid-fire screaming of obscenities in the car so that no one could hear me (both for the demise of the pie and for the awful fucking mess I get to clean up). Then I went inside, asked for someone to make me a drink, and enlisted friends to scoop the goop up off of the floorboard of the car.

I was pissed. Pissed beyond measure. Everyone's coming over to my house for dinner tonight—a thought crossed my mind that the best sort of revenge for losing those pies would be to haul self over to the farmer's market today to get enough strawberries for two more. Making them again might somehow make up for the two that have destroyed the passenger-side floorboard of my car.

Looking like an idiot is bad enough—looking like an idiot while your friends get to laugh at you is much, much worse.

Much of this was salved by a couple of lovely drinks by Geof, which resulted in Jeff driving me home.

Today I think I shall attempt culinary redemption. ph33r.