I like the kind of e-mails I sometimes get in my Bethel account.

A squirrel trap with a squirrel in it was stolen from outside the library between 12:00pm and 1:30pm this afternoon, Thursday, April 22, 2010. I would appreciate any information on this theft. The person who took the squirrel should also be aware that the squirrel may have sarcoptic mange, a disease which is contagious to humans. I would appreciate it if the squirrel is 1) released unharmed, and 2) that my trap is returned undamaged. Also, the individual should know that only those with a scientific purposes license are allowed to trap and handled squirrels, and thus, they are in violation of Indiana state law. Stealing the trap also was illegal. If the trap is damaged in any way, that is vandalism, which is also illegal. If anyone has information or saw who committed these crimes, please let me know as soon as possible.

The individual should also know that I do have a PhD in wildlife ecology and management, and I do know what I am doing, and that the squirrel was not going to be harmed.

Really? We're down to stealing squirrels?

Okay, okay, so I can't keep up a lie. I can accept that.

April Fool, my darlings. The video thing was true, the tinily worded bit was not.

I spoke too soon.

My OT Lit teacher does, in fact, know about Holy Week. At the end of our class on Wednesday, after studying Isaiah, he played us two videos.

The first was a collection of clips from The Passion of the Christ accompanied by Amazing Grace sung in the heavily stylistic, jazz-inspired way that is so dear to Bethelites. The second was O Sacred Head, Now Wounded in the same style, for which I may never forgive them. Afterward several of my classmates and my teacher were crying. It was really awkward and painful.

Speaking of awkward and painful... a certain... pink-hatted fellow I knew slightly asked me out the other day. I didn't mention it to anyone, but I figured I'd have to sometime.

Pop quiz!

1. What do you call the week leading up to Easter?
ANSWER: HOLY WEEK.

2. How do you act during Holy week?
ANSWER: SOLEMN.
[Edit: I will also accept partially synonymous answers such as "prayerful," "sad," or "contemplative."]

Congratulations! YOU NOW KNOW MORE THAN THE PEOPLE AT BETHEL. Yes, meine Freunden, Easter is already being celebrated at Bethel. A Christian college.

There were plastic candy-filled eggs in the cafeteria (except this one girl near me kept finding eggs filled with salad) and my teachers talk about Easter as if it's pretty much here.

REALLY, BETHEL? Are you too optimistic for that tiny matter of CHRIST'S DEATH? You know, THE MOST IMPORTANT PART EVER???

In case you can't tell, I'm REALLY REALLY APPALLED at this behavior.

Behavioral Self-Management.

Read Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech. Please. It's pretty short, and one of the characters is named Margaret Cadaver.

Anyway, what this post is really about: School, for duh. In Psych we have an assignment to manage our behavior. (See post title.) We picked a behavior—say biting your fingernails or drinking water. (*Nudgenudge*, Snap.) For one week—last week—we observed how often we performed this behavior. Say we bit our fingernails 30 times a day or drank 0 glasses of water. Then we set goals for ourselves for the next three weeks: Get down to 20 bitings a day, or 1 glass of water a day for the first week, 10 bitings or 2 glasses the second week, 0 bitings or 3 glasses the third week. The point is gradually changing.

To do this, we also set daily and weekly rewards.

My behavior is writing, seeing as I don't seem to write at all. For one week I observed how much extracurricular prose I wrote, rounding it down to the nearest hundred. I wrote 0 all week. (Despairing emoticon.) So this week I'm just writing 500 words a day. If I get that before midnight, I can read facebook and other peoples' blogs. If I do it every day for a week, I can call someone. (Y'all might know how I like to talk on the phone sometimes.) Also—for every 1,500 mark I get in any particular story, I can read a chapter of Forest Born. And I don't mean I can write 1,500 in one story and 1,500 in another; I mean once I hit the 1,500 mark in a story, then 3,000 in that story or a different one, then 4,500—etc. (There are 30 chapters in Forest Born, so I'll write 45,000 words.) This ought to be incentive to stick with a story, right?

Right?*

Over the next two weeks I'll increase it to writing 1,000 and 1,500 words a day.

The thing is, I didn't get enough words on Thursday. I was going to call zAaron after this week because I haven't talked to him, but now I can't. I'm sorry.

*Why do I keep writing my paragraphs long-short-long-short? It's kind of funny. I've been doing it for a long time.

If I would complain about any part of my writer's block, it would be sprinting. In November 2008 while I was writing that novel, I could write 500 words in 10 minutes, no sweat. I'd do two 10-minute sprints and a 20-minute sprint and have 2,000 words for the day. It was kind of tiring, but I was still able to do it. And now I can't get 500 words in under 13 minutes, and it's like pulling teeth. It's been a year and a third. Please, when can I start writing again?

What is it with all this SCHOOL?

Fifth post in a row about school, and yes, I know I haven't even posted for going on two months.

So that computer program for Sight Singing & Ear Training is REALLY LAME. For SERIOUS. It makes things way harder than they need to be, and is extremely confusing. I had to just hope I was doing the right exercises because I needed to get them done and I didn't have time to troll through pages of "Help" to see if it addressed my problem. Fortunately, not only did I catch up my 3-weeks-of-homework-in-1, I accidentally did 6-weeks-of-homework-in-2, and am completely done for the semester. Whatever.

Psych is really fascinating. OT Lit as well, though it more often slips into questionable theology.

What is the definition of "friend" in college? Is it someone you say hi to in the halls, someone who'll make you a copy of their notes, someone whose dorm you've hung out in?

In case some of you haven't been checking, I've been updating my book list. It's SO EXCITING you will have a HEART ATTACK.

More happy, happy adventures in school!

Doing homework to catch up with my new class, I learned:

1. if I want to get everything right, I'm going to be a bit slow by the computer's standards.
2. if I actually do it faster, the computer says "Too quick for accuracy. Your score is 0." EVEN IF I GOT THEM ALL RIGHT.
3. —despite my teacher saying this several times—the computer DOES NOT SAVE PROGRESS.

So there's an hour lost on frustrating, tedious stuff I already know, which I now have to repeat.

I suppose I'm exaggerating a little bit... it's more like forty-five minutes that was lost. For some reason the computer DID save what I did at first. Weirdo.