I was just out in the hall with Cathy, Liz, Rudi, and Mark discussing the strange phenomenon of The Weekend here at Clarion. We go ninety-million miles an hour during the week -- writing and reading and critiquing -- that when the weekend arrives and we don't have anything to do, it's oddly unsettling. You'd think we'd try to catch up on sleep and relax, which I do, but after a while, I feel like I'm being unproductive and bored, and I crave human contact. I don't know, it's weird.

Well, we're at the half-way point now, three weeks gone, three weeks left to go. It feels like I've been here forever, known all these people for a good chunk of my life, yet it's gone too quickly.

Last night, after the reading (which went well; I only stumbled over my tongue a few times) we got treated to homemade pizzas and frozen margaritas and cookies and a remarkably carved pineapple. Lena broke out a frisbee and we got a pretty good game going, monkey-in-the-middle type, with a lot of running around and frentic frisbee tossing. After that, the water guns came out and we had a massive battle; Celia, Ron and Dan got soaked down to their underwear. But during the fight, a casualty. As Jamie was chasing me with his high-powered-five-stream blitzkreig of a super-soaker, his wet flip-flops slipped on the wet grass, and he fell hard onto a concrete sidewalk. He didn't break or sprain anything, but he tore up a lot of skin on his left leg. I feel really bad for the guy; he's going to be in pain for a while.

After coming back upstairs, a few of us watched the old Marx Brothers film Duck Soup, then played a strange game called Zombies!!! I went to bed around 2 AM, and slept in this morning until 11. There wasn't much to do today, so I watched my DVD of the movie Snatch on my laptop, then critiqued some stories. A bunch of us are going to dinner at 6, which will be nice.

Oh, and I can now visibly tell that I've lost weight. I didn't bring my scale here, so I don't know how much, but my face and gut are a little thinner. Nerves, plus monotonous cafeteria food that makes me lose my appetite, plus heat, plus a lot of walking. The Clarion Weight Loss Plan. I just hope I can keep it up when I get home.