My blackhole

On Saturday, fifteen minutes before the start of my colleague's wedding, I was still waiting for Eric to come pick me up. Twenty minutes after the wedding started, we found ourselves stuck in traffic from the concert happening down the street from the wedding venue.

This morning, I drove to Jennifer's birthday surprise brunch with my gas light on because I had woken up late. I didn't have time to fill up and was worried I'd ruin the surprise if I showed up to the restaurant any later. Coasting along at a gas-saving 55 mph, I made it to the restaurant without incident. After eating cake and watching her open her presents, I jumped back in my car, watched as $20 barely filled my tank half way and booked it to Stanford for Irene's graduation.

Equipped with Irene's description of the graduation location as "the oval near the church," I did a speed-walk/run-shuffle across campus, stopping at each gathering of black-gowned people, looking for the education ceremony. Twenty minutes into the ceremony, I was sure they had already gotten to the K's, and did one last sprint to try to make it. Luckily, I had forgotten that graduations, unlike weddings, begin with a long series of speeches, so I made it with time to spare. But from this weekend's events, I have decided that the only explanation behind this stubborn tardiness is there must be a black hole surrounding me. Not the scary type that you'd imagine in space, sucking anything and everything near it into a murky, cold limbo. Mine is a mild-mannered one, nibbling away my extra twenty minutes here and there, especially when it thinks I'm not looking.