I got the grant in. It had to be postmarked by 5:00 today, and I turned it in by 4:45. But not without a wee amount of stress.

I had my grant application almost finished. Almost, maybe one more hour of work to pick the poems, make sure my name was on them all, photocopy, collate, three hole punch, walk to the Sip and Ship, and mail the sucker. Really, I had done all the hard thinking and revising over the last four days. It was just tiny finishing details.

So, I took a tutoring job in the morning and a tutoring job in the afternoon, and when my afternoon gig wanted to go another hour, I said I can do another 45 minutes. At 1:48 as I was walking out of the SPU library room study room, the school went into lockdown.

How do I know? My student was borrowing a school computer. Suddenly the screen was taken over by a huge black and yellow sign: Lockdown, this is not a drill. That was kind of scary in a big brother way as well as the potential threat to life way. Then I got the email on both accounts and the text. Really, big brother and I are tight.

We were on the third floor of the library. The study room didn't have a lock. A few minutes later a staff member herded all of us into the staff break room where we listened to choppers and tried to figure out what was going on from the Seattle police department website. I tried to figure out what poems I was going to send, but concentration wasn't really happening.

We were only in lockdown 30 minutes. Turns out someone on campus had been threatened. Until the police figured out the person who made the threat wasn't on campus, "out of an abundance of caution" lockdown for us. It retrospect the lockdown seems a little silly. I bet those types of threats happen everywhere every day, and they don't shut down that person's school or work. On the other hand, the school did have a crazy shooter last year who killed one and injured two others.

But my big take away is a little less procrastination. One never knows when the three hole punch is going to break (like mine did) or the powers that be will intervene.