It's just five days

First night back and already the sleeplessness is setting in. I think I'm just too pent up over stuff, and need to relax a bit. I'm almost done with a paper that should have been in last Monday. The concepts are not hard, I know all the material and have done all the reading. The hard part is forcing myself to sit down and write it. It's like the challenge is gone becuase I know, I know the answers. If it's not a personal challenge, then why is it worth doing? I suppose an A would be nice, but it's not the same motivation. I'm just going to have to bite the bullet -- get it done, staple my doctor's note to it, and hand it in.

I'm babbling, though. Or am I? Is it possible to babble in a textual setting?

It's warm in Ithaca, and warmer in the apartment. I'm really enjoying the weather and having my window open. The best part is that it feels like the summer again. I spent the whole summer here, with Graham and Jason and Kajsa, and now that feeling is back. It was filled with lazy days and nights, and brimming with promises of greatness that never seemed to materialize, as if they were a passing dream in the morning sun or the fading touch of a love long lost. The soft June breezes whispered -- beckoned -- to us from the outside in the afternoons, and drove us to mischeif at night.

After their classes (and my job at the Journal), we'd make dinner and lay out in front of the TV watching endless hours of baseball. The weekends started on Thursdays for us then, and people seemed to be in high spirits. Tonight was the same way, with a similar cast of characters (Graham is living here again, and Jason came to visit). We watched playoff basketball this time; secure in the comforts of our living room, the comforts of each other's friendly chatter.

Of course now the weekend starts on Friday afternoon. There are deadlines to meet and projects to accomplish. I view the week not as a liesurely stroll, but rather as a race. It's filled with hurdles, and while I can see the finish line -- Friday -- clearly in the distance, it's still seems so far away. I know it will be a quick race, and in the end it'll linger like a childhood memory -- more sensory than substantive. Still, it's the anticipation that's got me now. It's the anticipation that always gets me.

And so at 4:26 a.m., I sit in the dark of my room. I await the dawn that signals the start of the day. I await the race's beginning, only in that it will speed the coming of the end.