Holy crap.
Last night, when I got done with my next-to-last test-prep training class, I crashed on the couch in a state of sheer mental exhaustion. Even though I resigned myself to the fact that I was probably going to get very little done vis-a-vis my last (big) paper for the summer yesterday, I actually managed to write a full (1+ page!) outline for the paper to help collect my thoughts, and then proceeded to write roughly four pages of actual lit review stuff… which, for me, was pretty much miraculous.
Perhaps it was that feeling of self-satisfaction and calm that led me this morning to spend more than an hour at my computer cleaning up my iPod music library. See, the last time I put a new hard drive into my computer (this was roughly a year ago, mind you), I copied iTunes music over and re-imported it all. So I ended up with several hundred duplicate tracks, which then got transported to my new iPod at Christmastime. Ever since, when playing with the iPod, I’ve thought to myself, “Self, you should really delete off those duplicates.” But did I? Hell no!
Probably because I knew someday would come when I’d have genuinely important, time-sensitive things to do, and would need a procrastination excuse/distracion.
Then, this morning — again, filled with my own self-satisfaction at having gone above and beyond self expectations yesterday — I drove up to Denton to have a “last lunch” with a good friend who’s moving to Seattle while we’re gone to Europe. We chatted over lunch for 90 minutes, and yet I still left feeling as though we had so much more to talk to. But alas! She had to go back to work, and I have this damned paper to write.
Given my recent successes writing at the biblioteque, I decided to come to campus to finish up. I want to be done by 4:30 or 5:00, and so I’ve got roughly 2 hours (ish) to finish up. I’m less than halfway done, but I am still clinging tightly to my satisfaction with the outline, and hoping I can scrap together coherent *enough* prose to pass the class… as far as I know, this class is also a pass-fail one, so 70 percent effort should be good enough. I think I’m doing strong B work, so even if it’s not pass-fail, I think I can live with a B.
So… yeah! We fly to Europe tomorrow afternoon. HOLY SHIT! I stil need to do a few loads of laundry and, oh yes, pack, but most of the random small crap we’re taking is already in the packing staging area, so even that doesn’t intimidate me. What really freaks me out is that we’re going to be gone for 2 weeks and 3 days, and that’s a long damned time!! Don’t get me wrong, I’m sooooooo excited (and I think for the first time today, the reality that we really ARE going hit me when I woke up), but 17 days is a long time to be away from the hound, kitties, Internet, phone, etc.
I’ll have oodles, gobs and bunches of photos for you all when we’re back, along with stories aplenty, I’m sure. Once we’re back, I want to put together some of these things for the places we’re going, in part because travel writing has always sounded like an ideal side venture for me, and also because (let’s be perfectly honest) making some money off this trip would ROCK. 🙂