Friday, November 21, 2008

Home Safe

I'm sure everyone was waiting for the resolution with bated breath; I'm finally back in my apartment. Kudos again to my very understanding landlady. In total, I've been locked out and awake for the past 30 straight hours. It's been kind of an enlightening experience: I'm so out of it that I can't muster up any emotion regarding the situation other than a sort of wry humor. It's just too much energy to get upset. (And considering that replacing the English department keys took 3 more trips back and forth between buildings than it should have thanks to some bureaucratic slip-ups, I showed some impressive sangfroid.)
Even though I didn't get a wink of sleep, the night itself was amazingly productive. I finished all the marking I had with me, I read a half dozen or so recaps of Gossip Girl on televisionwithoutpity.com (honestly, the poster's analysis is pretty much a piece of literature in itself), I found a promising paper for my Mandeville essay, I chatted briefly with a friend online, I finished the daily Killer Sudoku puzzle, and I read a chapter or two of a few scholarly books and about half of Iain Banks' Bridge. It's not quite sci-fi, it's not quite surreal, and it sure as hell doesn't fit any other casual category (unless, and pardon my French, you consider "mindfuck" a category. In which case it's the prototype.). More on that (maybe) when I finish it.
So, yeah, as far as these things go, it was a fairly productive 10 hours between nine and seven. Not the usual nine and seven I associate with productivity, but there you go.
As a matter of interest, U of _______ has a much more active night life than U of Someplace Else. I'm not talking about the bar hoppers or the janitor force (they're about the same, or at least, I'd imagine they'd be the same if U of Someplace Else was closer to more bars). At about 11 or so, I headed down to the Math building's lounge, which I knew was full of comfy couches and such. And I was not alone. There were people sleeping, people working, and people talking all night long, from 11 till four, when I went back to a different building so I could use the computer lab. And while it was nice to just be around people, it was also nice to be specifically around good old, introverted, of course we're up at 3:00 am Math people. I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I did my BA in mathematics and english. So much of the mathematics has faded away--I doubt I could tell a Hermitian from a Hamiltonian these days--but I still feel like there's some connection between me and my mathematical bretheren. I imagine it says a lot about me that I find math, of all things, as this enticing, romantic subject, but I guess that's the road not taken for you. At the same time though, I've done enough near grad-level math research to know I really, really don't want to do grad-level math research. For now, I'm where I belong.
And now that I can get into my apartment, that's true in more ways than one.

Later Days.

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