The Eagle Has Landed

I can't believe how much stuff happened in the week leading up to Tim's departure for Panama. It's been beautiful in DC so we spent nearly every available second outside (when Tim's face wasn't exploding because of his allergies): we went swimming, walked from Eastern Market to Dupont Circle, got our hair cut (believe me, this is a big deal), and generally never sat down.

Last week, I volunteered at the Lannan Literary Symposium at Georgetown, which meant I got to do a lot of tech set up for these amazing talks on Literature and Democracy featuring Dave Eggars (!!!), Adam Hochschild, Chris Abani, Michael Eric Dyson, Maureen Corrigan, and Carolyn Forché. Meeting these kind of people always makes me a little bit dizzy and crazy even if our conversations only consist of "here is your microphone" and "thank you for speaking, you're way smarter than me". (Yes, that is the kind of thing I say to famous people, inevitably.)

The only problem with the symposium was that it required me to spend a lot of time on campus during Tim's last week at home. Wednesday I left home at 7:45 in the morning and didn't get home until almost midnight and was only able to eat half of a gross sandwich, some bite size cheese-cakes and beer the whole day. I also went to class somewhere in there, but I don't remember what was said. It was remarkably exhausting. But, in the true nature of exhausting activities, it was very rewarding. Particularly because I think I've found a new volunteer opportunity that I'm really, really into called 826DC. It's a non-profit tutoring center for kids that focuses on developing writing skills, something that's been sorely neglected in public schools since the advent of No Child Left Behind. It's something that I really, really believe in. But I'm also excited about it for the purely selfish reason that my own writing has been neglected since moving to DC and I think it will help inspire me to get back into it.

The only sad thing is that I won't be able to get involved until I get back from Panama. I bought my tickets on Saturday, the day before Tim left. I'm flying out on the 20th of May, and it's going to be a ridiculous summer. I fly back to DC in July only to leave 12 hours later for Colorado, then back to DC in two weeks, then 24 hours later it's on to Peru. Though apparently, our time in Panama at least will be spent in luxury as our apartment there has three bedrooms and FIVE BATHROOMS (and a pool). So between the two of us we currently have five bedrooms and seven bathrooms (and a pool), which just seems ridiculous and excessive.

In the interim between now and the day that I fly out for Panama I have a massive amount of homework and I'm getting used to entertaining myself again. It's odd, I'm very, very, very good at being alone when Tim is far away, but terrible at it when I have the option of hanging out with him instead. Yesterday I went through a stack of mail and other neglected business that took me three hours, then Alsn came over for dinner, and today I went to the comic book store on King Street I've been meaning to visit for over a year. I met the proprietor, whose name is Howard (like my dad) and who not only gave me a nice discount, but gave me two free editions of Mad House Glads, a division of Archie Comics from the early '70's. Sweet.

I just hope I can get through the end of the semester without flipping out on my professors. It's coming up way too soon and the my projects suddenly seem much larger than is humanly manageable. Hopefully by the time I'm in Panama I will find this moderate panic feeling utterly hilarious.