This has been an admirably relaxing week.  Although at this point I’m getting a bit of cabin fever, I’ve principally spent the past four days sleeping and watching ridiculous amounts of netflix. In short, it’s been quite heavenly. With that said, I did spend five hours at a study gathering yesterday and we got quite a bit done on one of our largest looming assignments (a horde of abstracts due this coming Wednesday).

I’ve spent quite a bit of time planning for Rome, as it’s just a few weeks away. I just discovered a musical instrument museum there (Museo Nazionale Degli Strumenti Musical), and so I need to spare a few hours to explore that. So far plans include the typical to-do-list as well as a visit to Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini & the Purgatory Museum. We’ve decided on a night spent in Naples as well so we can have a side-trip to Pompeii and to climb around on Vesuvius.  I tried to get us into a Scavi excavations tour beneath St. Peter’s, but they were full for the time we’ll be there. Despite that disappointment, I still was happy getting an email from the Vatican telling me so. I really am easily amused like that.

Before I step foot on that cross-pond-plane, I still have to plan for my Christmas trip home to Massachusetts for the two weeks prior which will be full of snow shoveling, reading fiction, and listening to mom tipsily gossip about 2010 with Patsy Cline carping in the background. At one point my mother’s dragging me to Peterborough, New Hampshire for some kind of bonding experience that includes wine. I was excited until I entered the town into google images and suddenly John McCain’s face took over my unsuspecting MacBook screen. Likewise, I’m dragging my sisters to Northampton, MA (about 40 minutes west of my hometown) for a day of frolicking among the hipsters and the hippies, and apparently one of them is dragging me to a Cyndi Lauper concert. Aside from that, I’ll squeeze in some fiction, some frozen walks through the New England woods, lots of hot apple cider, and lots of visiting time with extended-yet-close family.

For the past 40 days or so, a friend of mine has had an end-of-semester countdown on her gmail chat status. This has been an anxious concern for me – every time I open my email, I’m reminded that I have fewer days that I thought to finish a mountain of work. Today my reminder is for 13 days. While this seems like plenty of time, this Friday is our last day of classes and the rest is just wrap-up.  I’d like to announce that I’m quite proud of the composure I’m keeping at this realization. I like to think that the sleep I’ve enjoyed this past week has been to build an energy reserve for the coming week.

One semester is almost over. I can totally do this.