I arrived early this morning in my sometime home-away-from-home New York City. Due to the pounding rain, and the somewhat cookie-cutter nature of large-city airports (not to mention the lack of any significant contiguous sleep) I had a bit of a surreal moment deplaning where I felt I hadn’t actually left Portland at all. But a 10-hour hop, skip and a jump after leaving Salem, I find myself back in the Upper West Side.
I’m glad this is to be my final semester. It’s not that I dislike The City—it’s just getting harder and harder to leave home each semester. With only four months remaining until commencement, the end is very near.
The Christmas break was excellent, if brief. Julie and I managed to catch a couple of movies, King Kong and Munich. Both were very well done and well worth seeing. We also had an opportunity to hit the Portland Art Museum and see the Hesse exhibit that was visiting. There was a real first-rate Hans Holbein Madonna there. What an amazing artist.
We also had a bit of bad news. Rocky, our eldest male ferret, has been showing some signs of insulinoma. A trip to the vet confirmed that is the case, so he’s on some medicine now that should help to keep his blood-sugar level high enough to prevent any significant problems, though it does nothing to remove the underlying problem (a pancreatic tumor). You may remember that Rocky is a cancer surviver, who had his right adrenal gland removed a couple years back.
Much less significantly, but no less costly, Julie’s PC decided to go toes-up. Unfortunately this happened on the day I was to leave, so there wasn’t enough time for me to get replacement parts and assemble them myself. But we’ve ordered parts, and my excellent good friend, Paul, has graciously agreed to put it all together when they come in. Hopefully Julie will only be without a computer for a week or so.
Four weeks seems like such a long time at the onset, but much less so at the end of the time. I suppose I should bear that in mind for the coming semester. There is still so much to do. Wish me luck.
– Jeremy
