Dog Days of Summer

I haven't written anything in a while, and I'm not sure why.  I think maybe I've just been too busy being deeply homesick.  At this point in the summer, I'm just tired, all the way through, and ready for it to be over.  And I guess there's also the knowledge that soon it will be that part of the year when I miss Indiana the most, when the leaves turn colors and the bite of cold is in the air.  I don't ever feel that chill in the air here until February, and by then I know that what's coming isn't snow, but 90-degree days much too soon.

This has been an odd summer and fall.  Every since RUME4 class ended in May, I've felt... disconnected.  From everyone and everything.  I didn't realize the role that course sequence was playing in holding me together with my colleagues, but I guess it was.  We said at the time that "one of these days we will really miss this exchange of ideas", but I certainly never thought it would be quite this soon.  Absent that, it's hard to focus.  I know this is the point at which a lot of PhD students flame out, but that knowledge doesn't make it much easier to fight the urge.