Tomorrow.

So. In 39 hours I will be home. 39 hours sounds like a long time. Tonight at 8pm, Christian and Romana are picking me up at the apartment and we're going for a beer on the way to the train station. My train leaves Graz at 9:26 and arrives in Vienna just after midnight. Austria thinks nobody wants to go anywhere, least of all to the airport, after 7pm, so I'll have to take a taxi to the airport. I'll either check my bags when I get there or sleep on top of them in the airport until 5am, when I can check in. My plane leaves Vienna at 7:05am Vienna-time (12:05am Arkansas time). It will take about an hour and a half to get to London. My plane leaves London at 10:35am London-time. Or as I like to call it, "stepping time." (You like that one, Jamie?) About 7 and a half hours later, I'll be in Chicago. Back on our time. The real time. In the real world. My last plane leaves Chicago at 4:55pm and I'll be in Arkansas at 6:45.

I was hoping to sleep late today, sleep most of the day away so maybe it would go faster. But no. I woke up at 8:30. Last night the idea of sitting in my apartment watching Austrian TV was horrifying, so I went to the Royal English Cinema and saw "Batman Begins." I liked it. That's really all I'm going to say about it. I thought it was great, exactly what I wanted it to be, entertaining. I was home at about 11:45 and went to bed, rolled around for an hour or two and fell asleep. That was the last night I will sleep on the world's most uncomfortable mattress, without a pillow. My bags are completely packed. Everything fit, which surprised me. Actually, I think I did a better packing job this time than when I came over here. In my backpack I put just clothes, top to bottom except for a few books at the top. So bottom to almost top. In the suitcase there are some more clothes for padding, my computer and two bottles of wine. Hopefully the bottles don't break and ruin my computer. That would be a double whammie. I need to burn my pictures and music onto CDs and erase them from my hard drive when I get home. My computer is choking to death because of all those pictures.

Yesterday I went to the last two home games of the season. Unforunately the Dirty Sox lost both games, and both games were called early according to the mercy rule. Before I went to the game I went over to the train station and bought my ticket for tonight. Since it was Sunday, the only grocery store open was the Spar at the train station. So I got some sandwich stuff and snacks for a one-man picnic at the baseball field. I met Romana's parents, Tommy's parents and Tommy's best friend, who is a nice woman whose name I have forgotten because I'm a terrible person who forgets nice people's names. I tried to explain baseball to Romana's dad, but that's hard to do in English and nearly impossible in German.

Ah, I've been in here too long. I'm going to go pick up some döner, take a shower and make sure everything is in its right place.

I'll be home tomorrow. Can you stomp to that beat? I can stomp to that beat.

Three Days.

Today I turned in my last papers and pick up some of my grades. I stayed up all night doing them, that's sort of my style. Once I admitted to myself that they didn't have to be perfect and that something was better than nothing, it went pretty smoothly. I picked up some groceries, went to the apartment, made tacos, ate too many tacos, watched "Bull Durham" and fell asleep. After I woke up I cleaned my room some more and vacuumed. I hope I can get everything packed up and to the airport with as little stress as possible. Three days. I narrowly avoided some sort of breakdown this week. Things were looking pretty dire. I haven't felt that way since high school, out of control like that, like I had no control over my thoughts. It went away though. I'm not sure why the walls started closing in on me, so close to being home. I sure wish I was home already. I wish I was home in May. But I'll take three days.

Some things I think and I think you should know:

The most popular dance song in Austria this summer is "Summer of '69" by Bryan Adams. No, I'm not kidding. It's not a remix either. Bryan ****ing Adams.

Escalators are a very dramatic way of going up and down.

I want to like Keith Foulke. He's probably more frustrated than the fans are. But if you're paid to do a certain job, and you can't do it, maybe you shouldn't do it, or at least shouldn't be paid for it. And you certainly shouldn't insult the people who are paying you to do the job you're not doing.

Tom Cruise needs to disappear for 8 to 12. Just go away. Take a breather. For everyone's sake.

I'm more dependent on the internet than I ever thought I would be.

I'm nervous about Bush nominating Supreme Court Justices.

Ugh. Way too many tacos.

My girlfriend is super awesome.