Diablevert

The Great Panic of 95

Taking a brief time out from converting the 80-plus hours I've worked the last week into 6 minute chunks of Orwellian doublespeak to remark that I have taken the irrevitable step: I have bought a ticket. End of June, JFK, round about 18:20. Or 6:20 in the evening, for those of us who keep sensible twelve hour days, and an irrational fondness for gallons, teaspoon, miles and yards. (Though I notice y’all don’t belly up to the bar an order a demi-litre, do yehs? A pint of plain is still your only man, eh?)

Mind you, had I been bolder I could have saved myself seventy-five bucks; I hemmed and hawed, hoping to snag a sweet summer deal, only to find that the fairly cheap price I'd been eyeing for the past two weeks was the cheap summer deal, and that by waiting until the publicaly announced it, I had waited until it sold out. In a fit of pique and agita, I then opted to get the next cheapest ticket (still not bank-breaking), feeling that prices were likely only to rise as people's vacation dreams drew nearer, and that I was too chicken to wait until the last minute in hope of a better price, what with the risk of having to pay full. Viz. she-who-hestiates, I grimly conceed that I will probably spot fares less than half what I paid at intervals for the next three months.

Still, it feels good to be committed. Good in a paralyzing anxiety kind of way. My job is like to be comsuing almost all my waking hours for the next few weeks, which I am of two minds about: "Money, Yay!" and "I'm going to kick the dust of this hellhole off my feet first chance I get, and then I'm going to stomp on it, and then I'll have to kick it off my feet again, but that's okay 'cause the third thing I'll do is spit on it so it stays down, take that, you soul-sucking leeches!"

But either way, I won't have much time to really attack the many, many tasks on my List (it's the unknown unknowns that scare me) until a couple months from now. Which will be less than a couple months from my departure date.

Did I mention that in a while back, in the spirit of keeping my eye on the light at the end of the tunnel, I painstakingly tapped a day-by-day countdown to my anticipated quit date (a week and a half before my flight) into the calender of my handheld organizer thingie? And that now everytime I go to look up a phone number it confronts me with the dwindling number of days I have left to prepare to leave the country of my birth, taking self, stuff and sanity along?

Consider it mentioned, in the post title.