Lisa Coffey Lisa Coffey Lisa Coffey

Lisa is among the people who complain that they never make an appearance in my blog. Here you go, Lis. She’s been in town a few days, and was kind enough to swing by my place one night to see what was up. Brett was there too; it was an unlikely reunion, such as almost never happens to my high school friends. Two of us in one place is rare; three is even less common. Four happens about once a year.

I’m babbling. I’ve been riding a glittery wave of adrenaline all day, up until the moment I zipped shut the duffle containing everything I’m taking to Vienna, at which point I completely crashed. The cause of my stress gone, my body has given up; and now, after being on pins and needles all day, able to leap over construction signs and spot a helpless baby bird from 30 yards away, I can barely think straight. Ugh. It’s an icky feeling, sort of a dull ache all over – come to think of it, it’s almost exactly the feeling I got from Lisa sophomore year after confessing my love and finding it unrequited. See Lisa, two mentions in one post! The text on the monitor keeps going in and out of focus.

Today was my last day in the country. Nine hours from now, I’ll be flying the friendly skies to Washington Dulles, and from there to Frankfort, and from there to Vienna. Then I have to somehow find my apartment and get there unharmed. Then I have to cover myself under layers of blanket and sob pitifully because I have no friends and the entire country I’m staying in hates me. But maybe I’m getting ahead of myself.

All afternoon, every last frenzied minute of it, was spent completing neglected tasks to prepare for my departure, like making copies of all my important legal documents and letting my boss know I wouldn’t be in to the office for a quarter. I wandered around campus for a bit, and – I know this is absurd – spent a full fifteen minutes walking slowly among the cherry trees in the quad, thinking very sad thoughts and sighing very deeply. I’m going to miss this place, sincerely.

And I’m going to miss you people at least as much. I won’t go into a name-by-name confession of love here. That would be trite. Instead, I’ve dedicated myself to a letter-writing campaign while abroad. Postcards are for pansies; instead, expect a fully personalized letter just bursting with witty repartee and interesting foreign words. You can write to me at this address, and I promise on all that is holy that I’ll write back:

Hollandstrase 9/rechts/3/5, 1020 Wien, Austria

If it won’t reach me by June 1, don’t bother because I’ll probably be elsewhere already.

The most surreal thing just happened. Laurel and Abe and I were on my patio couch talking, saying goodbyes and reminiscing. It was a sweet post-adolescent conversation, redolent of flowers and sunshine. Suddenly my neighbor in the opposite building burst out of his door: “Excuse me!”

We’ve had problems with this guy before. I think I’ve personally received a half-dozen angry verbal reprovals from him, and he’s contacted my landlady to complain on two separate occasions. A couple times it was deserved, when I was being loud at 4:30 in the morning with Bryan and Laurel or something, but usually it was an absurd time to yell at someone, almost always just around 11:00. It was 11:00 on the dot tonight when he started the most fearsome of his attacks.

“I have to wake up at 6:30 tomorrow, and I can’t get any sleep because you guys are always out here being loud! You need to learn to be respectful of your neighbors! I called your land lady about the problem, and this needs to stop! Show some fucking respect!” He went on in this vein for some time.

“We’ll go inside, sir,” I said after a moment of awkward silence. He walked away as I finished, “Thanks for giving us a warning.” He slammed the door.

What an amazing prick. A dozen or so loud evenings in the course of two years is not a declaration of war. It’s the quiet murmurings of two fairly quiet, unassuming computer science students. Guess what, asshole? I have to be up at 5:45 tomorrow. That’s earlier than 6:30. I’m exhausted; I spent a solid three weeks with 16-hour days of work and school, frenzied preparations to leave the country, and nights coming home at 1:30 from the lab. So don’t talk to me about responsibility like I’m a sixteen-year-old driving my glass-pack-muffler-sporting Miada that Daddy bought for me. Just because I’m young enough to enjoy staying up in the quasi-lateness of the evening doesn’t make me a criminal. You’re telling me I can’t enjoy my sofa arrangement on my own patio at 11:00 to say goodbye to a dear friend I won’t see for six months? Fuck you, asshole. Way to fucking ruin my last evening in the country.

Argh. Moving on with the original theme…

If you miss me excessively, you can busy yourself with these toys: for the scientifically minded on the one hand, and for lovers of military hijinks on the other.

This is my last post until I find my feet (or wings!) in Vienna. Wish me luck and starfruit-flavored kisses.