So it looks like R-- and B-- might both be coming out for the same conference and are looking to do some traveling while they are here. I sort of offered to go with both of them. It was accidental. They aren't really friends, though they have met each other. This is going to be interesting.

Also, I just heard that they are going to start issuing fines for swearing on the street in Canberra. I think I might be in trouble. I have toned down the drunken angry sailor swearing in the last few years, but it still isn't good.

So:

It's starting to turn towards spring now here. It's not so cold in the mornings, and tonight I caught the last bus home and it wasn't totally dark while I was waiting. The dark gets to me in the winter much more than the cold. I don't think it used to be that way.

I remember those days in Chicago when it would be dark by about 4pm, but I also remember the big chunks of ice on the Lake shore, walking down after study break about 10:00 and seeing the way the light bounced off the ice. Winter never seemed that bad then, and I loved the night.

It's much darker here. The sky is black at night, and walking just a little way away can bring you a night sky filled with stars. But I kind of miss the orange sky in Chicago. Dark there was relative, not absolute.

It's been a rough couple of years. Sometimes I just want to forget everything, to start running and not stop until the past is hazy and gone and I don't have to talk to anyone who remembers the way I was. But I remember how happy I was, sitting on Dylan's car in the thick Atlanta night when the power went out, saying goodbye to the city that was home. The walk down 55th street leaning hard against the freezing wind to make it to the Point to feel the wind whipping around you, at least until the cops came and made you move along. The Christmas lights across Oxford Street in London, running on the beach at St. Simons as the sun went down, sitting on a balcony drinking sangria as the crickets chirped in June in Chicago, when I should have been studying, Fell's Point Halloween night, dressed as 1.5 blind mice, a summer night after the rain in Ireland. I wouldn't give up those memories.

Here's hoping I start feeling better with the longer days.

There was an accident on Friday, at the roundabout near where I work. I went through it before the accident, so I only heard it described from a couple of coworkers. A 4 Wheel Drive flipped over and landed on its roof. Everyone was OK, the driver was standing out having a chat to some other guys shortly after the crash.

I can't hear something like that and not think about how unfair it is, that those accidents happen all the time and everyone is fine. And my sister was in one and died. Why does it have to be that way? Why can't Jenny still be here?

I think what I miss most about college is the nights where you just hang out, drink wine or tea or fancy drinks, put on some music, and sit around and talk. Now everyone lives a lot further away than a block or two, so an evening is something a bit more involved. What I'm really in the mood for tonight is to have Will and Sudeep and Amanda and Maggie over and sit around and drink Tom Collinses or gin and tonics or margaritas and talk about whatever.

Instead I have to decide between going out hardcore or staying in alone. Tonight is an in alone night, since I'm beat and still not entirely healthy. But it would be great to have people over. Not like a party, with the really late night and obscene cleanup entailed in that description. Just sitting around and talking. If the Hiking Club ever were to get their row of cheap houses in Anacostia, I guess that would be what we could do.

In other news, I think I don't have malaria, which makes me happy. I had incredible chills on Tuesday night, which I know from Little House on the Prarie is totally a malaria symptom. I didn't feel feverish, though I didn't have a thermometer to check.