the Dalaverse

I walked down St. Giles this afternoon (after ducking into Borders to read up on Edinburgh and escape the rain), and it has finally hit me that I have fifteen days left. I don't know how to leave this place. At heart I am a creature of habit. I've lived in the same neighborhood, in the same house, for twenty-one years. This bed and room is where I have slept the most consecutive nights next to my bed and room at home. This isn't home, but it's -- something else entirely, I don't know. Three and a half months seems like a flash when you count them all up, but it's enough to make it something I don't have a name for.

I've started collecting lasts. I already walked into the Bodleian for the last time. Friday was probably the last time I'll eat at Gino's. Today was the last time I'll hear ATJ lecture, since I'll be in Scotland for his actual last lecture. This is my last weekend in England, technically. Tomorrow will be the last time I take the Oxford Tube to London, stow my ticket carefully away in my wallet, sit in the row of five seats in the back of the second storey. The books on my shelf right now are the last books I'll ever check out from the Westgate. The load after my next load of laundry -- with too-strongly-scented detergent and no fabric softener, the ruination of my favorite blue sweater -- will be the last.

Well, this is going nowhere. I'm going to read Sarah Waters until dinner.