Mad whirlwind of activity the past couple weeks, with Double M here for some research during the last week of October, then the election and a draining and completely bullshit activity called subciting that I was too weak to resist taking part of, and finally this weekend my dad was here. I have done no work for classes since Wednesday of last week. I have a memo due Thursday I have not started. I am screwed.

So Double M went to class with me a week an a half ago, the one with the most amusing and most disorganized professor, and she liked it. I remember visiting law school classes and thinking they were interesting. Somehow it all changes when you have 30 pages of reading for each class and it takes an hour to read 10 pages. Interesting -- mildly. Fun -- no.

I voted last Tuesday and then stayed in the library all day checking the footnotes for an article in one of the law journals on campus -- this was partly because the checking (subciting) was taking so long, but also because I just didn't want to be sitting through the blow-by-blow, and biting my nails all the way through. I went back to the dorm when the library closed at midnight and found Kerry losing. So. De. Press. Ing.

Then I woke up Wednesday morning and thought, "Oh, what a beautiful fall morning!" And then remembered and thought, "Oh NO."

While the results were not quite finalized, I had a thought during my morning contracts class -- I am just sick of Bush. Yes, I disagree with his politics and policies domestic and international, and think he has nearly singlehandedly ruined my country's relationship with the rest of the free world (a world that supported us and cried with us in November of 2001) -- but that morning last week I just thought, "Please, go away. I'm tired of your smirks and your mugs and your old boy guffawing and back thumping. I'm tired of the media making fun of your smirks and mugs and old boy guffawing and back thumping. I'm tired of your malapropisms, and even more tired of everyone snickering about them. I'm tired of your rolling back social policy 30 years and tired of your opponents rolling over, whimpering, exposing their necks to your strange, hypno-toad-like ability to alpha-dog everyone into agreeing. I'm tired of reports about how many vacation days you take, and how many hours you work a day. I'm tired of your daughters. (As a salon.com reader pointed out, they are the same age as many of the soldiers who are dying or in danger of dying in Iraq -- could they comport themselves with a little more dignity?) I'm tired of Laura Bush's Stepford hair and frozen grin ('cause you know, who didn't love watching Hillary transform from hair-banded, bespectacled wonk nerd to highlighted Oprah-style, two-Z-formation-snaps sub-Prez?). I'm tired of stifling my gag reflex when I hear you and your staff trying to gloss over failures and mistakes. And I'm tired of being afraid. I'm afraid that because of your policies, Pax Americana is over, and a global division between Christianity and Islam is again in the making. I'm afraid that we can never repair the damage done to our relationships with our allies. I'm afraid that there is something terrible coming up the pipe."

My musings on this subject were broken when someone, before answering a question, announced in class that Kerry had conceded. The professor asked him, "Wait, how do you know that?" The student smiled innocently: "The internet."

So there was a general feeling of depression around campus on Wednesday of last week, and Thursday as well, which contrasted with the week before, with euphoria of the Red Sox winning. On the whole, I think switching the outcomes would have been preferable. What's another year when it's already been 86? But no one asked me.

On an entirely different topic: on Thursday night, per my request, a hallmate who'd majored in music played a couple pieces for me in a music building practice room. It was a little odd. The scenario, I mean, and also my reaction to it. I've never heard a concert-level pianist in such close proximity before (the practice rooms have a piano in them, and little else). I also haven't listened to live music in general for a long time. And so I sat there, occasionally closing my eyes and leaning my head back, mostly watching my friend's hands move in strange and wonderful ways across the keyboard, and remembering, slowly, that there are more things to life than statutes of fraud and rules of formal realizability and how to establish jurisdiction. It's good that I've gotten so steeped in law school classes and campus life, but it's not a joyful sort of experience. It's a good experience -- I feel myself getting smarter, gaining knowledge -- but that's a kind of a satisfaction born of hard work. Different from joy.

It was raining that night, but I took a walk with my friend after the music building closed, and I felt something shift back into place. I guess you could call it perspective.

That was Thursday night, and on Friday night my dad arrived in town, on just a few days notice to me. I should have been catching up on property reading, and starting my memo, and reviewing rules of jurisdiction this weekend, but instead, I slept in the car as my dad drove to New York to see the site of a future Buddhist college, then slept some more as we drove to a temple with female nuns. That was Saturday. Yesterday we went to the Zen Center of Crimson City, and then a very strange Zen martial arts center. And then, because one can only expose oneself to peace and tranquility and mental discipline so much, we went to Target. And then to dinner, where we shared a bottle of soju. And then had a cigarette a piece. You know what they say about families who drink and smoke together...

I got back about an hour ago from the airport, where my dad, with his inexplicable charm, totally cut in front of this woman at the counter and got himself ticketed before the 50 other people in line, and got a smile and a laugh out of the woman whom he cut off. It's amazing. I'm going to miss him.