Update #36: The End of the World as I Know It

To my family:

I've arrived! Safe at home... Maybe. Considering I've not spent more than 4 nights in any bed since I arrived Stateside, I guess it's hard to say. Hugs and greetings and unbidden weeping at Wisconsin Campmeeting in Oxford; a few uneventful nights in my house in Frederic; an exploding tire, a southern-born trucker in steel-toed cowboy boots, a state trooper, and a hotel in the rural flats of central Illinois; pool parties and family in southern (heat- and humidity-stricken) Tennessee; more family and a soot-spewing water heater in the U.P.; and long, lazy days in a basement apartment in southern Wisconsin. Now you understand why it's taken me three weeks to let you all know that I've arrived safely in my home country. Of course, I never did inform you what method of transportation I'd be utilizing to make the transoceanic trek; some of you may be surprised at the thought that my steamer crossed the ocean so quickly. But, you know, volcanic ash in the atmosphere only affects air travel these days, not travel by sea. But airline food is quite a bit better than the stuff you find on those paddlewheels.

Update #35: The Great Migration

1.8 million.

That's the estimated number of wildebeest that pack up their homely selves each year and trek hundreds of miles from Ngorongoro Crater of Tanzania, over the plains of the Serengeti, and to the plentiful waves of grass of the Masai Mara, Kenya.
Sometime in May-June, these nearly innumerable implausibilities - yes, that really is the name for a group of gnus/wildebeest - simply turn tail south and start plodding north toward the equator. The way I figure it, there must be a wildebeest angel out there that gets to give each member of my favorite African species a little nudge and the migratory go-ahead nod.

Happroumentalgic

Graduation. Oi.
Talk about Jessica as an emotional wreck.
Combine the arrival of three family members (whom I have not seen for 294 days); the departure of a couple dozen freshmen (whom I will likely not see again this side of heaven); some of the most difficult piano pieces I've ever attempted to learn (as I am a pianist for the weekend's programs); and the thought that the entire senior class will march into the church, grab faux black leather bound folders, and march out of my life forever... yep. Jessica Stotz = emotional basket case.