Where did the first half of this semester go? I feel like I’m still back in the first half of February somewhere — so much so that I was late on rent for the first time ever. It can’t possibly be the first full week of March. My birthday can’t be tomorrow. Spring Break can’t be next week. There can’t only be nine weeks left until the end of my coursework.

Being an Internet researcher, I’ve never had to travel for research and rarely have to go out of the house to get to my texts. Pretty much wherever I go, there it is. Now that I’m taking a course in book history and working on the Cyclopaedia, I have to go visit the text. It’s a 1728 edition, worth around $35,000. It’s not like I can keep a working copy in the house. So off I go to the James Ford Bell library to sit in a very cold room and gently turn the pages. It’s quite a shift.

And I have a Minnesota driver’s license as of this morning. I guess that makes us even more settled now.