Meanwhile

I've been off-campus for almost a year. I am supposed to back at Carleton right now, living in an Evans quad with Brady, Aaron, and Dave. It's gonna be heading into spring term. There are frisbees to be tossed, warm spring afternoons stretched out on the hill, watching softball games unfold below. Beer, too, we'll need a keg of that at second base.

We need to make plans. We need to figure out whether or not the four of us will be living together again in the fall, although it's looking more and more likely that Brady is going to transfer, which sucks, but will ultimately be cool for him.

Aaron, Tor, and I could probably figure something out with Ken, depending on who gets the best room draw numbers. We'll want a West Side dorm. Davis if we can get it, but Sevy is okay, too. It all depends.

I'll need to start thinking about what classes I'll be taking in the fall. It's gonna be my senior year. Going to be. It is going to be my senior year, English major, and a decision will need to be made already in the spring, here, whether or not I'll be putting together a senior thesis, or taking the hellish full-day comprehensive test. If I opt for the paper, I'm pretty sure that I'll need to put together a reading list over the summer, so that when classes start up again in September I'll have at least a solid thesis to share with my advisor. To say nothing of sizing up my various requirements within the English department, along with the times of year they're offered.

And before I get too far ahead of myself, it's not as if I'm getting a clean slate from my professors at Lancaster. They've already been more than understanding. But it's not as if they're going to give me a free pass. Here, Mr. Brown, please enjoy full credits for our courses, even though you bailed out halfway through the term, and have yet to take any kind of final exams. It will be a fair trade -- one final essay for each class, and I get all of my credits while I'd been in England. Without those credits, I don't graduate on time from Carleton. Hell, even with those credits I'm going to have to come back for an extra term.

But see? Already that's long-term thinking. I'm focused on September, not next year. I've done the math. Even with the additional complications I've already run into, I'm still looking at something like five full months before school starts back up again. That's plenty of time. That's plenty of time for treatment and more complications and dealing with those complications; for coordinating with Aaron to register me for fall classes; for getting a good room with Ken and Aaron and Tor; for spending a week or two with my laptop propped up on my bed, books and papers piled at the foot of my bed, banging out the papers that I need for the credits that I need to get back to where I belong.

Carleton is all of my points on the horizon. It is my short, medium, and long-term goals. If my focus is anywhere, it is on what needs to happen to get my body back to Minnesota by September.

Leukemia? It's just a speed bump -- a major speed bump -- preventing me from getting on the rest of my life.