Preparation.

My paper is finished and, though it was five minutes too long on my first run-through, should be all right now, given the amount that I proceeded to trim. It barely seems as though I'm saying anything at all--and yet I'll be talking for twenty minutes.

And now I am being beset by what we might call an intense lack of interest in packing, one that I might appease by simply going to bed. Long ago, I stopped believing in packing-related disasters. For nearly every trip, there's some small group of make-or-break items without which the trip is useless. In this category, for this trip, I'd place: my paper, my train tickets, my medication, and my wallet. Pretty much everything else is icing. Icing on a very tasty cake called going away for a little while. All of my destinations involve water, this time around, which means that I'm a happy woman.

The weather did not look this way today, by the way, which no doubt has something to do with my utter lassitude.