Ready...Go

So I've already graded papers, done the dishes, cooked and eaten a delicious vegetable stir fry with rice, and watched the first twenty-one minutes of Grumpier Old Men. Eric will be gone for another few hours; the cats are asleep; the soft white plow-formed snowbank outside the only window in this room reaches, up - up - up, two-thirds of the way up the window now, insulating me against the dark outdoors. All of this can mean only one thing: it's time to turn off every light except the blue glow of the computer screen and draft my thesis in bursts of reckless keystrokes. Tonight, language is not beautiful. It is messy, halting, ugly, and nothing more than an ox cart for ideas.