Another Friday night at the office, and why.

The day winds down and I'm more awake now than I was sixteen hours ago, and that would likely be true even if I hadn't bought that cup of coffee an hour or so ago from Espresso Royale Caffe. It's the curse of years of late nights; some I spent doing things of importance and some I spent doing nothing in particular.

Regardless of event and memory, my nocturnal inclinations remain. It's why I'm still in the office, trying half-heartedly to finish a little more work. I don't think this is futile for a few reasons:

1. The weekend flies, and it flies quickly. It's unwise to fit all that you couldn't accomplish during the 5-day work-week and stuff it into a 2-day weekend.
   
   But even weekends have schedules: I'd have to fit some time for grading team homeworks and time for my own studies. Saturday afternoons are basketball and Sunday evenings are BSG nights at a friend's house, and this Saturday morning is a meeting I should attend and I probably will.
   
   Just to make sure there is time for fun, sometimes it's best to do a little work early at unorthodox times.
   
   
2. I've been social enough. I mean it for this particular week. A few of us UM grad students met with the GFT speaker, a grad student from Finland (visiting by way of Cinti), and thought to make her welcome and do a few fun things.
   
   It was nice: I can't remember the last time I went out for coffee with friends .. at least when it wasn't at a conference .. and had long conversations not about mathematics and not about complaining about math grad life. I've forgotten how pleasant such occasions can be.
   
   But that's what they are: occasions. Work beckons loudly and often to me, so it comes first before other matters; whether or not that is wise and correct, I'll debate it when I have less on my plate.
   
   
3. It's quiet, for once. As much as I like my office-mates and my friends and colleagues in the department, their number is great and during the workday it can be a cacophony of movement, conversation, and katzenjammer.
   
   In the late evening it's nice to have the solitary peace and quiet to think.
   
   
4. I'm relaxed. I may be working, but I'm doing so in a leisurely way. I can read without rushing and enjoy those pauses to reflect over a few paragraphs and what this or that really means. It almost feels like leisure reading, but instead of reading Haruki Murakami novels, I'm reading about geometric measure theory.
   
   The best circumstance might be the freedom of not working, but the second-best circumstance is the freedom of working without a deadline and at your own pace.

So that's why I'm working, and it seems perfectly reasonable to me. I just wish people would stop bothering me about it.