endgame.

earlier today i was walking back to my office and on the way i bumped into diane and johanna. we had this very brief conversation.

diane:

"hey. how's it going?"

me:

[thinks for a moment]
"time is always against us."
[exeunt]

what i meant was:

the advisor has finally suggested an end strategy to the current project, on extensions of circle homeomorphisms. only a few computations remain, and then we return to the original thesis problem.

however, by next week he leaves for a month of holiday and i leave for a month of travelling, and if i want any completion of the matter ..

(i imagine coming back to this after a month, and forgetting intermediate subtleties, to do this over again ..)

.. then the work better be done by the end of this week. so as a result, i've been computing off and on all day. it's getting to the point where i get this loathing in my gut when i think of computing one more derivative [1] .. but the end is near, and it beckons. besides that, there are trip details to plan (i fly to warsaw this friday) and preparations to complete for when i am gone and my duties left untended.

[sighs]

i rarely think this, but a getaway vacation is beginning to sound very, very good. never mind the fact that i wouldn't know what to do with myself: the notion of intentional and uninterrupted loafing, done somewhere far away, is finally making sense to me.

[1] yes: the topic is that concrete and classical. i consistently feel as if these questions should have been answered about 50-60 years ago.

also, when i mean computing a derivative, i mean ugly implicit functions and differentiation under the integral sign. tedious, but i wouldn't call it trivial .. yet.