As evinced by my last post, I am slightly sleep deprived these days. In part, I feel as though I am bouncing back and forth across the earth. Tonight I leave for Wichita; on Sunday I leave for California. All this traveling is certainly fun and thrilling (I know there are people who are stuck and would eagerly kill me for the chance to wear my traveling shoes), but kind of wearying for a homebody crab. For some reason I keep thinking about that twin paradox analogy from my high school physics textbook, and I tell my homebody self that all this hurtling through space may actually prolong my life (granted that I am not flung head first into a mountain or a corn field somewhere along the way).

I’ve also been using up energy trying to keep my friends from hurtling themselves off wintry Kansas cliffs. You’d be surprised how many dark and dreary cliffs there are in such a flat state. I am doing my best to try and hold them back, but it is tough and my efforts are, sadly, not all that great. My clear-headed logic and awesome reasoning powers can only go so far; I am perfectly confident of my ability to bend space and time, but saving lives?

Hopefully I shall return from California, not having driven the camper-van-on-its-third-engine into a snowy ditch somewhere in northern New Mexico, to find everything (and everyone) safe and sound.

I am not 100% sure, but I think the laws of physics are crumbling around me these days. More specifically, I have discovered that I walk faster than I drive. On days when I have class before work, I drive to campus; on days when I do not have class I walk. I am consistently five minutes late to class, whereas I am ten minutes early to work on the off-class days.

Now this could be explained if I actually lived closer to campus than where I park, but that is not the case - I live in another part of town, on the other side of Mass St., at the bottom of a hill. I don’t drive particularly slow, either, especially when racing to get to class; nor do I tend to walk at a brisk pace, having just woken up and being reluctant to hurry up and sit at a desk for eight hours.

This phenomenon could also be blamed on Elijah, who is also in the class, and whom I carpool with on class days. And yes, it is usually a valiant struggle for him to conquer the terrible dragons of inertia that keep him in bed. Yes, this would be a most valid explanation were it not for this morning, when Elijah was shuttled to the airport and I went to class alone. I still made it to class five minutes late.

The time lag remains relatively constant, despite the class location switching every Friday. On Fridays the class meets in a lab on the south end of campus, which is actually farther away from both my habitual parking spot and my apartment. One would assume, all other variables unchanged, that I would be more late to class on Fridays than on regular class days. And one would be wrong, because without fail, I am exactly five minutes late.

It has occurred to me that maybe I just tend to move more slowly on days when I drive, assuming that since I’m driving I am saving time; on days when I walk, I move more quickly to compensate for the fact that I am using a traditionally slower means of transport.

I have discounted that explanation, however, in favor of the more reasonable notion that I have managed to bend space and time. This ability strengthens in an inversely proportional relationship to the average amount of hours slept per week. The latter quantity, in turn, is directly correlated to the strictness to which the cat adheres to its diet (determined by external forces, of course, not by the self-imposed will of said cat), as well as number of hours spent playing games on the Wii console.

I am this close to cracking out a smashing theory that will win the Nobel Prize (take that Al Gore!) and the admiration and respect of my family and peers, instead of questioning about my future (”You’re still at that job?”, “when are you going to move away from Lawrence?”, “what about grad school?” and so forth). I’ll have the fame I crave and so desperately deserve.

Now, if only I could just work out how to get to class on time…