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I don't' know why I called this entry "getaway day". I'm not going anywhere. I have absolutely no plans to travel this extended July 4th weekend. But there still is that feeling that comes on the last day of work/school/whatever before a long holiday.
This afternoon, my work place became a silly place to be. No one was really working. There was a lot of talking going on, but not much else. Eventually at around 2:30 P.M., my two bosses packed up their stuff and went home together. The fact that they are married makes that a little less scandalous. As they left they told us that we could all leave at 3:00 P.M. Well that's all fine and good but I was defragging a hard drive for a computer that I am taking up to Rhode Island next week. Do I stop it, pack up and go home? Or do I wait it out and pack up when the defrag is over - somewhere around 4:30 P.M.? Ha ha ha ha ha! Did you really stop to think about that one? No, I shut it down and took off. Mainly because disk defragmentation in Windows is the ultimate in busy work. All this really cool stuff appears on the screen so it looks impressive. Every ten minutes you can sigh an exasperated "come ON!" to the computer. It must be loud enough so that the surrounding coworkers think you are desperate to get back to work on this thing, while secretly you are cheering the incredible slowness of the whole process. I have lots of look busy / work less techniques. But I can't share them all with you now can I?
But the getaway feeling extends to many other events too. The one that sticks out in my head occurred during my college years. I was pretty smart, but I was not what you'd call a good student. I learned just enough without putting out any, you know, effort. Whatever stuck in my head during a lecture or a one-time reading of the material was all that I was going to learn. I could never bring myself to study or take notes or anything. I was not the most dedicated student. So at the end of every school year, there was, by default, a last exam of the year. I would try to get at least halfway through that exam before the getaway feeling took over. I would try, I really would. I would carefully read each question and then try with the best of my ability to answer the question. I would carefully craft essay question answers. I would rule out pesky trick multiple choice answers. I would answer "TRUE" if the statement were "TRUE". And I could usually make this effort last right up to the midpoint of the exam.
But once I hit that point, I was on the express train to "Outtathere-ville". It started slowly at first. "TRUE, no FALSE, no TRU... oh who cares, I'll just put TRUE. It's only one question." But by the end of the exam, my number 2 pencil was just filling out a pretty pattern on that standardized answer grid with no real rhyme or reason to the actual answers. I can remember I actually had this thought go through my head: Hmmm, I haven't used "B" in a while. I'll just answer "B" for this one. I mean, I would actually read the question. Don't get me wrong. I just wasn't killing myself to make sure that I got the right answer. Because those pesky questions were the only thing between me and my summer. The quicker I vanquished them, the quicker I could get outta town. Not having anything to actually do once my summer began, didn't make this process any less important. Although this story might have been a little better if I was rushing through my exam so that I could travel to Europe or start appearing on the new season of The Real World. But no. That would have made the story better. So just pretend that it did.
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