instead, my weekend travels end up going only so far as the last screen on expedia before my credit card would have been billed

Take your thumb and forefinger. Place them a micrometer apart. I was that close to buying a ticket to come back to Madison for a couple days this Saturday through Monday. I do need to do a day or so of business there, and it seemed like, well, why not have it overlap with karaoke-with-careyoke? Especially since there were some great plane fares available online.

Then sanity prevailed. With me, the victory of Sanity over Irrational Whim is by no means assured, but in this case it managed to eke out a come-from-behind win. I am, after all, presently in the throes of a stupefying headcold, so it's not exactly the best time to be traveling. And I would probably be better able to make better use of my business time in Madison, not to mention my social time, if I gave people more than a couple days warning before showing up for a visit. And every weekend I spend elsewhere is a postponement of whenever I will feel fully settled in here.

Even so, I'll confess that I've been missing Madison lately. It might be because, here in Cambridge, I don't think the sun has come out in a week. Gray, rain, gray, rain, rain, gray, gray, gray, rain. I think maybe I need to get one of those full-spectrum lights and mount it on my head like a miner's helmet.