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The last bus out of Providence, Rhode Island arrived back at South Station bus terminal at 12:50 a.m. My four roommates and I had missed the last Red Line train back to Harvard, so we scanned the State Street taxi queue for a van.

The only one we found had its light off. The driver dismissed our window pantomiming by shaking his head and vaguely gesturing to the back of the cab (where we later found a void lay in place of a last row of seats), but we were determined and nearly hypothermic in the midnight chill, so after a few minutes more of our pathetic pantomiming, we crammed ourselves and our still-fresh memories of the Iron & Wine concert and Haven Bros. cheese fries into the van to take home.

Back in Cambridge, Mass again, post-tournament, post-concert, post-weekend high, I am sitting on the stoop of 2:30 a.m. and sketching plans for what to do next.

Vaguely, these plans involve papers, research, exams, design projects, appointments, lunch and dinner dates. In the margins, but really, more urgently, they involve letters, packages, some phone calls, a mix CD or three. A few hours later, and in my mind, planning devolves into musing about that hazy future in architecture and the long hours of slave labor, lack of job security, tight budget and general anxiety that I'm told it will bring.

Oh, but those sharp-edged potential realities are softened by the Iron & Wine I'm still replaying in my head. (What a perfect, perfect encore song, and how great our own encore, belting "Piano Man" in a dive bar across the street afterward.) The sky is getting lighter, and my musing turns into sketching, vignettes of lovers and friends past and present, places I've been or could be.

I'm resisting the urge to be romantic and trying hard to be unsentimental and keen, vacillating between carpe diem and a blase attitude that says I have something better coming. To just tell the truth, I'm waiting to go reeling through the door, to cross that threshold to something epic, something post-college, post-just-turned-21, post-first date.

At 7:34 a.m., I'm leaving the design office finally, sketchbook mussed and new blog finally christened. I've arrived and I am ready for a new day.