ready, set, OH

I am writing from my re-encounter with exile, Istanbul.  It is currently 12:23am in Columbus which puts me almost exactly one spin around our axis from my own bed, toilet, shower, and kitchen.

Oh to be alone with  thoughts during an eight-hour layover!  You know that feeling as soon as your plane lands when you have all the gumption in the world but are inevitably subdued by an epoch of taxiing, deplaning, and sign-following?  My friends, I am living in that frustrating place right now.

I can sit here, amused by how much business Burger King is getting at 7:25am, and stare at my calendar all I like.  With no option for Internet access though, I am able only to make to-do lists.

My Grandpa Rossfeld once referred to me as, "always putting 10 lbs. in a 5-lb. bag."  Part of me loves this descriptor in a way reminiscent of my beloved high school job, where we actually sold 5-lb. bags.  Some other fraction of myself loves this descriptor for its self-deprecating quality: I land in Columbus Monday at 11:52pm and have a year-end project presentation to the Department of Internal Medicine bigwigs Tuesday at 6:00pm.  Although I am not (too) worried, my slides are not finished.

The overarching sentiment here is that I am ready to be home.  All the more so when I get nerdy and tabulate that I've spent eight and change percent of 2013 away.  I also want to get home after hearing the single greatest item of news in recent memory.  In an attempt to decompress, let's run the list of my returning wants and my returning needs.

I want not to sleep in a twin sized bed.  I want to listen to music as much as I am used to (Foals with a new album since I've been gone, Sky Ferreira and Father John Misty on my to-listen-to list).  I want ice cream.  I want to go swimming.  I want to binge on DVR'ed Workaholics and Girls.  I want to hit up the new Short North spot, The Pearl (raw oysters are a minor contributor to my reason for living).  I want not to live out of my backpack and duffel.  I want to be able to read the news (e.g. Benedict, yo, what was that all about?  What is a/the Harlem Shake?  Sequester, eh?)

I need reacquainted with this superb Big Ten basketball season.  I need to go see new babies: the previously mentioned Xavier and, making me an uncle six times over, João Paulo.

I need to see my friends.  I need to recommit to the conquest of Breaking Bad.  I need to sit down with my family.  I really need to clear the air about residency, having now had four vivid dreams about Match Day.  I need to wish someone a happy first birthday.

My work:good times ratio is fantastically latter-heavy in the next months.  To be sure, this is a prime time of my life: finishing one chapter and patiently approaching the next while just having had my eyes/heart/mind/soul opened in Africa.

I can't help, however, but to feel a concurrent tinge of selfishness.  So acutely knowing sub-Saharan life, the prospect of seeking out my first-ever Shamrock Shake seems callous.  Perhaps all of life is just adjusting.  I know what my boy Jim Morrison said about comparisons but I'll allow myself one here.  Going forward, the African people will have an ever-smoldering place in my heart like that of my first real love: not directly connected but yet formative and never forgotten.

There is much on my mind and perhaps even more on my schedule.  Despite the literally world-class people watching between sentences here in Turkey, I am just ready to be home.