It’s December and my roommates and I are deeply into Christmas. We’ve got a little 3ft tall Christmas tree with about fifty-thousand little multicolor LED lights on it (LEDs because we ARE saving the planet). We’re in the ‘study period’ right before finals and It’s a lowkey Saturday night.

Lisa and I were pajama’d and gelaxing in our suite’s common room. She was in a tan easy chair and I was slouched on our red corduroy couch, my slippered feet up on a white coffee table. We had a Christmas playlist playing throughout the suite, a ‘Christmas lights of Paris’ Youtube video streaming silently on our TV and cups of Keurig brewed hot-chocolate with little marshmallows.

Leong came out of her room and joined us, taking a seat on the far side of the couch with me. After a moment she stretched-out, putting her head in my lap. I love her jet-black, cornsilk hair and it wasn’t long before I found myself stroking it, a gesture primates have been making since the pleistocene period. When Lisa glanced over at us and smiled, I started making gestures like I was looking for fleas in her hair and eating them - in a silly, momentary comedy lost on Leong.

We got back from November recess a few days ago. After three years together, it was easy, almost automatic, for us to fall back in our rhythms as roommates. On arrival, I glanced through my drawers, ***** clothes and shelves, taking a casual inventory. Everything was as I remembered it but still, everything had the feel of trivial leftovers from some lost civilization.

I got a new M3-iMac, it’s really the best platform for putting docs side by side. The first thing I did was hit ‘restore my setup’ from the cloud. I love futzing with tech - I can remember when that kind of restoration would have taken all day - but fifteen minutes later I could tell from the files on my desktop that everything was restoring nicely.

As I sat back on my office chair watching the restoration, I felt myself relax. THIS was real life, this was how life should be done. No matter what else I’d done or where else I’d gone - this was how my life should be - at school, with friends, facing those challenges. It was a peek-moment.

It was an illusion that my little iMac welcomed me back, like an old friend, as it finished restoring - wasn’t it?