I have noticed that a good number of my favorite poems evoke a certain sense of... not quite wanderlust, but the quiet little lifting of your soul that happens when you soar free through a wide, wide, ever-widening universe, somehow happy to be lonely at that moment. Some pieces of this stick so deeply in me that I've memorized them (unintentionally).

Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
-- from "An Irish Airman Forsees His Death," by William Butler Yeats

This is the sort of stuff that comes to mind when I find myself watching the sun come up from an air mattress next to a luggage of spilled clothes. It's a good life - one that can't last forever, but... well, I'll love it while I can.

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking.
-- from "Sea Fever," by John Masefield

All right. I gotta sleep - I get to go see Mark's lab today, which I am quite excited about. It's been so long since I was around active mechanical prototypes. As much as I love software, sometimes I do itch to get my hands on something solid.