As the date we move into our house gets nearer and nearer, I've been feeling my base level of excitment steadily rising, so that by now I go around giddy and half-drunk with anticipation. But there's another reason that December 1st will be an important date for me: it's the day I send my very, very last student loan payment.

Now, I still have other debts I'm paying down, and unlike several friends I never had crazy student loans to begin with, but by God I've been paying on those bastards off and on for ten years through summer jobs and what-all, and seeing that last payment go off is going to be like walking out the prison gates and stretching my arms.

I used to have reoccuring nightmares that I was late for class, or that I had gone to the wrong class all semester--distorted dream versions of real experiences--until I graduated and remembered in one dream that I had hung my diploma on the wall. The diploma as a dream-object was that powerful.

I feel a similar mix of pride and relief at the prospect of paying off that last 52 dollars. How funny that it will happen the same day Anne and I take possession of our house.