I have nothing to do.

It's true.  I went to the library today and bought more books.  I'm vaguely considering reading everything for my fall classes this summer, and then maybe I'll actually be prepared for my precepts for a change.  

To the Lighthouse got really good today.  I'm now realizing that a huge theme in Woolf's novels (and just modernism, in general) is impermanence, and the way we want to preserve a single moment in time and feel it forever and examine and understand it, but we can't, because time keeps moving forward.  As each of you read Mrs. Dalloway, *pay attention* to this theme ("leaden circles dissolved in the air").  This will become clearer as you read, Claire, given your newness to VW.

Also, time is such a huge factor in Woolf's novels simply because the book's emphasize character, rather than plot.  There is no plot pushing the novel forward; just time.  That's why Big Ben keeps sounding throughout Dalloway, bringing the focus of the characters (and therefore, the reader) to reality, to the shared notion of objectivity that must unite all the people in the novel and focus them on the exterior, despite their tendency to lose themselves inside their own thoughts.