9:00 my alarm probably did go off
12:11 i actually wake up
2:01 the last moving-in load is forced into my car
2:04 i anticipate showering, driving to my new house, unloading my car, and driving to school by 3 for a meeting with my professor
2:56 i park at duquesne with all my earthly goods still in my car, hoping i don't own anything anybody wants to take out of my car
3:02 i meet with dr. hanna
3:37 my car still hasn't been stolen, so i drive it back to my house and unload
5:39 i leave for my 6:00 class
5:56 i blow a tire completely flat on my way to school
6:01 i park my car somewhere unobtrusive and put a pair of underpants in the window for lack of a rag
6:14 i appear at my first-ever class at duquesne
8:46 i emerge from my first-ever class at duquesne and find a security officer near my car
8:59 the security officer brings a jack, and i do not have a wrench.
9:01 i pull my keys out of my pocket to move my car to a slightly better place
9:02 i realize my car key has broken in half
9:04 i call my dad to explain that i need a jack, a wrench, and a key
9:13 i realize i have not eaten all day
9:47 subway is in my belly and i'm hanging out in my car
10:28 my dad comes to the rescue
10:44 we realize he does not have the right size of wrench
10:49 i call aaa
10:56 i hang up with aaa, having given them my cell phone number
10:57 my cell dies
10:58 i call them back and give them my dad's number
11:15 someone comes from aaa to rescue my car
11:51 i get home and try to use the internet
12:14 i realize that my room is the only one in the house that will not receive internet
3:00 i fall asleep in my clean bed in my clean room with a fan overhead and screens to keep the bugs out.  i am not afraid someone will kill me.  i am not worried about where my next meal will come from.  i do not have any enemies that i know of, and i have a lot of friends and a loving family.  there is running water and electricity.  i am sleeping in a room with hundreds of books that i own.  i have had a wonderful day.

Apparently a large part of moving out of my parents' house will be deciding what items I will steal from them.  So far I have my eye on a couple folding yellow metal chairs, a mattress, a little desk, several dozen heavily-used books, and two lamps.  Oh, and my dad's internet subscription.

I'm fascinated by the concept of children divvying up their parents' earthly belongings in an orderly fashion.  The opportunity for offense and division just seems so huge.  I've sort of resigned myself to pilfering things away every time I bring the kids over for Christmas or Thanksgiving, so that when the fateful day comes I can confess my evil sneaky ways and withdraw my claim from any inheritance.  Of course, my parents will probably suspect what's going on every time they notice another crucial piece of furniture missing, but I plan on having really cute kids who will be excellent diversions.

What can I say.  I'm an evil genius.



--Edit:  The downside to this strategy is, of course, that all my children will be raised thinking this is the normal and proper way to do things.  After every family get-together, I'll have to refurnish my house with toilets, bathtubs, sofas, dining room tables, and light fixtures.

So I'm home.  My trip went like this.

The plan was to fly to JFK on Jet Blue, then onto London, Madrid, and Valencia on British Airways.  On June 19, Jet Blue was delayed 4 hours and I had to completely reschedule my three British Airways flights on the spot.  This was not too bad in JFK, but it was a little more complicated in London, and when I got to Madrid it was entirely in Spanish and they almost kept me off the plane because high school Spanish never taught me how to explain that I had rescheduled my entire 20-hour flightplan starting in New York.

Gina met me in Valencia and we hung out for a couple days, then flew to Belgium, planning to take a train into Luxembourg, because her friends said Luxembourg was pretty swell.  In keeping with the current theme, our flight was delayed 3 or 4 hours because "a bird hit the plane" at some point.  So we spent the night in Belgium before going on to Luxembourg.  We walked around the city walls, bought a lot of chocolate, and then came back to Valencia.

We played tourist in Valencia for a few more days and then packed Gina up and sent her home.  Because of her broken wrist, Gina was going home early, and once again I was reshuffling my flightplan in Spanish.  I got to Madrid okay, and then ran into a British Airways ticket counter that had gone on strike; another 5 hours later, I was on my way to London.

In London it was raining.  I tried vainly to call my uncle Jim from a phone booth, and reached someone named Martha, and gave up.  I hailed a cab, showed the cabbie my uncle's address, and mumbled something in not-really-Spanish before realizing that people speak English in England.  Funny, but true.  Then I showed up at the address I'd written down, and rung the doorbell, having given my uncle absolutely no warning.  Tada!

Now in London, I spent time with my Uncle Jim and Aunt Di, then time with Chris Dinkle from ORU who happened to be in London, and then a lot of time with Peter Jackson, who was there for no specific reason.  I saw a cricket match at Lord's, which was impressive.  I took thousands of pictures.  I went to evensong at Westminster Abbey, saw Buckingham Palace and Big Ben and Tower Bridge and the Tower of London.  I crossed every bridge across the Thames in downtown London, I saw Phantom of the Opera and I haunted the British Museum.  I walked through London with the intention of getting lost, and succeeded.  I saw Stonehenge, I saw where the Thames inlet meets the English Channel.  But I think the most important part of the London trip was getting to know my aunt and uncle, who til now had been sort of shadowy mystery people in the nether regions of Extended Family.  Granted, it was only a couple of weeks, but  feel like I've at least met them as an adult, and that's significant to me.  They're great people.  I'm glad I'm related to them.

The next part of the plan was to come home, and then two weeks-ish later, to go with my family to visit other family in California.  But Gina's family was going on vacation in Colorado right when I was getting back to the States.  So instead of going home, I juggled flights and wound up in Colorado with Gina's family.  We hiked--and it was pretty serious hiking--and we visited and relaxed and then we all drove back to her house in Kansas, and did more relaxing.  I got a haircut.  We saw Harry Potter.  And then I flew out to California, and met my family in the Oakland airport.

My family packs a lot into a little time.  Six days into my London trip, I had barely started taking pictures.  In six days with my family, we hiked the hills along the northern shore, we went to at least 3 family reunion dinners, we had seen the Japanese Tea Gardens and the redwoods preserve outside San Fransisco, along with taking a tour of downtown San Fransisco, riding the cable cars, seeing mom's friend from high school (she had one friend in high school), and other stuff I can't even really remember.  I'm duly impressed.  And I got a copy of the latest Vicious Rumors album, courtesy of my uncle Larry, the drummer for said band.  And I got to hang out with my cousin Taylor, and she and my little sister and I stayed up all night talking and it was uber.  Then we all flew back to Pittsburgh tonight.

So my trip to Europe was a slow, aimless immersion of culture.  My trip to the midwest was a relaxing visit with Gina & her family.  My trip to California was a whirlwind tour.  I've seen the Atlantic, walked on the shore of the Mediterranean, dipped a hand in the English Channel and a foot into the Pacific ocean.  I've hiked along the city walls of Luxembourg, I've paced the "higgly-piggly" streets of London (phrase courtesy of my uncle Jim), I've trekked to the Continental Divide and I've walked under the towering redwoods in California.  I've been through 9 different time zones, 5 different countries (USA, UK, Spain, Belgium, and Luxembourg), 5 different states (PA, NY, CO, KS, and CA), and I've been on 5 airlines in 13 different airplanes.

I was sitting at my uncle Larry's, talking about my Europe trip, and someone asked me what I learned.  "Nothing much," I replied, "except that other places are all just--  Well, they're just other places where people live, and work, and eventually die, and they aren't all on vacation, and that's about all there is to it."  This world is a nice place, and I've enjoyed seeing more than I usually would.  But honestly, every corner of the world seems to be mostly what you make of it and who you know in it--Pittsburgh as much as London or Madrid.  And I think it will be a while before I go gallavanting across the globe again.