I made it!

For those keeping track, I did not write yesterday because, well, I was staying with friends in the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania. Wireless was not so much an option. Not a bad day of driving from Ann Arbor to Champion, PA. Chicago always produces a ridiculous amount of traffic and construction but I managed to avoid getting lost, which is a plus. I also noticed that there are a lot of billboards in Ohio and Michigan that advertise for porn shops and 'friendly encounters'. Perhaps it's because they have a lot of lonely truckers? Who knows. Listened to more christian radio which continues to make me angry.

Got to our friends Pam and Hugh's around 4:30 yesterday afternoon and we sat and visited for a while. Wow I said "visited". Does that make me old? It was nice to catch up after not having seen them in forever. They are actually friends of my parents from Thailand but I feel like they are like second parents. It was nice to be in a home away from home. Went for a run up a giant hill, which is apparently all they have in that part of PA, after which I was served a fantastic dinner. And then I passed out. My phone rang around midnight I guess but I didn't hear it, even though it was right next to my head. Soemthing to be said about sleeping in the woods. Pam and Hugh's cabin is literally in the middle of the woods, with bears, squirrels, birds and all the other wildlife we don't get in cities. It's a little haven where I will most certainly return when DC starts to grate on me.

Drove back to VA this morning to mom's house. Decided to NOT drive on the PA turnpike since it is the worst road ever. Picture the Jersey turnpike (for those who have never driven it, two lanes going in each direction with a giant concrete barrier in the center and very little shoulder) with a million trucks, tons of construction, curves like a road through Vermont, and inevitably bad weather. Took a couple of small back roads to get to rte68, a much more pleasant alternative to the turnpike. And the unavoidable downpour occurred. Visibility was pretty much nil for about 40 miles, which isn't so bad unless you're driving downhill next to giant trucks behind thrown around by the wind and your windshield is not quite clear because the defroster isn't working and the last time the windshield was properly cleaned, a lot of streaks were left. I survived, obviously. Stopped someplace near the MD border to look at a cutout of the rock surface (will post picture later) that shows the striations and compression of the rocks over millions of years. Fascinating.

Got home around 1:30pm and promptly passed out on mom's sofa for a couple hours. All is well at home. Oh except for my minor freak out this evening. Mom and Gary went out for a couple hours and left me to tend the house, bake cookies, do my laundry, etc. I was in the basement and when I came up the stairs to the main level, the front door was wide open. Strange. I remember distinctly looking at the close door on my trip down the stairs and wondering if they had locked the door on their way out. Apparently not. I freaked out. The house is in a nice, safe neighborhood but there have been incidents of car thefts and people randomly wandering into houses. I was not about to become a bloody heap of former person, so I called mommy then went to daddy's house to hang out until the family came home. I'm still a little weirded out and a little worried that some weirdo is squatting in my sister's closet, waiting until we're all asleep so that he can jump out and eat us or something.

Sweet dreams all...