Travel Update: 8/27/09

The pic is the lovely pyromaniac I have left behind. :’(

Travel was uneventful, which is usually best. After a 3-month absence, my apartment is still here and unflooded (no hurricanes or even rain here, apparently), the phone and internet work, nothing smells weird, and I am really hoping there are no dead animals in either of my kayaks, this year. I made all my flights, they were all on time, and I wasn’t in any middle seats.

My car still works. I reconnected the battery, put the license plates back on, and drove it a little, feeling the whumpy whumpy of the flat spots on the tires. I got $90 worth of groceries, which feels like nothing; it always does when you start from nearly zero.

My job is still here, and all the people I love, whom I work with. Now I have a new next-office neighbor, Edna, who is an awesome developmental researcher, a set of skills I wish to exploit. Heh heh. I have put my Algonquin 8x10s on my office wall. They may not be the most artfully-placed things ever (wall space = limited), but they remind me, and make others jealous. Their purpose is fulfilled. I renewed my campus gym membership and parking tag (total price for the year: about $300; kind of a bargain, in the case of the parking permit). I got my accumulated mail (nothing from U.S. Immigration). I have migrated my Outlook settings from the summer back into my desktop machine, and am working on synchronizing the files, now. I watched the Fall Convocation on le internets, and then sneaked into the after-convocation brunch to chat with people I haven’t seen all summer. Nice :)

Ah, to be back home. Perfect? No. But it’s home, and there’s something to be said for not worrying every day whether it’s still there ;)