it’s been a while

December 28, 2004

approximately 2100 miles of driving took josh and me from durham to fort wayne (indiana) to champaign (illinois) to philadelphia and back to durham over the course of the last week and a half. it was actually not as painful as it sounds, although there were particular stretches which i did not enjoy: the last several hours through dark and intermittently snowy central pennsylvania, for example.

but we made it, we’re still here, and we did not get any speeding tickets. we didn’t really get lost, either. i would call the trip overall a success.

a (very) brief synopsis:

1. fort wayne

the wedding we attended was beautiful. for all of molly’s (the bride) whining about the lack of class in fort wayne, it was pretty damn classy. the highlight (lowlight) was probably me accidently flashing about 5 people on the dance floor towards the end of the night while dancing frenetically (in a very non-serious way) to “hey ya!”. apparently, my dress was just not constucted to handle the gyrations i was subjecting it to. i realize that i will be hearing about this incident until i die, but i do agree that it was funny, although not very dignified.

2. champaign

we drove 4 hours west (i think) to champaign in order to visit josh’s grad school friends who are mostly still pounding away at computer science phDs. now, i have never thought of myself as an extremely stylish or ‘cool’ person, but i can now rest assured that i am nowhere near the edge of the nerd spectrum. josh’s friends were nice, but i saw some fashions at a party that were from the most unfortunate period of the mid-80s and worn with absolutely no irony or sense of humor at all. one pair of too-tight, waist-high, acid-washed jeans stands out in my mind (it’s like an indelible image of horror). wow.

3. philadelphia

after a rather long haul across illinois/indiana/west virginia/pennsylvania, we spent several days in philadelphia with my parents. it was nice to visit (i hadn’t been back in a while) though rather hard to concentrate (i was supposed to be studying). i did manage to get through about 600 qbank questions. people always ask me how i am able to ‘zone out’ and focus so easily, and during this trip i realized that if i hadn’t learned to tune out background noise while growing up in my house, i wouldn’t have made it out of high school.

highlights of this trip included a visit to my aunt/uncle/cousins’ house where a movie-sized hdtv setup has been installed, a trip downtown to see a musical set in the year 1224, and christmas-eve dinner at my father’s brother’s house complete with the best ham i have ever eaten (not that i’ve eaten much ham in my life, but this was definitely the best). as we tried to leave, josh and i were showered with enough food, wine, and other trinkets to last us through a weeklong blizzard back in north carolina.

we’re home now. it’s very quiet. i am now exactly 3 weeks away from the boards, but i will be spending one of those weeks in miami (i know, feel sorry for me). it’s back to studying and procrastinating in relative solitude once again. but i’m happy to be back.

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