Countdown begins...

As it begins to dawn on me that I'm going back to school in just a smidge over a week.

And I'm a little bit scared about it, probably because I didn't leave on a wildly good note on a number of factors, but there's still a surreal dream like quality to the knowledge that the summer's almost over and then it's back.

Don't get me wrong; I actually really like the school. I like the people there; I like learning things; I like getting closer to getting my medical degree, and if this paragraph is any indication, I like semicolons, but there's this 'freedom' high school feel to summer this time, something I hadn't experienced for quite a while, despite the shadowing and studying. No job, most of my time scheduled to myself, being with my parents...

And now, it'll be back to the world of responsibility. No more "fun with flashcards" at Disneyworld, since the stuff really is interesting, but back to the land where knowledge must be applied and tested rather than just simply known just in case "Eicosanoids" happens to come up as a category in Jeopardy.

The feeling is different than last term because I know what to expect, though ValueMD prepared me for it to a great degree, but it also means there's less excitement. Less fear, but less excitement because it's not off to the big unknown to end my stint as a technical writer and pursue my dream. It's the maintenance of that dream with an end to my stint as a lazy bum, and "lazy bum" is a far more difficult profession to leave. Ask anyone.

Which means it's back to preparation, dwelling on baggage allowances and the fact that I have to navigate Boston in time to not have to rush a flight that's at 6 in the morning, which will then invariably take me on the scenic route of NYC, Jamaica, Grenada. Unlike the six hours American Airlines robbed me of in Puerto Rico, I only have a scheduled 2 hours in Jamaica, which still tempts me to go in and out of customs just to get my passport stamped because I'm a total dork, but we shall see.

But last I updated, I was in North Carolina, wasn't I? Well, I'm back in New Hampshire just in time for a heat wave, thus the upstairs temperature during the day is actually hotter than Grenada, but I got to enjoy the California-winter temperatures before leaving, complete with storms and winds, which was actually pretty cool, despite the locals hardly being thrilled with it.

The drive back from NC... Mapquest, she lies to us, precious. Which I already knew of course, once ending up down a private drive in Beverly Hills, which was Mapquest's interpretation of "John Wayne Airport", which isn't even particularly close, but still, let me tell you definitively that driving I-95 from North Carolina to my temporary home in New Hampshire is not 13 hours by any stretch of the imagination, even accounting for the ferociously bad traffic that constitutes New York City and ALL of Connecticut, particularly since I drive like a maniac.

In addition, playing "red light/green light" on the George Washington Bridge is a stupid idea. When you're going to change toll-takers, just make the person wait like they do on every other bridge, including the Golden Gate and Bay Bridge, so we're not talking rinky dinky little bridges. Do NOT, in that sort of traffic, arbitrarily flick on either red or green lights, causing everyone backed up in traffic to attempt desperate, last minute, panicked, slow motion, honking lane changes while narrowly avoiding the big rigs screaming through the enviable fastpass lane, or whatever the heck it's called. That was a traffic jam that didn't need to happen.

Which brings me to Connecticut... now... I don't know the Northeast too well, but it seems like Connecticut, as far as I heard, had a reputation for being a green pastured, albeit, whitebread existence while Jersey's reputation as the "Garden State" is often deemed largely ironic, dismissed as a stinking factory-sunk urban wasteland...

So it confused me that Jersey, almost exclusively, on the way down and up, via different routes, was beautiful, lush and green, while Connecticut seemed to be a vast congested concrete jungle punctuated only by arbitrary decisions to reduce 3-4 lanes of traffic to one to hammer up the barely paved roads. Did they run out of asphalt when they were paving over the state? I'll admit, it *is* a nice way to ensure traffic jams at 2 in the morning. Usually, that's a feat only accomplished by the tangle of the "80s" in the Bay Area. Yeesh.

Getting in at around 4 in the morning, I was so achey and exhausted from being in the car since 9 that morning with no cruise control that my calf muscles were actually trembling. DVT anyone? So thank you again, Mapquest with your 75% success rate. You are right just often enough that I let my guard down and trust you just in time to get hosed.

Since then, I've primarily been sleeping and reading the latest Harry Potter book (see above about being a dork), thus basking in the sweet sweet fiction that will have to go away in a week. I have kept up the biochem though, polishing off hemostasis AGAIN tonight before lounging in a bath, again, to enjoy the luxuries I will not have in Grenada. That's right, no bathtub, not when I was in the dorm, not in my upcoming apartment, and as a girl with girl genes and girl parts, I must, as a duty to my gender, periodically soak in tepid perfumed liquid, with champagne and classical music as optional, thus my deprivation from that nearly caused me to go into symptomatic withdrawal whilst on the Rock... so I'm stocking up now, lest the testosterone build...