ROAD TRIP!!

I'm going home! Yay! Goin' home! Yay!

My bestest friend Grace is flying to Houston on Nov 18 and she will accompany me on the 1,340 mile drive back to the east coast!

It should take about 3 days, 2 nights. We'll have a short first day and spend some time in New Orleans and try to stay in a hotel in the French Quarter. Then we'll have a longer second day and spend the night in Greenville, SC or somethin between Atlanta, I mean HOTlanta, and Charlotte. Grace and I are great traveling buddies so I'm excited about this trip! I've never driven so far before. Well, I was in a car on the same trip from Houston to Virginia back in 1983, but I don't remember any of that.

If it don't fit in my car, it ain't comin' with me. So I have lots to do to sort out all of my junk. After Katrina and Rita, I realized I don't really need STUFF. Almost everyTHING is replacable. I'll try to sell some stuff, but a lot will just be thrown out or maybe donated. I'm not really sure how I'm gonna do all that. Craigslist I guess. But I'm going to toss every tshirt that has a little hole near the belly button resulting from leaning up against lab benches with bleach or other mysterious chemical residue, which sadly, is a lot. Dishes, glassware, and pots and pans are going. Small favorite kitchen gadgets, like the microplane grater, will be kept. Old text books are going because the most important bio texts are free and online at the NCBI Bookshelf website anyway. So basically, that leaves clothes I actually wear, sentimental things, fun books, jewelry making supplies, my laptop, and stuff for my thesis.

Thinking about all the crap I have to square away in the lab and in the apartment makes my head hurt.

BUT I'll be home just in time for Thanksgiving! My family moved into our house in Clinton on Thanksgiving in 1986 (right?). That's gotta be a good sign :)