Well, this was my last day in Connecticut.  I haven't been able to sleep, so I've been up all night looking at things online, finishing packing, that sort of thing.  I went to get a Big Mac at the fast food place on I-91.  Pretty desolate, about two people in the place, but the fries were fresh and hot.

Today was an odd day.  I don't like this process of leaving, saying goodbyes, trying to, I don't know.  There's an impulse to sort of make a statement of one thing or another when you're leaving people, and I don't like the feeling.  My leaving is kind of weighing on my mother - I don't know what to say to make her feel better.  This does seem, for some reason, far more final than my leaving for college.  It's very sudden.

I ate a boiled lobster at Lenny's today, first time I had had that in, what, a decade, I think.  Very good, I should've eaten them more often - there's some sort of odd, weird green muck in the central chest cavity of the little beast.  It tastes like low tide, very strange flavor.

Choosing a car is an odd experience, almost character defining in a way.  I'm excited about having one, finally.

I'm just bringing a duffel bag and a backpack to Los Angeles.  I'll probably have my mom send some more books, I guess some other things, later, but, really, I don't need anything beyond what's in the luggage that'll be flying with me.  I like physical things, goods (not to slight services), but I find it fairly freeing in a way to discard or disregard most of the stuff I've purchased over the past 10-15 years.  It's like starting with a clean slate - ill advised purchases, gone, regrettable book or course choices, irrelevant, so on.  I'm not, of course, planning on becoming some sort of anti-materialist; this just gives me the chance to define myself through a whole new set of products.

I'm enjoying the progress in the Middle East.  Seems like things are working, that recent international actions may have moved the groups towards being more willing to compromise, which is cheering.  I imagine that Bush would have to get the Peace Prize if his roadmap lead in some part to a peace between Israel and Palestine - deeply ironical for most of Europe, which is what would make it so entertaining.

Ah, hell, now I'm getting tired.

Stone