When you wake.

I'm in New York City for the night, and I'll be back here for a few months starting next Monday. If nothing else, this new residency's going to be an excellent prompt to keep going with the job hunt. Not that I'm at the residency yet - that's starting next week - but being in the guest bedroom of my parents' rented apartment is a weird exercise in the idea of temporary living spaces, especially since they're moving again in a few months. It's a pretty city at night, but I know I'd feel better about living in it if I wasn't coming off a six-hour drive and wasn't leaving tomorrow morning. Much as I'm looking forward to Vancouver, I'm dreading the subway ride to get there. I don't know how people whose jobs rely on travel manage to handle themselves.

The drive took about six hours, from just after ten to just after six, counting a lunch break, rest stops, and typical traffic congestion. I got behind the wheel for a while, which was all right except for the trucks, since those don't follow the same rules as cars and make car-driving trickier. I ended up locking my arms out straight and pressing myself against the seat to get as much force applied to the steering wheel itself as I could. Aside from that, and having to keep pausing the music to tell my dad what the people just sang, it went about as well as I'd have predicted. We got off a bit later than we wanted, but got into New York by dinnertime, and as soon as we passed over the state border from Pennsylvania to New Jersey I let out a sigh of relief: leaving the state made the feeling of getting my MS that much more real. I'm still waiting on my diploma and gainful employment, but not being in the city anymore's as good a sign as any that I finished the degree. No, my class didn't get a graduation ceremony since we're leaving when most of the new students come in. I can go to a graduation ceremony in winter or spring if I want, but I'll probably just stay inside and break out a bottle of Martinelli's or something.

In the meantime, I'd better go through my stuff and make sure I have just the things I need for the vacation tomorrow. And on some level, I can't quite understand why I need to take a bus and the subway to get to the airport. I really can't wait to just be somewhere and not have to worry about transportation connections. Which, if it all goes well, might be as early as this Thursday. I guess I'll find out when I get there.