There is indeed no place like home; I am finally back in my own beautiful state, where the temperatures are bearable and the people don't talk funny. I mean, come on, what is "ayuh" in comparison with "Ma'am, y'all have a good tahme now, y'hear? Bubbah naow sweetie."? I was roped into driving down south...deep south...where they take the greatest pride in sporting the most lurid shade of orange in the world and the expiring pickup with the Rebel flag in the back window is a dirty wifebeater'ed mulletted reality...with my sister for her graduation and to pick up all her stuff that had been left there, a not so much unwilling as uninformed accomplice. It rained merrily every night and the vast majority of the days as well, producing great claps of thunder unexpectedly at two in the morning that evoked nothing so much as a compressed combination of a shotgun blast and a small sonic boom. Not like thunder at all.

Anyways, I drooped through the week in 90+ degree weather (the humidity levels shall remain unaddressed for your sake, dear reader) and the endless socializing and overflow of sentimentality that marks any college graduation worth its salt. Estrogen reigned rampant. An eleven-hour drive yesterday and a ten-hour one today, with four stopped bumper-to-bumper traffic jams and a schizophrenic temperature gauge mixed in for spice, saw us home intact. I shall now proceed to collapse, gently and with dignity.