This was a most eventful weekend... a trip home, and a trip home. I went to Columbus, and .. well, things did not go according to plan. Right before I went, my GPS came in. It's really cool, and GeoCaching with it will be a lot of fun. It actually has some pretty decent maps preloaded (it knew about Brecksville, the little town my parents have settled in, not far from Cleveland). However, although it's good with highways, it lacks most local streets. They sell a CD with street-level maps for $149, but I'm unlikely to get that.. :) I might borrow it from someone, or see if I can get the publically available data to work. Unfortunately, the thing eats batteries very quickly. I'm glad I'm back -- using it with rechargables should fix the problem. Anyhow, back to the narrative.. I hopped back in my car (having made a special trip back to work to get the GPS), and hopped on the highway going west. The trip was uneventful -- some new music I got made it less dull than usual, and my anticipation of SFF gave me impetus to get there in a hurry. I soon reached Columbus, very much enjoying watching my GPS map the entire way there, and made a mad dash for the building where SFF had been meeting for an hour. SFF was enjoyable -- a lot of new faces, a few old ones... Martha was there, and told a ghost story.. I finally confirmed my suspicion, on this trip, that there's nothing unusual left between us -- it wasn't really weird at all for me.

After the meeting, we went out to eat, and then some of us went to hang out at someone's house, and then, much later, out for more food. It was on the way to the hanging out that the first major snafu of the weekend struck -- my car became very ill, spitting out foul smoke and making bad noises. We pulled it to the side of the road near a member of the party's house, and got a ride to continue the night's events. I also hung out with Gaelynn, a really cute/smart girl from SFF I've occasionally been chatting with via IM, and exchanged some music with her. The next day, I returned to my car, had it towed to Fnord, and then got a ride back to campus, thanks to Aug (thanks, Aug! Wish we had had more time to hang out).. I visited some professors and ex-co-workers, and then some plans for the evening were changed, so I ended up walking around Columbus for about 5 hours. - This was once Insomnia I eventually called Dubin, and hung out at his place for a bit, and napped. I woke up just in time to go to outland, and ended up biking there.. It was a good visit, and on the way back, I had an interesting experience. The next morning, we did breckfast, and Martha showed up -- there was a gathering for the funeral of Larry Reyka, an important person in the humanist movement that a lot of people in the local movement who knew him went to. I went and visited with Lorie, having good Indian food and chatting for awhile at a coffeeshop. After that, I went to visit with my sisters. Up until this point, I was planning to Greyhound home, but my mom suggested that if I could make it back to Brecksville, I could borrow one of the spare cars. When I made it there, I hung out briefly with Katie, and then Andrea drove me up. It was a fun ride -- we had a good chance to talk (something which I really don't get to do very often with my sisters), and I shared some music on my laptop with her. Being home was pretty good.. I always seem to sleep very well there, and caught up on a lot of the sleep that I didn't get in Columbus, for one reason or another. I also got to taste some of my mom's latest cooking experiments, and hang out with Lindsay. We played Gamecube for a bit (she brought Pikmin and Simpsons Road Rage, both of which were a lot of fun). A few hours ago, the time came when I couldn't put off leaving any further (if I wanted to get home at a reasonable hour), so I hopped in the spare car, put on some music that I got from a friend on this trip, and went home.

So, in sum, I didn't go to Athens for the Halloween parade. Amanda wasn't there anyhow -- she was on a trip that was unexpectedly delayed. My car is currently ill, and in Columbus being repaired. I'm borrowing a spare car from my family, and sometime, perhaps next weekend, I'll likely be returning to Columbus to get my car back (unless I can convince my sisters to drive here, and drive it back.. which might be fun -- they could see my new place and we could visit IKEA and stuff). There're two somethings I'm not telling you about the trip, with various details removed. Sorry. I'm going to detail the stuff below, in a private section, as this journal is partly for me, and partly for .. heh.. my public. I like that phrase.

So, half-asleep Pat types, let's look quickly at our remaining thoughts.. First, I noticed at the toll station I passed getting back into Pennsylvania, the teller called me "Sir". I've chewed on what the word means in modern American English, at least in common usage, and I've come to the conclusion that it's meant to suggest a seperation between the people speaking. The seperation isn't necessarily in class, but rather is a clear indicator that no friendly or personal contact is intended, and that things are strictly 'business'. I find this idea strangely fascinating.

The Episcopals have finished with the arguing over the appointment of Gene Robinson as Bishop, and have finally done it. I've talked about this before, so I'm just noting the conclusion, for now, on the matter.

Here's an interview with some celtic pagans in the Highlands of Scotland. If you're into Gaelic, apparently the BBC is the place for you .. :) I stumbled on the previous two links looking for an interesting telling of the episcopal story for you to read..

It looks like the big fires in California are beginning to quiet down, although some people are suggesting that human stupidity might play a part in how big the effect was. It wouldn't surprise me.. My dad mentioned that in his most recent business trip to Brazil, on the airplane they flew over huge forest fires in the sparsely-settled western areas of the country, and someone explained that as it's largely unsettled land, much of it unexplored, nature takes its course as it sees fit, with the fires unmanaged. There's something interesting about that -- I've heard that the efforts to fight forest fires generally tend to just set the stage for big ones, and that the periodic random fires tend to be less destructive when they're not interfered with. Of course, it's hard for civilized people to accept that, either psychologically or economically -- we feel a need to control our environment, and also tend to need to keep external influences to a minimum so we can sue things that step into the middle of our finely-laid plans.

My cat is sure happy to see me. *snuggle* Oh, finally, if you're a computer geek, you might want to know that there are new versions of GAIM, a totally kickass IM client that talks ICQ/AIM/Yahoo/etc, and Apache. Time to upgrade.