It's been seven nine weeks since I got on a plane back to Newark, NJ. It seems like ages ago, even though it really isn't... Hmmm... *ponder*

The first week: August 8 - 13

My trip back was highly uneventful, until I got to Newark. I was worried about immigration -- I figured getting through on a new US Visa + I-20 might take longer. The good news was that I was wrong. Instead, my suitcase didn't roll off the conveyer belt until a solid 30 minutes after I got there. That's 30 minutes *after* I cleared immigration; usually my suitcase gets to the baggage claim before I do.

The short version: I missed my connection and got stuck at Newark for a bit. My original flight was supposed to leave at 1:20pm, but I didn't get out until well after 6pm. Fortunately the people at Continental took pity on me; I got my ticket changed for free.

I was booked for three random flights to Syracuse. The earliest one was a revenue stand-by for 6pm, and thankfully it worked out that way. I didn't find out until they actually told me to get on the plane, though, so it was a little hectic keeping Char (in Hamilton) and Michael (in NJ/NYC) up to date. The plan was to stay at Michael's if I didn't get a flight on that particular day.

At Syracuse I was met by Char and Allison, who helped me find my suitcase (which took a while, again!). I spent the next few days being taken care of Jabonskis, in terms of food and entertainment. Time went by rather quickly, even though Hamilton was at a standstill (like every summer). The library was even-more-finished than before, and the new Ho Science Center was remarkably bigger. There was basically construction all over campus, to the point where getting to McGregory was quite a feat.

Jetlag always makes the first few days on a new continent extra exciting. Fortunately this time around wasn't that bad, though. The Jablonskis made sure of that. I also had plenty of time to sleep

Friday came around quickly. I hung out with Annabel and her family in Rome for a day, and then all of a sudden it was... *drumroll* Saturday. Michael arrived that afternoon. Annabel, her siblings, and I were just visiting Curtis at that time, which made for an odd scene (since two of used to live in Curtis, way back when). After Annabel had left to return to Rome, Michael and I stopped by the Hour Glass for a drink (a first for me), and proceeded home to Tuckers' to get ready for our trip. This felt counterintuitive; I was sort of half-expecting classes to start and leaving Hamilton would be a bad idea if that were true.

On Sunday, Michael and I made the long trip back to New Jersey. It was an awesome day for driving, as it so happened, and Michael brought excellent music for the road. We took Route 20 East, stopping at Anderson's Hardware Store (run by Rob Anderson's family) on the way. We stopped at Bard College next, where we had lunch with Bridget. After a quick highlight tour of the Bard campus, we were on our way to Harrington Park, aka New Jersey Suburbs.

Michael's place, another couple of hours south, was much the way I left it four years ago -- warm and comfy. Unfortunately I started feeling somewhat nauseous at this point, and incredibly tired. Fortunately there was Mrs. Tringali with toast and tea, which helped a lot.

The second week: August 14 - 20

The next morning I woke up feeling a lot better. Next to me on the couch was Jake, the family dog -- he was new since my previous visit. After some breakfast, Mrs. Tringali and Michael dropped me off at the airport. The whole London scare had been that Wednesday, so I was at the airport a solid 2.5 hours before my flight. Of course, security ended up taking less than 10 minutes, so I got to sit around for quite a while.

My flight took me to Atlanta first, and then Charlottesville. Karsten, my student mentor, picked me up from the airport. After a quick stop to drop off my stuff, we went to dinner in Charlottesville. This was to become my first night of eating out in a very long series

I took the SPEAK test the next morning. It was approximately as entertaining as I had feared it would be. I spent the rest of the day taking care of paperwork and what not: getting my final transcripts from Colgate sent over, making sure the Engineering School was aware of the fact that the International Studies Office had allowed me into the country, that sort of thing. It was a good way to keep busy.

Wednesday and Thursday were marked by... TA workshops. Some of these were pretty abysmal, unfortunately, and many of the not-so-bad sessions seemed to repeat each other. Fortunately a bunch of the incoming Computer Science students were able to team up at this point, so I wasn't alone in my teeth-griding at this point. If you're interested, the schedule for this week (and the week following) is here.

My stay at Karsten's place lasted for four nights; I finally moved into my apartment on Friday. My first night at the new place was interesting; I had no sheets or pillows, so I just slept on a bare mattress. Fortunately I went shopping with Karolina the next day, so at that point I had all the essentials -- sheets, can liners, a shower curtain, etc.

Week three: August 21-27

Computer Science orientation was not terribly exciting, although it was good to finally get started meeting people in the department. Tuesday was probably the most exciting; we had faculty advising and I finally got to pick classes! I'm currently taking:

• Theory of Computation
• Computer Organization
• Programming Languages

I also got my initial TA assignment: Operating Systems for Prof. Marty Humphrey. This got changed a few days later, and my *actual* assignment turned out to be Parallel Computing for Prof. Grimshaw. Either way -- w00t.

All of September

My first few weeks here were marked by lots of going out, meeting people, and generally finding my bearings. I bought a lot of the stuff I needed, most notably my bike. I got my phone plan transferred to my name and set up a banking account here. I got help moving my stuff to my apartment, where it now sits, mostly in my closet. I spent an ungodly amount of money on eating and drinking out. A million people helped me out in various ways.

September saw a rather sizable slowdown in the logistic stuff. I sort of peddled between my apartment and Olsson, casually working on occasion, but mostly getting very, very bored with work in a hurry. (Fortunately that has since changed -- see below).

Highlights for the month included:

• Cakefest - A cake baking competition organized by my fellow firstyear grad students, which ended up involving most of the CS department. My team and I made Spekkoek (aka Dutch Spice Cake, not to be confused with the [a/i]Spice version). It rocked.
• Mountain Biking - I've taken my bike out on several occasions now. A few weeks ago I rode to Walnut Creek Park together with Ray, another incoming CS grad. It took us a solid 45 minutes to get down there, so we only hit the trails for about 20 minutes. It rocked.
• Ultimate Frisbee - My fellow CS grad students signed up two teams for intramural (i.e. recreational) Ultimate. The team names (Diskdrivers and Finite Automapimps) were a good indication of our general nerdiness level. It was a ton of fun though -- we basically played every Tuesday and Friday for a few weeks. I got to run a lot.

Work picked up toward the third week of September, and I have yet to catch up. I blame the fact that I had *nothing* to do for too long 8-)

Homecoming

I was debating whether I should go to homecoming for a while. Chris finally stepped in, providing me with an itinerary that would get me to Colgate and back for less than $150. Thank you =)

So... Last week Thursday (20060928 ) I skipped two of my classes and made my way to the train station in an ungodly rainy mess. I took a bus (not train, for reasons of that being too logical) to Union Station in Washington DC. I noted that it was good to be back in the city, and then took the red line Metro to Metro Center. From there I took the orange line all the way to New Carrollton. Chris picked me up and we drove to his apartment just west of Newark, Delaware.

The next day consisted primarily of The Long Drive to Colgate. We picked up Annabel in State College, PA and headed northeast to Colgate. This is when I got a phone call informing me that I had just become an uncle to a nephew. As a longstanding family tradition, the message didn't mention said nephew's name. A few hours later I finally picked up a call from Kim. She informed me the baby's name is Nathan. W00t!

Annabel, Chris, and I arrived in Rome, NY around 11pm. Annabel's grandparents were, of course, out on the town, but they arrived shortly after we did 8-)

We finally made it to Colgate on Saturday. My 24 hours there were a whirlwind of football, scrabble, taking pictures of the campus, shopping at the Bookstore, and going out Saturday night. I even set foot in the Jug for the first time in my life. I slept on Ushnish' couch for a few hours before hanging out with a few more people on Sunday. We left Colgate late on Sunday, arriving in State College around 3am on Monday and spending the night there.

On 'Monday proper,' Chris and I set out to get back to Delaware. We ran into some traffic, so Chris made the executive decision to skip part of his schedule for the day and drive me directly to the nearest Metro station (for which many thanks). I arrived at Union Station well before my train was scheduled to depart. At this point I realized something was very wrong -- even though I had had minor delays on the way to Chris' (back on Thursday), nothing had gone terribly wrong with my itinerary thusfar.

Fortunately Amtrak was there to prolong my '20 trip delayed for more than a few hours' streak -- a phonecall to their 1-800 number revealed that my train was still on its way to Philadelphia (a good 2 hours late). Long story short -- I made some half-assed attempts at getting a bus to Charlottesville, but ended up waiting for my train.

A side note on American trains: you can just taste the inefficiency as *everyone* gets in line to be boarded, one by one, followed by this weird ritual where an attendant writes your destination on a little card. Tickets are then rechecked on board (by a different attendant) to ensure maximum time wastage. All in all it took 20 minutes for the train to leave, and this was not even a busy day from what I could tell. On a more positive note -- the seats are big and comfortable, especially compared to the average Greyhound bus or airplane "seat."

I finally got to Charlottesville at 11:30pm, where I was met by Clint and Blake, who were kind enough to get me home, where I crashed (in more ways than one).

Scrambling to catch up since Homecoming

I started a rather bizarre 24-hour grading marathon on Tuesday. It ended around 5pm on Wednesday, at which point my brain was in a rather bizarre foggy state. I was happy to get that done though. Since then I've tried to get some more sleep, while keeping up (but not-quite-catching up) with work. It's hard to believe that homecoming was a week ago... But yah -- finally, some action 8-) Cheers.