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I got back from Thanksgiving at home last night, but that drive really takes it out of you.

So I was home all last week for Thanksgiving. We did the whole dinner thing on Thursday with Mom's big family. There were two pork shoulders weighing in somewhere around 25 lbs, a deep fried turkey and a traditionally cooked turkey, wet and dry stuffing, pineapple mold, mashed potatoes, sweet potato with marshmallows, carrot casserole, broccoli casserole, and more arroz con gandules (orange rice with green pidgeon peas) than you could shake a stick at. I didn't really have any turkey. The pork roasts were so phenomenal that to eat any other meat would take away.

I felt reasonably miserable for a good portion of break. I think I'm allergic to my house. My sinuses got all plugged up, then that dripped down the back of my throat and into my lungs. The result was a painful wheezing cough and quite a bit of difficulty falling asleep. I'm still having some of the lung issues. That will take a couple of days to clear.

Holiday traffic was hellish. The vast majority of my ten hour trip is spent on I-81, from Binghamton, NY to Christiansburg, VA. All the way through PA and the brief corners of MD and WV were congested, but there weren't too many slowdowns. I hit a couple of spots in VA near I-66 and I-64 where traffic was crawling. They cleared up as soon as I passed the exits. Then near Roanoke, for no discernible reason, I was at a dead stop on the interstate for 45 minutes. When that happens at the beginning of a trip, it's frustrating. When that happens in the eleventh hour of a ten hour trip, one begins inventing new profanities.

I'm home now, though, and my roommate erected a holiday tree, and Sebastian is still adorable, and the water damage in my wall is finally corrected, and I'm going to eat a bowl of cereal and ponder navel lint.

I'm at home for the week, currently chilling in the basement and catching some wireless leeching love courtesy of Frontier DSL. I thought I would be SOL for internet connection, but the modem they use also includes a four-port wireless router. Awesome!

I'll be enjoying Thanksgiving, as I usually do, with my extended family on my mother's side. Steve will be joining me in a couple of days. I really love the closeness of our family, I think it has had a big impact on me. I sometimes forget that not everyone has this kind of relationship with their family. I really do feel badly for them, it's a wonderful thing to have. If you can't be with your family, give them a ring and say hello. Let them know you care.

Now that I've been all sentimental, I'll give you the haps. Days Inn apparently has free wireless internet for guests, so if you're ever in a pinch for internet access, you can always park in their lot. I drove ten hours home from Blacksburg, with only a quick stop in Lebanon, PA for gas, Wendy's and email. Just the essentials, folks.

I'll be heading home on Saturday, giving me time to situate myself at home before class gets started on Monday. Painters are supposed to be in this week to paint one wall of my room which is suffering from water damage from the apartment above. Because of this, my furniture is all moved away from that wall and I'm entirely disorganized. I was getting sick of looking at the water spot on my wall, though.

I also found an mp3 of Killer Tofu by The Beets. For the uninitiated, The Beets are a fictional cartoon band from the Nickelodeon, and later Disney, show Doug.

It seems that everything is so "Web 2.0" these days, with all their AJAX thingamabobs that update your information five seconds before you enter it, and custom switching stylesheets based on the weather in Brisbane. I didn't even have any shiny or glassy starburst graphics... until now!

Unfortunately, my content just isn't very Web 2.0, nor is the site in general. That's why I was forced to create my very own starbursts that didn't have any new-fangled technological references.

They were created using PS CS2, and a couple of Web 2.0 button Photoshop tutorials.

As an aside, I do believe this is the most categories any one post has ever belonged to.

Sanity is a relative thing, but I think my roommate is crazy.

I should be really happy with the election results. Elliot Spitzer won for governor of New York. Democrats took a large lead in the House and are one vote up in the Senate (two if you count the Socialist from Vermont). Polls show voters are interested in cleaning up corruption and getting out of Iraq. Donald Rumsfeld resigned.

I should be pretty pleased. I'm not.

CO, SC, SD, TN, VA, and WI (at least) passed amendments to their respective state constitutions to define marriage as being between one man and one woman. I'd like to take this opportunity to note that none of these amendments actually changes the status of gay marriage in those states. None of them have ever allowed gay marriage, and DOMA protects them from having to recognize unions from other states. This is a preemptive attack by conservatives against the possibility of change. You know, Virginia was starting to grow on me. I was beginning to think I might be able to settle down here someday. So much for that idea.

Hey Virginia, you might want to update your slogan.