Sorry, lost my train of thought towards the end of this entry.

It's 11:30 pm, and to be perfectly frank, I'm very tired. I'm at the tipping point where if you layed me down on any horizontal surface, I would fall asleep instantly, but because I am still sitting upright, I don't want to go to bed yet. If this entry doesn't go anywhere, you now know the reason why.

The last entry I wrote in here was about babies. It mentioned that I had obtained a job taking pictures of babies in their homes, with overzealous mothers, and more often than not, a language barrier that I couldn't cross because I don't know any Spanish, and it seemed that certain mothers never bothered to learn English. So what happened was I stopped working. It had nothing to do with language barriers or overzealous moms. It had to do with the fact that I was driving anywhere from 55 to 100 miles per day, in rush hour traffic, amongst asshole Long Island/NY drivers, in the middle of beautiful Spring days, only to have to try to get 2 month old babies to stop crying for an instant to snap a picture of them at their most clueless... excluding their high school years of course.

I had to fill up my gas tank in my Explorer twice in 5 days while working this job, and when a fill up costs over $50, suddenly $400 a week doesn't seem like it's worth it. Especially not when I was technically working from 8 am till 7 pm or later because of traffic. I would LOVE it if someone could explain to me why traffic exists at all hours of the day on all major roads on Long Island whether it's rush hour in or out of the city. And I would also LOVE it if someone could explain to me why people insist on blasting their car horns when sitting in traffic, as if it does ANYTHING to help alleviate the situation. Flounder often preaches that those people believe by beeping their horns in such a fashion, a magical rainbow bridge appears and they can drive over everyone else's car and be whisked away to any location of their choosing.

The real reason I quit this job though was because I realized that I'll be leaving the country to go into the Peace Corps on July 16, and there was no way in hell I was going to spend the better part of my last spring home driving around Long Island all day, taking pictures of babies. There's wayyy too much to get done. It actually blows my mind. I shan't bore you with all the things I have to do before I leave, but you can begin to imagine some of the things that have been going thru my mind lately.

#1 - How the hell do you pack for 2 years? I haven't a clue. 2 pairs of jeans, 5 t-shirts, khakis, shirt and tie, sneakers sandals a sweater and raincoat. Seems pretty basic. I will take much more than that. I can live as a minimalist. Mentally I am capable of it, but the thing is, I never found it all that much fun to be a minimalist. There's way too many awesome things to take on an adventure abroad. Like a pocket knife and compass! Playing cards! Headlamp! Backpack and tent! Crazy hats! Sponge balls! To name a few. But I'm not worried about packing at this point.

#2 - How do you say goodbye to everyone for 2 years? Study abroad trips are great. You have your month or 4 abroad (if it's a semester abroad), you take classes, see the sites, get drunk at your favourite bar, put pictures up on facebook, title the album "Crazy times in London with some Crazy People" but really mean "It was so great to not be at my college for the past 4 weeks and get drunk in a different country and talk to the young foreigners who speak with accents and hang out with all these kids who I won't be as close with once we get back stateside" and while some will revel in all of this and some will get homesick, everyone knows they're coming back at the latest in a couple of months.

I never thought that going away for two years would bother me. An truth be told, it's not the length of time away that bothers me. It's the fact that so many relationships here have to be suspended temporarily and put on hold, and when my 2 years is up and I do get back, everyone knows that everything will be different. How could it not be? Change such as this is meant to be good and of course it's all part of growing up and getting past college. We go thru the same process in high school. By sophomore year of college, nothing in high school seems like it was ever really all that important. I've willingly taken this next step, knowing full well that this was something I would have to face, and I'm ready to face it, but it doesn't change the fact that there is a certain "this sucks" factor to it. But shite - things could be a lot worse. I might not have any arms or legs, and W might be up for a third term. Luckily these worse scenarios are not the case.

I know I only numbered 2 things that were going thru my mind, but I don't feel like numbering any more ideas, so I'm just going to keep writing till I get tired.

A lot of people have said such nice things when they heard I was joining the Peace Corps. A lot of people want to know why I decided to do it, what got me interested in it - they ask what do I think I will do when my 2 years are up, they ask this, they ask that, and I always answer them the best I can, as truthfully as I can, unless I know that they really don't care all that much. It's easy to tell when someone is genuinely interested in what you have to say, or whether they're just being polite and aren't really on the same page as you. When I come across this second group of people, I find it easier just to tell them what they want to hear, in short sound bytes and then we both move on.

I've just lost my train of thought. That's ok. I think the train left the station a long time ago. I'm tempted to delete everything I just wrote tonite, but I won't.

For posterity.

G'ahead.