Ahhh, apologies for the delay. I have a great deal to cover. I will try to be brief.

The weekend after Thanksgiving was a crazy one. Keys, dignity, sanity, memory, ID cards, and dinners were lost. Fortunately, I was a bystander to the entire ordeal. We went to a poorly DJ'd dance hosted by the Ad Libs where a lot of my friends got up in each others' business. It was simultaneously entertaining and unfortunate to have to act as the Synthesizer of Lost Memories the next day. One of the more hilarious, less embarrassing anecdotes: I left the dance early because I got tired, both of witnessing the scary things on the dance floor and of dancing like a maniac. While sitting in my room, watching the Usual Suspects, Joe came in and, holding a red coat that I'd never seen in my life, said "Brett wanted me to bring you your coat." "Hm. Not my coat."

The following week was the start of finals work. Even over the weekend, gatherings were toned down to watching movies and having a Christmas celebration of sorts. Joe, Tyler, Brett, Tess, and I went to Sushi Thai to use Tess and I's gift certificate. That's about all that happened.

Even towards the start of finals week, we started losing people to vacation. By Thursday, Joe was the only good friend I had on campus, among acquaintances who, outside of running into at the dining hall, I'd feel a little strange spending time with. I stayed up much later than I had to finishing my seminar take-home exam and, after handing it in in the afternoon, was home-free. I borrowed the first three seasons of Six Feet Under and got through the first one while packing and cleaning up.

On Friday, I got up, took a shower, returned Six Feet Under, had a relaxing breakfast at an almost-empty dining hall, and started my adventure at noon. Since I didn't feel like paying $60 for a taxi and had more than enough time on my hands, I had decided to take local CDTA busses to the airport, starting with the 12:00 bus leaving campus. On the bus from Saratoga Springs to Schenectady, I listened to some black ladies rant about how racist upstate New York is; one of them kept bringing Jesus into the conversation, which was less than productive. The 55 from Schenectady to Albany was incredibly crowded with holiday shoppers and I felt like a douche for taking up the standing room of one person with my gigantic suitcase.

I got off the 55 and crossed the street in hopes of catching the Shuttlefly to the airport. After waiting for about forty minutes, watching horrible traffic pass and no busses coming, I called CDTA and asked where the shuttle stopped. It turned out to be a bus shelter on the other side of the gigantic shopping center, so I rushed over there and caught the shuttle. At this point, my trip had taken over four hours and I was getting a little scared that I wouldn't be at the airport in time for my flight.

When I got to Albany International, there were no lines and I checked in without any trouble. I got to the gate and there was no airline representative. The sign behind the counter still said "Welcome to Albany International Airport" and we all waited around to figure out what was going on. In the end, we spent a couple of hours sitting on the plane. My connecting flight was also delayed, so I ended up getting into Utah an hour and a half later than planned. Our happily reunited family spent about an hour waiting for my suitcase, only to find that it had been sent to San Jose, California (SJC) instead of Salt Lake City (SLC). In the parking lot, we were greeted by a flat tire, replaced it, and hauled-ass back home, where we ate and eventually slept.

The suitcase was supposed to be delivered between 5 and 9 PM. It's now 12:10 and we got a call saying that it would get here in an hour or so. We're heading to Colorado tomorrow, so my stuff has to get here. Wearing the same clothes five days in a row is not going to fly.