"The injuries we do and those we suffer are seldom weighed in the same scales." - Aesop

8:30 a.m. - The laundry is done, the house cleaned except for an out-the-door vacuuming, and the bags packed.

I'd forgotten just how dry things get in a cold climate where the furnace runs a lot. I took the bed sheets off to wash them and when I picked them up the hair on my head stuck straight up from the static electricity.

Eugene counts as a small media market. NYC must be the biggest. It's...interesting...to note the people they hire here to do the local news, traffic, and weather, and how they're dressed. The women who do the weather and traffic (i.e. don't sit behind a desk) wear stiletto heels and painted-on dresses that maybe go halfway down their thigh. I think I could easily encircle their wastes with my two hands but the same can most definitely not be said about other undoubtedly augmented portions of their anatomy.
By comparison the Eugene on-air personalities have nice personalities.
(I prefer Eugene. Seriously. The NYC version seems so blatantly gratuitous.)

10:15 a.m. - sitting at Beaches Bakery in Westhampton. Just read two chapters of the latest (free) Zane Grey book I downloaded yesterday.

One of the gifts I got at last night's class was this hoodie. All the males here wear hoodies all the time. It's the unofficial uniform of Long Island. A shirt, a hoodie, and a heavy jacket almost stave off the cold wind that bows constantly.
The story behind this particular hoodie and why Josh and his girlfriend Carissa got it for me:
There are at least three towns here that bear the name Moriches (more-ITCHES, said very quickly). There's Moriches, East Moriches, and Central Moriches. I don't know what happened to West Moriches. It may have blown off the island.
Several people in the church live in Central Moriches which is separated from Eastport only be East Moriches. (Each of these towns are about five miles across and you can't tell when you go from one to another.)
When I heard people talk about living in Central Moriches I decided to look on a map and see where it is but I Could Not Find It! So while at the Tuttle's for dinner I asked, "Where is Santa Moriches?"
In response I got "huh??"
One of the other people at dinner that night, Danielle, is a speech therapist. She figured it out and explained that New Yorkers don't pronounce an R at the end of a word when it's there and add it when it isn't. So a soda becomes a soder and a place to sit becomes a sofer.
Said quickly and with the final R dropped Center Moriches becomes Santa Moriches.
Through the rest of the meal the seven of them said Santa Moriches so often in normal conversation that it became something of a joke. Once they heard themselves say it in Long Island-ese they couldn't help but laugh at my hearing of it.
Hence this hoodie to "keep the joke alive."
I'm wearing it with a smile.

Nathan got me into the "Brown House" that I wrote about in a post early in my stay here. He climbed through a window and opened the front door for me.
The Victorian exterior makes promises about the interior that don't get fulfilled. Nathan says it was common in the 60s to erase all the fine woodwork that marked an early 19th century home to "modernize it." So ALL the expected molding and trim is gone, replaced by drywall and flat painted trim. Stripped bare and turned into any generic 20th century interior.
Bummer.

It's now 3:30 and I'm sitting in JFK at Gate B32 waiting to board my flight. I managed to get a bulkhead seat, good if someone's head needs to go between his/her knees. But that's not going to happen, is it!

Homeward bound!