Different eyes

My sister treated me to a train ticket home this morning, since there is a train that runs once a day to Amherst directly from New York on its way to Vermont, and the station's not a bad walk from our house. Actually we're disgustingly close to all public transport, it's pretty cool. But I digress.

I'd never taken the train up to Amherst before - I would always get off in Springfield and take the bus to Northampton, since, considering that there's an hour between Springfield and the Amherst station, it didn't seem practical. I'm still debating whether it is at this point, but it was kinda fun to finally take it up and to find out why it takes an hour in between. They have to pull the train into Palmer, attach another locomotive on the other end of the train, then the train goes in the other direction north towards Vermont.

Parts of the route from Palmer were already familiar to me - rather painfully so. I finally got the train's eye view of inle_rah's and L's little town after years of hearing the train going through during visits, and was rather saddened by the thought that at this point I probably won't get to enjoy the town's shabby charm again except from the window of a train. Which sucks... for all the obvious reasons, of course, but in addition, I did love the chicken carbonara from the place next door to the Crackhouse, even if eating it was like taking a shot from Spider Jerusalem's bowel disruptor. And I would have liked to finally tell L why the train detoured past her house rather than going directly North from Springfield, and now I won't get to, nor will I sit on the water side of the bridge overlooking the river shooting the shit. Ah well, c'est la vie... and change, except from a cany machine, is inevitable.

But enough cheezy cliches.

The rest of the ride was me playing hunt the landmark. Mostly I was looking for a big swamp spot and the Norwottuck trail, which we eventually found and ran parallel to all the way up until the sudden appearance of the Amherst campus, and then the stopping of the train. Anyway, it was fun - and kinda cool to have new sights added to my traveling experiences back and forth to the City.

I got home and was immediately daunted nigh unto the point of panic attack by the very unpacked and chaotic state of my room. I still haven't managed to deal with it, as soon after the daunty daunt happened I ended up helping morlock move some stuff upstairs and then going to the former farmhouse to pitch in with the cleaning. I'm still daunted by all the boxes, but after I post, I'm going to go in there, turn on some music, and attempt to make some sense of it. Wish me luck.

Looks like my internet access won't be as spotty as previously thought - I guess years of tech supporting at eclecTechs comes in handy cause I remembered the Amherst dialup number off the top of my head. I honestly don't mind dialup - not having a permanent internet connection at least ensures that I get something else done. Nonetheless, morlock and I are going to experiment with some wireless options for my laptop, so we'll see. But in the meantime... I actually don't miss the broadband much... do I have to hand in my geek card for saying that? Probably not if I also mention that the temporary home for my laptop is on top of my stereo, where it and Maxtor the Burninator are currently serving as sound system components. Mmm, iTunes + stereo = teh winny win win win.

Those boxes aren't going to unpack themselves. Gotta run.