Jiggity jig

Well I didn't get home until Monday afternoon. I missed my flight out of Anchorage on Friday because my flight from Homer to Anchorage was canceled due to fog. There's actually a term for this in Alaska: getting "weathered in." It was pretty lame, because I wasn't able to get another flight back to DC until Sunday night, so I lost 2.5 days in what was already a whirlwind trip home. Not surprisingly, its been a busy busy past few days. Jamming in social events with as many old friends as possible (thank goodness for internet and cell phones, or this would have been a far more depressing trip given that I'm not sure when I'll next be out on the east coast) and making snap decisions for every item I own, whether I want to get rid of it, put it in storage, send it to my grandparent's house in California (which is going to become my USA home base once my parents move), or send it to the Philippines. I'm sorry, but 4 options is far too many. And if you know me at all, you should realize I'm TERRIBLE at making decisions. Maybe this is good practice.

Speaking of the Philippines, my dad is there now, and I believe has made an offer on a house. Unfortunately, he DIDN'T choose the huge stone house with wooden doors and a sweet pool/jacuzzi...so much for my grand visions of classy poolside parties complete with huge Hollywood sunglasses and fruity drinks decorated with paper umbrellas. Of course there's the question of WHO I'd actually invite to these so-called parties, plus I'm really not a glamorous person, so maybe its for the best.

I'm feeling surprisingly ambivalent about being home. Its nice, but I have so much to do so it doesn't really feel like a vacation. I kind of miss Alaska, but not really in the sense that I'd rather be there than here, but more because life there is much less stressful compared to my time at home. But that only applies to specifically now - packing up 19 years of your life really can't be a barrel of monkeys all the time. The weather has been perfect - definitely humid but comfortably so - only mid 70s - and oh how I've missed wearing flipflops, but its not like I have much time to doddle outside. I do miss not having to worry about locking doors. In Homer, nobody locks their doors - house doors, car doors...its kind of nice.

Now that I know I'm not staying there past Thanksgiving, my mind has started wandering on where my next adventure should occur. The rest of 08 is pretty much set - California for Thanksgiving with the grandparents, Seattle for a week or so in December to visit friends and then Christmas in the Philippines. But from there....the future is a blank page until September (I'll be back in school somewhere at that point). I want to visit LA, because all of a sudden I know quite a few people there and maybe it would be fun. After Christmas, there are lots of places I could visit on that side of the Pacific from the Philippines - maybe Australia and/or New Zealand. Maybe I'll hang out in Berkeley since I have a place to stay there, maybe I'll go up to Seattle. I kind of want to go back to Homer next summer, but I don't know what I'd do there. My job won't be waiting for me. And of course, all of this is contingent upon the state of my bank balance. I think I'm just getting itchy feet because I'm feeling a bit lost. Its always hard for me to go new places when I'm there long enough to realize I don't have a solid social network, and I think my automatic reaction is to want to run off somewhere new. Which clearly doesn't solve the problem and results in the same problem all over again, but I think perhaps its just standard 20-something searchings for meaning.