It's strange being back in a big city after just a handful of months in Juneau. I didn't think I had acclimated myself so significantly to small town perks/pains in the ass, but now I wonder if I still retain my adolescent goal of living in Manhattan for a couple years. Juneau is like an old typewriter; it's functional but more than a bit outdated, but it has a great charm to it. You feel like you're living a romantic life in a quaint setting. Seattle is like one of those gadgets I saw someone at SEATAC airport using which is some crazy hi-tech personal organizer that multitasks as a cellphone, IPOD, digital camera, DVD/radio player, Internet browser, and will probably start vacuuming your house if you set it on the carpet and don't watch it for awhile.

Today, we went for a lunch outing at 1:30p.m. and didn't return until 5. The eating itself actually didn't take hours--it was all the driving in traffic that turned a normal event into an afternoon extravaganza. In Cincinnati, if I drove longer than 45 minutes in any one direction, I could feasibly be in Dayton, interior Kentucky, or Indiana. Seattle though is one gigantic carpool lane going around in circles.