Part A: trip to the East Coast

First off, a ton of trivial funny stuff happened:

- Between leaving Eugene and arriving in Hartford was about 24 hours; I spent only about 12 hours in Portland.
- This was my first airplane trip since turning 18 and needing government issued ID.
- We drove on I-84... in Connecticut.
- In NY it was 64 degrees. On some steep stairs, I was walking around in a tank top in December.
- Meanwhile, it Portland it was snowing.
- Our return flight was early enough, and we were east enough, that we got up at midnight in PST.
- I saw a bird, a little sparrow or something, inside the Newark airport.
- And my mom would like to inform Portland drivers that they have nothing to complain about and should go try to drive in New York.

We went to a wedding dinner, the wedding ceremony and brunch, dinner with the parents of the bride, and a day in New York City.

The dinner was the night before the actual wedding ceremony, which we all really liked because all the friends and family of the couple got to know each other. All the people there were interesting, but the best was meeting the bride (our friend's) parents. She is my stepdad's childhood friend, and he has told me so much about her parents, I really wanted to meet them. I felt I connected with them quickly and it was odd, because we had never met before but have this whole set of people in common.

After the wedding, we went to New York for a day. We rode the subway, had a picnic in Central Park, and spent most of the day at the Museum of Natural History. The museum is really, really big - a place where you can go time after time and not get bored, unlike OMSI, my other beloved science museum. In the mineral room, I was looking at the chemistry of some of the minerals and there were old, weirdly arranged periodic tables with eight groups and "B" groups for the transition metals. There's also a ton of stuffed animals in displays with excellently rendered background, and we went to the dinosaur room.

It was really fun. But by the end, I was definitely glad to be going home. Back to stability, or so I'm hoping. Things have been going a little nuts since getting back.