Life is a highway

Well, now, I had a great weekend, taking a bold and adventurous road trip to the exciting state of New Jersey... oh, yes.

My sorority's rush is officially over, and we have 10 new candidates.. I think. I haven't met them all yet... lol. The last event was initiation (Friday night) followed by dinner, and a make-up initiation on Sunday (which I missed, being in NJ at the time.) Saturday I did some sleeping and cleaning, and just a little bit of packing, in order to leave around 1:30am for the trip.

If I ever make this drive again, inshaAllah, I'd like to make it at night, on a night like that. Except for some very dense fog in Virginia, the drive was extremely pleasant. I-95 through NC and VA doesn't have any lights, and there is practically nothing around for most of the drive, affording an excellent view of the stars and moonrise, around 2:30am. Until northern VA, there were hardly any other cars on the road... to such an extent that for most of the drive I could see no brake lights in front of me, nor headlights behind me. I was in Baltimore by the time the sun came up, dawning on a beautiful day, and I got a good view of the skyline there... I-95 traverses exciting bridges and overpasses there, going up and down and seeing the downtown, the port, the gas tanks, and other random things. Even by the time I was into New Jersey the roads weren't very crowded--not until the last few miles on the New Jersey turnpike and when I got off. This was by far the furthest I had driven myself in a car, and I was alone. But I think I did a fair job of entertaining myself... I do that quite well.

I can't really say enough nice things about the family I stayed with on Sunday and Sunday night. The only thing I regret is I wasn't quite awake enough to be fully sociable because they were kind and attentive and fully pleasant to be around.

The reason I decided to go to New Jersey in the first place was for a sister's wedding. I pray that her marriage will be filled with blessings and that she and her husband never cease to enrich each other.

The drive home wasn't bad--I never encountered (save some small construction zones) any heavy traffic that set me back considerably but overall the drive was slower and more tedious because of a greater volume of traffic in general, especially trucks. But by the time I was approaching Richmond the roads were pretty much clear, and stayed that way until I got close to Raleigh. I stopped to get gas and food in Hopewell, Virginia. This is the town where my parents lived and met, went to HS, got married. My mom's parents lived there all their lives--her mom has passed away and dad is now living with my uncle and his wife. My dad's mom and step-dad lived there at some point, though he spent more time in Minnesota in his youth. Since his mom died, he now visits just to see his step-dad and his wife Maxine. I have visited Hopewell several times but only just to see family--there isn't much to do there. But I was running low on fuel when I passed it (I-295 goes right through it, instead of I-95 which goes through Richmond, and 295 bypasses Richmond so that's what I was on) so I stopped... the Petrol station was run by a Muslim! I think that's a little ironic... Hopewell being such a small town as it is, where my parents grew up, and so "old-timey" in my estimation, and I see a Muslim there. Neat.

The price of gasoline there was $2.27. Gas prices have come down in the last few weeks, hovering near $2.44 here, about $2.55 in most of the places north of Washington, DC., but in Hopewell... yeah... even cheaper. That was nice. :-) Plus the greeting.

I now have a load of homework (that I didn't do over the weekend) to catch up on, including a lab report and set of problems (for the same class!) that is probably going to take at least 6 hours. But I have my NT class tonight until... 9:15 or so. Going to be another long couple of days... how far is Friday??