For someone like me who has a hard time knowing when to relax, catching up on sleep and regaining energy post-finals and move out has been challenging at times. Yet I have tried, beginning with a low key 36 hour train ride home from St. Paul. (It was meant to be 32 hours, but Amtrak being Amtrak, we had a few extra hours tacked on. We were late coming into Chicago, but KH and spent our four hour wait walking the mile plus to the lake (while carrying our 25 pound backpacks, and my 35 pound duffle bag), and eating a delicious stuffed pizza at Giordano's .
Sleeping overnight on the train (not in a sleeper car) was not too bad. We agreed that the worst part of the train ride was the kvetchers sitting in the seats around us who had been downgraded from the sleeper cars at Chicago. Complainers aside, KH and I descended the train none the worse for wear (except, perhaps, for craving showers)and briefly parted ways in order to gather our lives under our feet and remember how to live with parents, before heading down to North Carolina for a five day vacation.
Which is where I'm sitting now, recovering from a long day spent running, swimming, reading, sitting in the sun, and going for a two and a half hour beach walk. I had intended to upload some photos, but my SD card has ceased working in ED's computer.
The houses here are absolutely amazing. They are slightly chalushious, as we'd say in Yiddish, but they are pretty incredible nonetheless. The ground floor is typically a garage/storage space (we have a garage as well as three bedrooms and two and a half bathrooms in ours)while the second floor is the primary living space - kitchen, dining room, and living room (ours also has a sunroom with a breakfast nook and the master suite. We also have a third floor with a balcony that goes through the upper part of the living room, accessed by a spiral staircase, which ends in a small lounge room with a couch.
The entire back of the house is windows and we look right over the beach. We also have private beach access and the deck/boardwalk network in the backyard is quite extensive and detailed. In case the ocean wasn't enough, we also have a pool and a hot tub, which we sat in for nearly 45 minutes after eating Ghiradelli brownies tonight.
I had wanted to post pictures but it's not working at the moment. I will try to figure it out and post some tomorrow. It's supposed to be rather stormy, so I will hopefully be reading and writing for the majority of the day.
