Apparently this page has been unavailable for a few weeks. This is because the evil commenting website that stole all of my comments last winter also decided to steal my entire website. That should be fixed now. The new comments that I got after the old ones were stolen don't seem to be working, though, but I think that's a completely unrelated problem and hopefully it will soon be fixed.

And I'm in St. Louis. And I have the Internet, but not the flu, anymore. And it was hot today, and there were freshmen moving in, but apparently no other upperclassmen Lutherans, just me and the new intern and the injured pastor. The new intern was cool, though, and so were people from various other campus ministries, who spoke to us much more frequently than the hot, moving-in freshmen did.

- posted by Darcey @ 5:43 PM

 
The Rest of My Fascinating Journey

I was going to go get work to do, but the lady with the work is on the phone. Oh well. So I will talk more about Pennsylvania. So after our brush with fame and power, we stopped for the night in pretty much the middle of nowhere, Somerset, PA, but even that was not without national significance. It's the county where the fourth plane crashed on 9/11, and also where you may or may not remember there were some miners trapped for days and then they got out and turned out to be a much happier story than a plane crash.

And then we went on to lots of other places where old important dead people once were - Gettysburg, Valley Forge, and some historic areas of Philadelphia. We took an audio walking tour of Philadelphia. We got these two red CD players, and my mom wore one around her neck and I plugged a headset in to hers so we were joined together and couldn't turn or make sudden movements without nearly pulling one another's ear off. It was supercool. And we got to look through a hole in the ground to see the foundation of Ben Franklin's house and his sewer drain, which was actually one of the more interesting stops, though it doesn't sound like it here. And we went to see the Liberty Bell, where you have to walk through a metal detector to get in, and my poor sheltered grandparents who've never been on a plane had not a clue what to do, and then my grandpa's hip replacements kept setting off the detectors, and it was amusing. And it was my mom's birthday and we had a nice steak dinner. And we drove through a lot of hills and mountains, because there are a lot of those in Pennsylvania. They build things on them, like one of our hotels, and to my Indiana flat-trained eye, this was also cause for interest. And I guess that's about it. I should go see if the work lady is off the phone now.

- posted by Darcey @ 1:14 PM

 
I have spent the past five days doing something mildly interesting, so I will write about it here now. I took a road trip through Pennsylvania to Philadelphia with my mother and grandparents. Really, it's how all the cool kids are vacationing these days.

The first day of driving turned out to be slightly more exciting than expected. Around the border of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and about two feet of West Virginia, we began seeing people outside with flags and signs saying "Welcome, President Bush" and such. A little while later, we began seeing cop cars positioned on every overpass and helicopters circling above (big, we-will-hunt-you-down-and-kill-you helicopters, not looking-for-traffic-jams-on-the-highway helicopters), and we figured out that we were being chased, not far behind, by the president of the United States. After a few miles, though, the president's course veered off to the north and everything returned to normal. But then we started seeing people with flags and signs standing on bridges and the sides of the road facing in the opposite direction, and soon traffic stopped coming down the opposite side of the interstate. And that's when John Kerry and his 8 bus caravan came driving past us. Now, I was expecting to be in close proximity to the presidential candidates at school at the upcoming debate, but what are the odds of all of us being so close together in Podunk-town Ohio? (Actually, after reading the news, the odds of Bush and Kerry being close together in Podunk-towns all over strategic Midwestern states are rather high, but the odds of me being there are less so.)

And now I have to go back to work, so I'll tell you about the rest of my fascinating journey later. I'm sure you'll be holding your breath until then.

- posted by Darcey @ 12:57 PM