Hello from my parents' basement, listening to Bill Hicks' Dangerous. My stomach is sort of churning with anticipation, excitement, and dread. I know my summer isn't going to be as interesting as the past five months, but hopefully it'll still be a good one. I'm calling Connie tomorrow, I wanna see her shaved head.

Earlier today Phil, Teresa, Tony, and I went to the aquarium for a short while before going to the airport. The flight was delayed, but uneventful. My sisters Joy and Kate, and my mom picked me up at the airport.

I guess this is the end of the journal, but I'm not sure. Here is a perhaps pertinent link. [This link no longer works but it connected to an Onion editorial called something like "There's More to Life Than Experiencing Its Varied Peoples and Cultures".]

Forgot to mention that I finished Close to the Knives and read all of Nick Hornby's High Fidelity on the way from Helsinki to Florence. In Florence I bought White Noise by Don DeLillo, which I'm reading now, and Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut and Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, both of which I've read once before but wanted to read again. I bought the latter two with the intention of sending them to Maddy, who is working on a ship in Alaska for the third straight summer.

We went to the MIT Museum, which had some interesting displays on robotics and artificial intelligence, and the work of a guy called Edgerton (forgot his first name), who is probably most famous for a photograph of an apple being pierced by a bullet.

We also walked along the Freedom Trail for a while, then went to the Chomsky lecture. It was on East Timor, and there was another speaker, Winston Rondo, from West Timorese organization to help East Timorese refugees. I was glad to go because I didn't know very much about the situation.

Then we went to the science museum to see Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure which chronicled the eponymous explorer's mission to the eponymous continent (he didn't get there, though). It was a good show.

Next post from the center of Ohio.

I got to Boston yesterday at 4pm (10pm to me); Phil and his friend from college Tony, who's in town on business, picked me up at the airport. We lugged my junk on the T and back to Phil and Teresa's apartment and I think I strained something, although I'm proud I was able to stuff five months of things into two large bags and one small one. We went to a Brazilian restaurant and met Teresa there. I was exhausted, but determined to stay up at least till 10pm. We had some wine and watched "Monty Python's Life of Brian" which I had never seen. Then sleep, wonderful sleep.

Today we're going to see some museums, I guess, since it's raining and will be all day. Tonight we're going to a lecture by Noam Chomsky!

Tomorrow I fly to Columbus, and after that I don't really know what'll happen. This website will be updated, of course. But that really means the end of this trip and the end of this journal. We'll see what happens.