I just got back from visiting Job in P-burgh over Xmas. We had the traditional atheist Jewish Xmas: we went out for Chinese. I had a really great time, as usual, talking 'til the wee hours of the morning about all kinds of things: politics, philosophy, mathematics, personal gossip, watching magic DVDs and discussing theory and practice. Also as usual, his life is full of events in dizzying profusion. Basically, I suppose it boils down to his professional life is this amazing academic dream career that makes me feel like I've pretty much wasted mine, while his personal life and particularly health leave me with the strongest "there but for the Grace of God" feeling that this atheist has ever experienced. Also as usual, I came away with some really neat logical puzzles, which I'll blog about elsewhere.
Because I was leery of doing the six+ hour drive from P-burgh to my home on the day after Xmas, because of the traffic that I might encounter, I ended up starting out at about 1:30 AM (after a couple hour nap). I like driving at night, having gotten used to it because of my ridiculous commute in SoCal, and I've never ever seen the highway as empty as when cruising along at 3 AM December 26th. I stopped at more or less every other service plaza to stretch my legs, re-fuel or get something to drink, etc. and I was careful to keep shifting my focal point around to keep from getting hypnotized by the road. I had my little jukebox next to me, shuffling randomly through my entire collection of Rock. Good driving music: George Thoroughgood, Little Richard, The Who, The Kinks, up-tempo Robyn Hitchcock, Talking Heads, The Coasters. Bad driving music: David Bowie's Hunky Dory and The Man Who Sold the World albums, down-tempo Robyn Hitchcock, the Beatles (nowadays I find the Beatles soporific even at the best of times).
I had one irritating moment, when I realized that the exit that my yahoo maps directions told me to get off at on the return trip no longer existed because of construction. If I had known that I could have gotten off an exit earlier and had no trouble, although it would have been a little longer. Luckily, I'm finally familiar enough with the highways around here to get off at the next exit and find my way home with only one clue from the tollbooth guy (I needed to know whether to head North or South on 476). It's only taken about 5 years. Of course, since I hardly ever take the highway, that's probably only been about 10 trips over that stretch of road.
I got home around 6:40 AM, and boy was my cat happy to see me. I took another nap, and now I'm here in Borders, sipping my chai and blogging away.