The big road trip was more than two weeks ago. Time for some introspection.

Things I Learned on The Road Trip
1) You can find places to go out dancing any night of the week if you try hard enough.
2) LA lives up to its stereotypes.
3) Santa Barbara is an underrated town.
4) If you find a band-aid on your pillow at the hotel, you should complain in person.
5) I have no reason or desire ever to go to Utah.
6) If you see billboards for roadside zoos with six-legged cows and the world's largest prairie dog, you MUST stop.
7) If you wear false eyelashes and a cocktail dress to a Burger King in Wyoming at noon on a Tuesday, you might get some stares.
8) Reno is not all it's cracked up to be, and it's not cracked up to be all that much.
9) My car can go 60 miles after the gas light comes on.
10) Speaking of my car, if you let it sit unused in a garage in South Carolina for a year and a half and then take it 3,000 miles at an average of 75 mph through mountains, plains, snow, and rain, fully loaded, it might have a problem or two by the time you get to your destination.
11) College night at the clubs is still fun when you're not in college anymore.
12) Vodka is not my friend (unless mixed with grape soda), but beer is!
13) The San Diego Zoo might still have the same black jaguars (or their offspring) it had in the critically acclaimed 1987 film "Rainbow Brite at the San Diego Zoo."
14) Coronada: fact or fiction? Fact: it has good Thai food.
15) Just because you get to Fresno doesn't mean the trip is over! You can always go back to San Francisco.
16) Cool travel companions make all the difference.

So now I'm in my new home city, trying to weasel an apartment out of the people at my chosen apartment complex. It's not even particularly nice, but I can't afford to lose my deposit. So I call the manager and her idiotic trainee manager everyday trying to convey the idea that I WILL GIVE YOU MON-EY (vigorously nod head, smile) IF YOU GIVE ME AN AP-ART-MENT! speaking very slowly, loudly, and angrily. In the meantime, I started my job yesterday, and it looks like it'll be a good one.

Halloween is just around the corner! Today I will hit up the discount stores for Vampirate costume components.