There is no buffer time here...

I never really realized how much of a break driving home from school and work was, and how relaxing it could be, until I moved here. The "relax" time has gotten progressively shorter and shorter since I've been moving away from rural living and moving towards the most urban of urban settings. The school/work to home commute has gone from a very enjoyable, relaxing and windy drive through the forest to a smog-filled jaunt through the streets and freeways of suburbia to literally being crammed into an overcrowded subway car. Once you start to walk towards the open doors you just keep getting pushed from behind until there's literally only enough room to breathe, and sometimes you're not even able to breathe fully. You're also crammed into a car full of commuters going down to wall street and showing up to their highly stressful jobs only to have heart attacks and add to their ulcers, all so they can make a pretty penny. A big departure from the windy trek that let us unwind going up (and down) Highway 9. Even living in suburbia we had that "buffer" time between the stresses of work/school that let you unwind and clear your mind before you returned home. Here, you're just moving between types (and intensities) of stress - and you're constantly surrounded by them. I think that's what I really miss most about California, and why I miss driving so much.

Alitalia is on Strike

Great. I'm already stressed out enough with finals, and I find out this morning that Alitalia (along with other Italian-run transportation services) is going on strike. If you didn't already know, I've already had the last leg of my flight cancelled, which resulted in me having five connections. I fly from here to Milan, Milan to London, London to San Francisco, San Francisco to Los Angeles, and Los Angeles to Ontario. Alitalia is the first two legs of that, up until London. So if Alitalia strikes and my flight isn't flying on Friday, that screws up the rest of my flights, possibly resulting in me missing my main flight, from London to San Francisco. I don't even want to begin to think what might happen if that were to occur, with me joining in the thousands of other angry travelers trying to get put on later flights that have only two seats open. Not a pretty picture.

They just had to strike on Friday. Out of all the days that we're here, I just want to go home, and they're not letting me. But we don't know for sure if our particular flights will be canceled or if we'll be lucky and the strike won't go into effect until later in the day.

Fireplaces

A little something I wrote in writing the other day; rather than have it go to waste, I decided to publish it on here (it was the result of an assignment that I didn't understand the question, but luckily I read the question again and I can re-do it now). So here it is:

“There’s something about fires—and specifically fireplaces—that I will always hold dear to my heart; I never knew something so primitive could instill so much joy in me, as it has for millions of people over thousands of years in the past. I’m finding more and more as every subsequent day passes that it seems to be the small things in life that mater the most, and seem to take the pace of life by the reigns just long enough for you to step back and enjoy it for a few seconds.”
I remember parting with the property my parents swore to live on for the rest of their lives, going on a long, solitary, walk covering almost the whole section of property and giving me plenty of time to reflect on my boyhood. I came upon one of my favorite spots on the property, with a hidden view that I discovered when I was eight years old and that remains one of my treasured secrets to the best of my knowledge. I climbed up the tree and simply gazed out over the view for what must have been hours, soaking up every little detail of the natural beauty that surrounded me. I knew that I would be moving to suburbia, with the distance in between my neighbor’s houses going from two miles as the bird flies to two yards at best. But I tried not to let that bother me, as I erased unnecessary thoughts from my memory and started over with a blank slate and recording each and every sensation, not letting an ounce of information escape. And as a result of this, I have one of the most vivid memories of my life, too much information to express through writing, through art, even through a movie—its true and uncompromised expression accessible only to the mind of the boy who wasn’t ready to let go.