Back again to a place that is no longer home.

I love Baltimore and always will, but it’s been interesting to see how living in Vermont has realigned my various scales. Wait…what?

Before living in VT, anything below 30 degrees felt fairly cold to me. After living through (most of) a Vermont winter, now I don’t feel a temperature’s cold until it’s in the teens. Likewise, when I was living here, Baltimore always felt right-sized at best and more often slightly small. But today? Today while I was driving through town, Baltimore felt unmanageably big.

So, yeah, here isn’t home anymore. But I’ve known that for a while.

It’s been a good day, but damned if it didn’t start off a little weird. I was all set to leave Binghamton when I stopped for a pre-getting-on-the-road email check. Good thing I did because I had a message from my hotel in Charleston kindly informing me that the guest staying in my room decided to extend their stay and that they canceled my reservation. They left an 800 number, so I called and had choice words with the moronic and mush-mouthed “reservations manager”. To his credit, he did offer to make new reservations for me at another hotel, but I told him I didn’t want him anywhere near my reservations. So I found a new hotel and all should be fine.

The drive to Baltimore was rainy and foggy, but never close to freezing, so I was able to make reasonably good time. Once in Maryland, I had lunch with friends Joey and Amanda, saw my cousin Pete’s house, saw my cousin Emily and her husband Zach, and had dinner with friends Ben and Tara (who are nice enough to put me up for the night.)

One thing I haven’t really thought about since I moved to Vermont is crime, but tyoday I made sure that I didn’t park my car with anything stealable showing and made sure the club was firmly affixed to my steering wheel before coming inside for the night. Ben says his block has seen a car break-in spree, so I’m nervous.

Again, nothing preservation related today other than someone who let me describe what I’m going to school for and then proceeded to talk about how a nearby neighborhood should be totally razed because it was beyond saving. Nice. (Also, totally untrue.)

Tomorrow I drive to Charleston where I will have a king bed and a distinct lack of five-hour driving days for a while.

The too-many beers I’ve had tonight are telling me it’s time to sleep.

(Oh, also I’m not the only preservation student blogging their spring break trip. Check out http://jessiebisventingagain.blogspot.com!)