Back in L.A.

I made it safely back to L.A. The lines to get through airport security looked mighty intimidating, but they ended up being not that bad. Still, the trip took eleven hours door-to-door, so I’m pretty wiped out. I’ve had enough bad luck with USC administrative stuff that I was afraid something would go dramatically wrong with trying to re-integrate into my life here (such as being told that I didn’t have housing after all, or discovering that my car had disappeared from the parking garage), but actually everything went very smoothly. In fact, I’m back in the exact same apartment in the exact same room with the exact same roommate, so it’s almost as if I’d never left. And this year I actually have a parking permit for my apartment, which means no more “ghetto gallop” for me! (This is a term I coined to describe the process of parking on the street at 2:00 a.m. and then sprinting back to your apartment to avoid being mugged.)