Not Dead!

I made it to Landstuhl and found my hotel! There were a lot of places I could have been derailed; my flight from LaGuardia to Philadelphia was delayed and I almost missed my connection, I realized as I was going through customs I had no idea what I should state as the purpose of my visit (I went with "civilian working on a project on a US Military base", and apparently that corresponded to one of the guard's check boxes), and I really only had a vague idea where my lodgings were. But all that worked out fine.

New York was fun; I got to go to Brooklyn twice, and went to Manhattan 0 times, mostly because of concerns about traffic. I feel like Brooklynites will look back on this trip as the moment when their borough really turned the corner and became a world-class neighborhood. The precipitating factors were probably their acquisition of my cousin Ian and a very nice art museum.

After arriving from California, I was unable to go to sleep until around 12 or 1 each morning. I can at this time confirm that, during the week, parts of New York State do indeed sleep, and in fact get up very early for school. Whether or not this sleeping pattern is reflected in the city remains to be seen. I suspect that they sleep in shifts to give the illusion of constant wakefulness.

My New York-dwelling family members are all doing pretty well. The younger ones continue to grow and mature, while the older ones have not aged a day. There are also more dogs than I remembered, but who knows whether this is just a trick of memory or there are actually three where there once were two.