Go figure the first time I travel alone, I travel ALONE ALONE. And by "ALONE," I mean "ALONE" T_T

HOWEVER, that means...
- for the 4 hours either way I will spend in transit, I will be able to listen to whatever I want and sing as loudly as I want, if I so choose to
- I will have a whole damn bed to myself without having to be like "nohomo" after sleeping with a person of the gender I do not pursue
- nobody will complain if I take a long time in the shower or in front of the mirror
- I might consider taking a dildo
- I can watch whatever I want on TV, if I do so choose to watch TV

It will be like living alone except without enough time to decorate and populate the fridge with foreign food. I wanted my bf to come with me and he was going to but he works the 20th...blimey.

I might get some time to think and get some art done.

UPDATE: DAY 1
The actual trip took less time than expected and the PA turnpike is very beautiful in a grim-and-nekro kind of way (rocky cliffs, leafless trees, mountains, fog, shades of grey), I drove to where I'm supposed to go tomorrow so I know how to get there.

My hotel room is extremely meh, even considering it was $45 per night. I meticulously checked the bed for bedbugs - lifted up the mattress and all that - and found none, but I found hairs on the bathroom floor (one vaguely pubic in appearance), and a blonde hair on the mattress cover, there were pieces of candlewax on the floor next to the bed which was sort of suggestive, and around the bed and against the walls were "artifacts" such as pennies and miscellaneous particles. How did I notice these? I checked the seams of the walls and floor for bedbugs as well. However, the tub was clean and the toilet had one of those little "sanitised for your protection" paper ribbon things on it.

I'm still paranoid of bedbugs, but I'm lying ON the bed now which is a start (still not enough guts to get under the blankets). And I can't sleep because I'm feeling like I could have a better room, with people to talk to, probably could have been out to eat by now (All I've had since Chinese food at 1:00 today was a glass of crystal light), and spent less to do this all if I had just been better at planning and coordinating with other people. In my defense, though, I did send a message to my nursing class asking if anyone would be interested in letting me room with them so it's not like I just sat there passively expecting things to fall from the sky as I usually do.

Hopefully, tomorrow will be busy enough to distract me from how broke I am and how fail my hotel room is.

Lancaster is really beautiful BTW. Most of what I've seen of town is almost all Colonial style buildings, a lot of stone, some very inviting pubs and bars, and some Amish people in horse buggies. Everything's really clean too. I'm used to seeing garbage in corners, potholes all over the road, penises spraypainted on random buildings and street signs, plastic bags rolling playfully about, and Tyvek Housewrap and cinderblocks being used as acceptable exteriour wallcoverings. What fails about cities though (among a variety of things) is parking is scarce and it's invariably a billion dollars a minute. I will need to find somewhere to fucking park.

DAY 2
Someone from class invited me to stay with them at their room. I was like "FTW" and went to get my second day's reservation returned. The hotel manager was really nice about it and didn't give me any trouble, thankfully. The day was mostly boring until 6, when all the boring stuff was over, so we went back to the room and I had 4-or-so glasses of wine which coerced me into sending texts to nearly everyone in my contacts and yelling about how amazing my pens are.

Then one of my roomies suggested we walk to buy some beer and those flavoured NOMNOM Bacardi things. We ended up walking clear across town to buy booze from the "Six Pak" store which was, unbeknown to any of us, DEEP in the ghetto. Some guys were yelling at us from their stoop, "WHIIIIITEY!!! HEY, WHITE-0UT! PICK UP THE PACE!" but we got back with no complications.

Normally, I'm not one to drink to the point that I'm tripping on myself. I try to keep myself sober enough that I only need to wait a little bit to drive if something comes up. That night I was like "Oh what the hell!" because a nice hotel with non-strangers is really a safe place to get drunk. We played Mad Gab - a game with phrases that don't make sense but sound like ones that do, and you have to guess what it's really saying - and I like party games enough when I'm sober.

My yelling and over-enthusiasm for Mad Gab probably made me appear more drunk than I was...but you can judge for yourself: 1 shot of tequila, 3-4 shots of gin, 1 beer, 1 Bacardi fruity thinger, and whatever I was still feeling from the wine. I was apparently just drunk enough to wake up hung over, which I didn't realise until I went outside into the sunlight.

DAY 3
I did some boring stuff and then basically went home. The trip was supposed to take 4 hours and I drove it in about 3.5, WITH getting lost for about a half hour. The expression "hauling ass" was a gross understatement. Let's just say I felt like I was going at a snail's pace when I dropped to 65mph/100kph.