And tomorrow, I head to Pennsylvania for nearly a week.
September 19, 2009, 5:50 PM
Yeah, tomorrow is going to be a travel day for me. I’m going to a Mac OS X Server class at Montgomery County Community College in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, just outside Philadelphia. Finally I’m going to get a really good understanding of Mac OS X Server, and this will be really useful when I get back to the office the following week.
Of course, this means I have to drive up Interstate 95 to get there, but it’s okay – I have a GPS this time around, and Lori (the name of the voice on my TomTom GPS) tells me where to turn. The only thing that particularly bugs me is all the tolls. It seems like just about every time you really get going, there’s a guy in a yellow safety vest with his hand out. And unless the tolls have changed, I’m going to have to pay $11.75 in tolls alone. That breaks down to $2.00 for the Fort McHenry Tunnel, $5.00 for the Susquehanna River bridge, $4.00 for the Delaware Turnpike, and then $0.75 for a short stretch of the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
I’m just glad to finally make the trip – I’ve been trying to do this for four months now. First I was going to take the class in mid-May in Charlottesville, and it was cancelled. Then late May in Blue Bell. Then mid-July. Then late August. Now, for mid-September, they promised me that they are definitely having the class, and I got no notifications that they were cancelling. Dy-no-mite!
And the trip ought to go a little more smoothly this time around. After all, I’ve done this before now. I remember where the hotel is, and I kind of remember how I got to Montgomery County Community College from there. I also know going in that they use too much chlorine in the pool, and so I’ll bring goggles this time. And I don’t have to travel on I-95 back to Maryland during evening rush hour in the dark this time. That was a less-than-pleasant experience last time, with bumper-to-bumper traffic most of the way home. It only cleared up just north of Baltimore, when I stopped for dinner and gave traffic some time to get moving. Then it was smooth sailing the rest of the way home. I was never so glad to see the Beltway before. My goodness, I hate that road, but it meant I was almost home and back in familiar surroundings.
Meanwhile, the service plaza in Delaware that had Metro’s tiles closed down like last week, and they’re going to demolish it and rebuild it into something really classy. Virginia should take a hint.
And I’ll be interested to see how the hotel looks. It was closed for a month in August due to flooding caused by a storm, and now they’re open again following renovations.
Meanwhile, I’ve been cleaning. My apartment looked kind of dirty, and now it’s looking a lot better. I don’t know what it is about my wanting to clean it right before leaving, but that’s what I usually do. I guess it’s the whole idea of not wanting to come home to a dirty house. All I have to do now is vacuum the rugs, and we’re all set.
Web site: Girl gets to pull the fire alarm at 7:15. She's excited!
Song: Japanese sketch comedy parody of Power Rangers
Quote: So next time we speak, I should be in the Philadelphia area...
Categories: Work