Day 9:  Dublin to Philadelphia and Philadelphia to Chicago

Back in Indiana, suburban Chicago, with the family.  There is a new shower here.  You all should come over and try it out.  I'm just about to try it out for the first time myself and break the cycle of only showering once every two or three weeks.  I also can't wait to buy a deodorant gel stick, which apparently does not exist in Europe.  I'm not just going to spray terrible scents on me and hope that covers up my stench.  I want the comfort of gel adhering to the hair of my armpits.  Nothing beats that kind of fresh feeling.  Nothing.

A brief retrospective look back on my trip and I realize that I didn't accomplish anything that I had sent out to do like write a second draft to the novel, figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life, figure out where I want to live for at least the next few months of my life, maybe finally make a decision about grad school, and try to once and for all not live in an existential panic.  But I did none of that.  I did a whole lot more.  I went to Slovenia.  You probably can't say that, can you?  (And if you can, don't tell me, don't slash my sails, not right now, let them stay puffed up and full and happy.  Thank you.)

I've returned to a familiar routine.  A pot of coffee.  On my dual-monitored desktop blasting Distorted Pony, downloading the (finally!) new Duchess Says.  Writing e-mails, researching literary magazines, making music on Fruity Loops, tuning my tele, and shopping online for used books.  It's a lot of the same, but I feel different doing it.  I can't quite explain the change.  It could just be the jet lag, but I don't jet lag.  There probably isn't a change.  Watch me sit on my ass until tonight's Hawks game.  Watch!

I wanted to spend several blog posts posting several pictures from my journey.  But now that my camera is gone and likely gone forever before I could upload those hundreds of pictures, I have to decide the fate of this blog.  Like all the others, it is destined to die.  I'm sorry.  It's what happens when Kyle Brown makes a blog.  It dies.

So do I start another?  Change the name of this one?  What will I talk about.  It's easy to be perceived as exciting and interesting when you're across an ocean traveling new lands where your friends can read about your experiences and spend those five to ten minutes living vicariously.  But back in suburbia.  No one wants to live vicariously through my suburban experience.  Hell, I want one of you to go do some travel and blog about it so I can sit here and read about it and live vicariously.  And if I really put my mind to it, I can use the word vicariously more in this paragraph than in any other paragraph ever.

So how about some goals.  Some futureplans.  How about another trip next September?  This time with more friends.  Then there won't be any need for any of us to live vicariously through the other because we'll all be drunk in hostels together, meeting new people, making new friends, and learning about how people live in other places, which really isn't too much different than here, where people just want good, cheap booze and some laughs, some entertainment.  How does that sound?  Sign up now!