(Jet-laggity-lagged, so this entry is jumpity jump jump.)

Tired... yet, not sleepy. I've been up for a good 14 hours, running around to Walmart, the supermarket, Sears, etc. in my rented car (which I'll be very sad to part with tomorrow morning), with my roommate, but it's 10:40 pm and as bright as, say, 6:30 pm back in Crimson City, and it feels very weird to have to go to sleep now.

America West lost my roommate's luggage yesterday, and wasn't sure where it was or why it was where it was, or if she'd ever see it again, so we ran around buying just-in-case shoes and the like. Fortunately, just as we were at Sears and she was ready to buy an armload of clothes, America West called. The luggage arrived 10 minutes ago.

Anchorage looks like a lot of small cities with suburban outriggings, and the streets are wide and spacious, like any place with nothing but a surfeit of space. But for the soaring mountains in the distance, there was nothing particularly distinctive about today's outings -- probably because we stuck to huge chain markets. My roommate remarked that it was surprisingly diverse, and I think she's right. There were a lot of people we saw who could have been Native American, which is interesting in itself.

Different too was the moment, cresting over the swell in the road where my office is located, when the cold, icy sea came into view, with misty mountains in the far distance, and I thought, "Wow." Actually, I believe I said it out loud: "Wow. That is aMAzing."

My landlady is a pretty woman in her early 40s, I would guess, with curly ash blonde hair, a boyfriend down the block, a small white dog, and a young daughter. She just bought a house in Kenai, which she promptly offered for a weekend, if we liked. She seems quite nice, but not overly solicitous. She set up a wireless port for us down here in the basement.

Tomorrow I start work. They told me to come in around noon, as my supervisor would be busy until then. I wonder how it will be. Will I like working in law? I'm a little nervous about starting a new job, but not too much so. I just want to like it.

Oh, and I broke up with Friend, about three hours before I left Crimson City. But then we sort of fooled around for 45 minutes, and then he packed my suitcase for me, so I don't know what the HELL is up with me, him, or this damn situation. Well, at least I have no qualms about meeting my mountain-man-with-grizzly-for-a-pet this summer. You think I'm kidding.

Oh yes, and I spent 48 hours with my mother, my aunt and my uncle in Seattle this past weekend. Sigh. It was fine, much better than I thought. They were uncharacteristically late in picking me up because they had the wrong flight number and arrival time, so I chilled out with my luggage, happy to have the time to adjust and prepare. I saw them coming down the escalator and jumped in front of my mother, who, for a startled second, looked at me without recognition, and then grabbed me in a hug. She seemed okay this weekend, alternating between sulking silently and disdainfully and being involved and solicitous. Much less of the former than before. At one point, when my uncle wandered off into a store rather than walk with us down the pier in Port Townsend, she said hilariously, "He's not a team player." Which she verified as her current status too when I set up my camera for a group photo and she didn't look at it. I playfully accused her of not being a team player, and she agreed completely straight-faced, "That's right. Not yet."

Oh, my mother.

At the end of the two days, my aunt tried to give me money, and I refused about 50 times before my mother said, "Take it and give it back another way. That's the best way." My uncle asked me straight out, "Why don't you want to take the money?" and I couldn't say the words: "Because I'm making more than enough money from this summer to take care of myself, and you're working away at age 64 to take care of yourself, your wife, and yet another member of your wife's family who doesn't appreciate what you do, and that isn't fair, damn it, it's not fair and I'll be damned if I take from you when I should be giving YOU money to take care of MY ungrateful, silent, resentful mother." But I didn't say it. There are some things that aren't worth the damage. Not when things are healing over. I took half the money, which will go into a card for Father's Day that'll get mailed right back to Seattle.

Okay, time to shut it, and go to bed.