Going home... and about time too

I'm flying back home today, at last! and I'm more than ready. It's been a long time away, especially with my shoulder the way it is. Do I regret coming? (after all, I did have the choice) - not really. The first experiments, in Chicago, made it all worth while. The New York ones were always going to be a bit 'let's try this and see, but we're not expecting anything fantastic'. The Stanford ones... let's not go there. I'm still fuming a bit.

So I had fun over the weekend. Saturday I caught up with Regina and Kirill and we went into the city, wandered around the farmers market, then along the waterfront at Crissy field. I guess it's one of those things: even though we didn't do anything of note, like go to a museum or whatever, just spending time with people - especially when you thought that last time you saw them was the last time you were going to see them - is great. Like a mastercard ad I guess... gelato, $5; coffee, $6; time with your friends, priceless.

Sunday Mike took me 'hiking'... meh. That wasn't a hike. Come to NZ and I'll show you a real hike. See, back home we make the distinction between a 'stroll', a 'walk', a 'hike', and 'going tramping'. What we did yesterday was a walk (in the park, literally). If you're walking and don't need to carry anything, it's a walk. Especially if while you're there, you meet people walking their dogs - you don't 'hike' your dog.

Using one word to describe things of varying degrees is (in a Bridget-esque completely random way) perhaps akin to these 'social networking' sites where you click on people to add them as a 'friend'. Now I have a (mental?) problem with this. I didn't have many - ok, any - friends in school, so to just click on people who I know and have them labelled as my 'friend' seems really phony. Acquaintance, yes; person-that-I-remember, yes; friend? No. Most of the people at school were either really mean to me or ignored it when other people were really mean for me. The only time they'd show an interest was when they needed help with their physics or calculus homework. Oh, and once in 7th form (i.e. last year of school) when somebody said to me they'd heard a rumour that I wasn't a virgin, was it true? I sighed - that had started when I was 11 or 12. And the person asking wasn't even at the school at the time. Of course the rumour wasn't true. I think that goes without saying. Girls can be really nasty.

So (getting back to the 'hike') I guess I've come to expect that the same word can mean two different things. So 'hike', 'friend'. 'Rubbish'. 'Boot'. 'Solicitor'.

Perhaps I'll try this next time. I will educate my American friends - or at least try to - so they can understand me. And that's not even including idioms, although that would be quite fun:
'Come on, rattle your dags; you're as slow as a wet week...'

I'm so glad I'm going home today!