Grounded, once again, in Madison, taking a brief account of a long trip.

I need to readjust to being home, to my familiar ritual of sitting at the dining table paging through the NYT and sporadically blogging. Today, there are the four extra NYTs that accumulated while I was off on my quick trip to Ithaca and back.

I spent nearly 14 hours strapped in the driver's seat yesterday. We emerged from the little car only three times, each time for less than 15 minutes. Things I bought at the stops and then consumed in the car:

1. White cheddar popcorn.

2. A venti latte (Starbucks).

3. A Rice Krispies treat, Diet Pepsi, and peppermint gum.

On the last leg of the trip, driving up into Wisconsin, finally freed of all toll roads, keeping myself going on Pepsi and peppermint gum, I had to struggle with pouring rain, wisps of fog, and lots of truckers who saw fit to get right up to the taillights to express dissatisfaction with the little silver sports car that had eased off from the 65 mile an hour speed limit as it racked up the last 25 miles of that 837 mile day.

In the car, we listened to rock music on lots of different satellite radio channels. I concluded, for the thousandth time, that the 60s music is the best, as "Help Me, Rhonda" and "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" played, somewhere between Beloit and Janesville.

At one point, we listened to a spoken word CD, a lecture about philosophy and religion, and when the teacher used the phrase "the dark room of your mind," we turned it off and had a long conversation, answering my question: Do you see your own mind as dark? That is, when you picture your mind, do you see a black place inside your head? Much of the space between Cleveland and the holy city of Toledo was devoted to this inquiry, which transitioned from a discussion of the color and light of one's mind to the issue of where we saw our selves. Are we inside our heads, contiguous with our bodies, or occupying a place that extended beyond our bodies into the space immediately surrounding us?

Okay, back to the lecture. Enough of that. Let's listen to talk radio. No, no, let's go back to music. Let's play 20 questions.

Things I guessed, on just about the last question:

1. The Erie Railroad. (That last exam was Civil Procedure.)

2. Monica Lewinsky's dress. (Guessed just after guessing "Abraham Lincoln's hat" on question 19.)