Goodbye Texas. Howdy Kentucky.

It's official. I'm a college graduate (or as we Aggies like to say, a former student). I am no longer a resident of the great state of Texas. I walked Friday morning, packed up the U-Haul, made one last stop at Layne's and Sweet Eugenes, blared the Aggie War Hymn as I rolled out of Aggieland, and made the 1000 mile trek to Lexington, Kentucky with my mom in the trusty Camry and my dad driving the macho, manly truck.

To be honest, I thought it was going to be a lot harder than it was to leave. During the early stages of the packing process last week, I broke down three times and cried my eyes out, as I found old love letters, sifted through 3 years of tests and papers (for some reason I found it very sentimental - I had somehow forgotten about that 74 I got on a physics test or the 76 on an organic chemistry test), and thought of all the great times I had as an Aggie. But when the clock finally struck graduation day, my tear ducts were dry as could be. I credit that to the Man Upstairs.

The trip home was exactly what I had hoped for: 17 hours of bonding time with my mama. We laughed our back sides off joking around, had lots of heart-to-heart talks, jammed to some oldies music, and got ourselves into trouble. Like the time I was driving and my mom was in the passenger seat. My dad had been leading us in the Penske truck for a few hours and we had finally caught up after making a pit stop, so I sped up to pass him and my mama started making kissy faces and smashed her lips up against the window, only to find out as we passed that it was not my dad, just some other random guy driving another Penske truck. I quickly sped off to save my mama from even more embarrassment.

Or when we stopped outside of Nashville to fill up with gas for the last time. As we were pulling back on to the interstate, my dad cut off a middle-aged woman in an Escalade and she was just about fit to be tied. She got right up on my dad's tail, was honking her brains out, then to cap things off, gaive a strong, firm flick off, leaving the bird up for at least 15 seconds as she sped on by. To make things even better, my dad was completely oblivious and did not even know that happened til we got home and I brought it up.

Just as I crossed the Kentucky border we hit construction. I luckily got caught between two cars that wanted to go over the speed limit, so I willingly followed their lead, but the white van behind me was sitting close to my tail. I could tell he wanted to get by me but he was stuck in the one lane. When it finally opened up to two lanes, he promptly got in the other lane and sped up. I curiously looked over just to get a look at the guy, and I found two middle-aged men throwing up the t.u. "hook 'em" sign. I gave an absolutely disgusted look (the best I could think of on the spot) and gave a strong "gig 'em" right back to them. They laughed, we exchanged smiles, and they sped off. I love being an Aggie. My mom then started singing the "Spirit of Aggieland" at the top of her lungs. I joined in, and we put on a performance of a lifetime.

I don't think it has hit me that I am in Kentucky for good. I still feel like I am just on vacation. But a few prescriptions of anti-depressants and staying busy at work (researching prostate cancer all summer) will hopefully make the transition easier. Although the weather (50 and raining) isn't helping at all.