The last Amtrak Regional for the evening passed through New Jersey ten minutes late, but was not too heavily packed, as the bulk of the Thanksgiving holiday crowd had already milled through the corridors of transit several hours earlier. Amy and I found a couple of seats together in an Amfleet 1 coach — those older ones with brown and tan interiors, dimly lit with bright red seats and only a few AC outlets in certain rows. It was a noisy, slightly cramped train, with the heat turned up way too high, so that the air had that musty “burnt radiator” smell, and we took off our hats and jackets and sweaters and still felt too warm. But we managed to sleep most of the way, listening to Grieg’s Peer Gynt on Amy’s iPod, with an earphone splitter to share the audio between two sets of earphones.

I came home at about 3am, to a cat who, though happy to see me, had also thrown up a hairball on the sheets and peed on the bathroom rug.