My continued exile on Long Island

I'm out on LI for two more weeks. This is both good and bad. Bad because I have a ton of work to get done before I leave. Good because it means I will shortly be able to rejoin civilization in the suburbs on the other side of the city. When I get home I will never speak poorly of them again (at least not before I've reacclimated to living in Manhattan with the children of the rich and famous :-) ).

The more time I spend off of lab grounds the more convinced I become that LI is part of a non-parallel universe. Today for example, I had to go to Home Depot to buy a screwdriver so I could mount a new hard drive in my computer. On the way there I was listening to the radio, switching back and forth between WLIR and an NPR station from Conn. (yes, I've resorted to listening to public radio for lack of better options). At one point I neglected to change stations during the commercials on LIR and heard an ad for some store or other in Patchogue (a few towns over from Brookhaven) and I was incredibly puzzled because I had no idea what they were talking about until the end when I realized they were advertising bongs. On the radio. I almost drove off the road laughing. Obviously they didn't say it explicitly or I would have caught on sooner, but then again who expects someone to advertise that they're selling drug paraphernalia on the radio? Does this happen in NJ? Clearly if it does I've been listening to the wrong radio stations.