Reunited

I flew back home Sunday night and made it in around 7 PM after a pretty much effortless airplane trip. I always imagine the worst is going to happen, so when all goes well I am very pleased. The Delta jet I flew back on had a cool trivia game on their personal computer that made the trip that much better..against 39 of my fellow fliers, I came in 1st on one round, and in the top 5 the other.
I didn't take one picture the entire time, so I only have narrative to supply. The first three days I was with my friend Nara and staying in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. She lives in a great neighborhood that is just being gentrified, but is still mostly Polish immigrants. I mostly followed Nara around like a puppy dog for three days - for some reason I had no will to do any sightseeing and was happy to just walk around. We ate some really great food, I got some studying done, and saw several areas of Brooklyn I hadn't seen before; Carroll Gardens, Williamsburg, and Park Slope. We met up with my friend Alieda at Momofuku Ssam Bar, which is quite the trendy place to eat, and we later agreed that all the serving staff seemed to be on cocaine. We did attempt to go to two museums - PS1 and the Lower East Side Tenament museum and couldn't get into either, despite a long trek in the rain. We hung out at their neighborhood bar, Habitat, which happens to be the only bar I have ever been in and really enjoyed myself. Thank you to Chance and Nara for being such great hosts!
On Thursday I took the Greyhound bus from Port Authority to Hagerstown, Maryland where Jocelyn was getting married. The bus provided some really fantastic people watching, not the least of which was a woman who seemed to be the absolute living embodiement of all things Conneticut. The whole trip was about 7 hours long, and I really had a great time in a strange way.
Friday and Saturday was taken up with all things wedding - and I had so much concentrated fun, it is hard to put it all together. I was like a sorority girl on spring break (sans anything skanky), not a married 30 year old mother of 4. I stayed up all night and danced and spent a lot of time with old and new friends. I even made a 5 am waffle house run with a friends from high school who had flown in. I give big kudos to Jocelyn and her parents. They threw one awesome wedding; I don't think I saw one person who wasn't enjoying themselves the entire weekend. I will post some pictures of me as a bridesmaid when the photographer puts them together. It was such an incredible change of pace for me, but it was fun to get home too. Ariel did an amazing job and had almost no problems at all. Everyone was happy to see me and the kids made me a big welcome home poster.

The only near misshap the entire time was when Ariel mentioned he hadn't seen Tess in a few days, then suddenly dissapeared out the back door. He had realized that he had not seen Tess since he closed the crawl space cover outside, and lo and behold she jumped out as soon as he opened it. I guess she is a pretty decent survivalist. Today I had to jump back into life as I know it, and face a few semi unpleasantries that I had put off while I was gone. I also have a rather bad case of jet lag/sleep deprivation/party hangover to get through. It is very nice to be home and be reminded how great my family and my life are.