Got back last night from a nice family vacation in East Hampton. I took a redeye to New York Wednesday night and arrived (with eyes appropriately red) at around 6 am Thursday morning. I took a quick nap at my brother’s place (where my parents had arrived the previous day) before heading to Long Island with the dog in tow. My sister in law, her mother, and my niece had arrived the day before, so they were waiting for us when we arrived. And maybe I’m biased, but I have to declare here that my niece is officially the Cutest Baby of All Time. She walks like a pro now, and has a wide vocabulary consisting of words like “Mommy”, “apple”, “dog”, “shoes”, and “goggles” (which she learned while I was there, thank you very much.)

The rest of the time was spent doing some combination of the following: reading (finished the new Harry Potter book), swimming, hanging out with the fam, going to the beach, eating waaaayyyy too much, watching a few movies, and playing with my niece. You’ll notice that “sleeping” was not in that list. This is because my family has a strange aversion to allowing my sister and I to sleep in on vacations. This has been the case for as long as I can remember. Usually this involves my family walking into the room, not explicitly trying to wake us up, but talking at a normal volume, using the computer, etc. Eventually, we either break down and get up, or my Mom directly tells us to get up. Sunday morning, my brother first woke us up at 7:57am to give us donuts (which was, admittedly, very nice) and then the circus began. I eventually caved in and got up around 9 or so, but my sister kept sleeping. At 10, my Mom told my sister to get up.

Really, how can you argue with that?

My sister and I took the bus back to Manhattan Sunday afternoon where I got to see her swank new apartment. We watched a bit of TV, had dinner, and in the evening I met up with my high school friend Eli. I hadn’t seen her since high school, so it was nice to catch up. We met at Union Square, and I had a brief flash of panic when I thought I might not recognize her if I saw her, but we managed to find each other with no problem. We went to a tea house, then met up with a friend of hers and sat up on the roof deck of the apartment he was watching. In high school Eli and I would always have New York City vs. San Francisco debates (I being on the New York side, and she being on the San Francisco side) so we decided it was some sort of karmic retribution that she should end up in New York, and I in the Bay Area.

Monday morning I got up early to meet my other high-school bud Lisa before she had to go to work. We sat in Au Bon Pain and had expensive orange juice and had a nice lil’ chat. She filled me in on her exciting adventures, and I filled her in on my boring non-adventures. Good times.

Afterwards I picked up my stuff at my sister’s apartment before meeting my sister-in-law for lunch at the newly-redone MoMA. It’s very nice; nicer than the SF MoMA, I’m inclined to say. After lunch it was off to the airport via subway, then back to the good ol’ Bay Area.

It was a really nice, relaxing trip, despite getting less sleep than I get here. I also gotta give huge proppy shout-out thanks to Buddy for taking care of Enzo while I was gone.

In some sadder news, my dog Wendy was put to sleep early Monday morning. My parents put her in a kennel, and while she was at the kennel, her hind legs collapsed (she had pretty severe arthritis.) The kennel people took her to the vet, where they gave her injections of arthritis medication to try to get her back on her feet. Unfortunately, the medication is bad for your kidneys (hers were likely not doing to well to begin with) so her kidneys began to fail. Since her kidneys were failing, she started to have seizures. Fortunately, she held on long enough for my parents to return home, so they were there when the vet put her to sleep. (My other two dogs were put to sleep when no members of the family were present.) Wendy was 15 years old and had a very good life, but I was still really sad to see her go. She was the last of my childhood pets, so I think she was probably lonely after my other two dogs died. She’ll be cremated like my other dogs and sent back home.