home again, home again

Hey kids! Did you miss me? I missed you!

Well, I missed you when I wasn't spending time with family whose company I actually enjoy. Or visiting wineries. Or on the beach. Or shopping. Or biking Mackinac Island. Or stuffing my face with cherries, fudge and whitefish pate. Did I mention the wine? And the champagne?

You know how it is outside right now? All 78 degrees and sunny and no humidity? Yeah, I brought that back with me. The good people at Northwest Airlines let me carry it on, even though I also had a shopping bag full of food and wine and champagne and a bathrobe (new purchase, hot pink and furry and makes me look like a Fraggle, and the best thing I've ever had wrapped around me, including Jan the Flying Dutchman). The weather was this perfect all. Week. Long.

You know there's been some not-so-good stuff going on lately. This vacation was all about trying to purge the negativity and not think about stuff I can't control for a little bit. This plan worked better than I'd ever thought because something really big happened in my family this weekend. For the sake of preserving my semi-anonymity I can't really get specific, but let's say you happened to wander to the Purdue website and happened to click on the news section and happened to read a press release from today, and... well, you might get an idea of what all is going on. Bottom line: it's good, it's a big change, and it has absolutely nothing to do with me and everything to do with someone I love. And dealing with it and celebrating it all weekend took the focus off of all my crap, which was exactly what I needed.

*Exhale*

Pictures are coming, as soon as Verizon decides to remove their collective thumbs from their nether regions and fix my DSL. Really, it was gorgeous. That part of the country just restores my soul.

Hope you all had a great 4th!