When I got to Newark International Airport, it was warmish and drizzly. I'd forgotten how much I missed having tomaneuver around puddles. The drizzle perhaps made everything seem more verdant than ever. Even the weeds are green around here. Of course, they're pushing their way through the stark metal highway dividers.

So I got home Friday night around 7:15, just barely missing my brother who'd already gone to—woohoo!—the eighth grade dance. I was supposed to simply pick him up at 10, but, instead, Meenal and I crashed it. Let me tell you, it was so much more upscale than ours. The young'uns even got favors. Sigh. What is the world coming to? Further confirming the degeneracy of our nation's youth was Mr. George's report that Karla's brother was quite the pimp, and that Albert danced with girls. Heck, I don't think I hit that milestone with guys who weren't my good friends until well into high school, and (if I remember correctly) that was at a Model UN end-of-conference dance in Iowa. (Oops. Every time I read L.M. Montgomery, I begin to overuse italics just like Anne of Green Gables does.) In my experience, good things have only tended to come from states with coasts, unless you count Meenal's paramour TJ and his 8 by 10 glossies. Oh, poor kid. He was only smitten.

Afterward, we watched Harry Potter for the first time, with several interruptions to comment on Matt's pedophilic crush on Hermione. And then I went home. And slept. And slept. And slept, for 18 whole hours. When I woke up, I helped paint a house.

Stereotypically, people's midlife crises manifest themselves in fast women and fast red convertibles. My parents remodel houses. Well, correction. There've really only been two, and they've both been in collaboration with friends, and they're not even completely done yet. So I guess I can't truly justify the use of the plural.

In any case, they're not drastically dismantling the things or anything. Just repainting walls and exteriors, removing some gaudy old wallpaper, fixing lights, ripping up old carpet to find some really nice hardwood floor hidden underneath, and redoing most of the kitchen. It's a small house, but with character. Absolutely objectively speaking, I don't really like our current one. I'm attached to it, of course, by virtue of having grown up here, and the memories associated with all of the various dents and paint stains—not to mention dead hermit crabs—in the basement, but it's not a particularly loveable building. It's far too huge and boxy and shiny and stark. Twenty-eight Jersey Avenue, on the other hand, has got great little details like exposed rafters across the living room, an asymmetrical front door, and cool windows that I don't really know how to describe. It's just more homey to me, even though I only first set sight on it two days ago.

So my afternoons should be full of house-fixing, and nights of down time with old friends. Sounds warm and delicious.