Living After Living the Dream

Hello, faithful readers, ie: Serena and Aunt Marian and Uncle Barnett, and possibly up to five other people!

I've been back in the U S of A since June 4th.
It's nice to be back; it's weird to be back; things are so much bigger here.

Since my return, life has been uneventful to say the least.
I've seen some good old friends and met some good new ones, and that's always nice.
But I haven't gone on a beautiful hike through the wilds of New Zealand, or escaped the curiosity of an Australian Brown Snake in over 3 months, and that's terrible.

So the blog will continue as a means to continue highlighting the good stuff, and if nothing else, it's a good way to remember the other stuff.

So without further delay:

Upon my return, I slept for a week.
Then Serena and I had bagels at the Maven.
Then I went to Boston and surprised the pants off of my best friend in her favorite bookstore and we compared how tan I was and how incredibly cold this winter must have been in Boston.
We also watched the USA v. England game at a nice bar in Newton and were so boisterous that the other diners complained about us passive aggressively on a comment card.

Then it was mid-June and I decided it was really time to look for a job.
I spent a good amount of time looking on various websites and asking friends for leads and applying to everything that I was remotely qualified for, including one job requiring a master's degree in conversational Tagalog (oops).

Then I got a call from one of the jobs I applied to through the help and general hook up of a one Caite Burke, and scheduled an interview for that Friday.
That night I went to Serena's goodbye party. It was devastating, but so fun!
Then I went to Wendy's birthday party on Saturday night, which was both really fun and really culture shocking because I forgot how fancy some of New York seems to be/wants to be/actually really is.
That Sunday, I saw Grampa and my cousin Larry and we celebrated Grampa's 90th (!!!)

Then I saw Phish in Camden and realized that while I'm still a fan, some of those songs are just too damn long.
Maybe I've grown up, or maybe I've just outgrown it.
Maybe that's just two ways of saying the same thing?

Then I got a call from the job I interviewed for and I start work on July 19th.

[What recession?]

Aside from the job hunt and reunions with friends and family, I've been spending a lot of time in my room, going through a lot of my old stuff and getting rid of doubles of pictures of people and things I just don't need two of.

Being home feels weird; feels right; feels like summer without camp, which also feels weird and somehow right.

In short: wherever you go, there you are.