Good god….. I’m sooooooo full right now. I swear the moment I walked in the door, my mom was pushing candied goods and sweets at me. Moms can be like tobacco companies — they get you hooked on their stuff when you’re young, and you just can’t resist it when you’re older!

Today was a good day. RevJon and I did our on-site Perkins breakfast (Pancakes, bizzles!), and I drove the last 2 hrs out to PA — it went by pretty quickly. I have this tradition for my trips from Indiana to PA — I’ve done it every year except last year; I always have to play the Tenacious D album — at least half of it — on the trip to PA. I don’t know what it is… the trip just doesn’t feel right without it.

Oh — on a related note: I had written about this a few days ago, but myspace crashed while I was typing, so I lost all of that blog and was too trustrated to re-write… anyways — There’s this sign on the side of the road right as you’re junctioning onto Interstate 80-East from I-76-E, it says “(80) East New York City via Penna. 412 miles”. What I find a bit funny about this is that this sign is in OHIO. You aren’t even *IN* New Joisey, let alone PA, when you see this sign. Nevermind that there are TWO FULL STATES to go through before you hit NYC…. The sign doesn’t mention anything else along the way either!

Hilarious…

Same kind of situation is down in Arizona. When you enter in on, I THINK, I-41 or I-46 west, and are at the top of Flagstaff, AZ (the NE corner of the state) there’s a sign that says “Los Angeles 650 miles” (I forget the exact number, it was around that though). You still have to cross through the bulk of Arizona, all of Nevada, and most of the width of California before you finally get to smoggy LA.

Enough about that…

So yeah. Today was pretty uneventful. My mom bought me a fifth of Tanqueray, which my dad (actually my step-dad, but I just call him dad) and I put a nice dent in this afternoon. We ate some left over Chinese, watched some James Bond, and visited my sis (Lauren, 20y) at work. I usually only get to come home about once a year and this area always changes so dramatically in those 12 months. It’s really growing ridiculously fast. My elementary school, which is a few miles from my home, has an addition being built that will effectively double its size. This is the first time since a *long* time ago that they have done any additions. I went there 20 years ago, and it was well before that when they did the last alteration.

Early in the evening, my little brother (Danny, 9y) and I drove over to my Aunt & Uncle’s house. My cousin Steve (21y, Hebby — ..4 on my Top was recently sick, and I hadn’t seen him in a year, so it was good to see all of them again. Perry is a freelance photographer. He has owned and ran somewhere between 2 and 4 photolabs in his life, and *his* dad used to shoot for National Geographic. Anyways, he had asked to see some of the stuff I brought with me, including my new Nikon EL manual I got earlier this year. We chatted for a little while about various things — he said he might be able to get me another enlarger and some more darkroom equipment from one of his friends down in Bethelehem, PA! That would be SWEET!

Steve and I talked for a bit as well. His band (Steadyhands for Steadyhearts) will be signing onto a record label in a few months, and they’ll be not only producing a full-length album, but also going on the Warped Tour! That will be BAD-ASS. I would love to see them live. They’ve got some good stuff, I’m really excited for them.

After that — we both came back here, ate some dinner and veg’d out on the couch for a while. Felt good to do nothing. Lauren was all freaking out because she was going to her date’s 5-year reunion tonight and she couldn’t find what to wear. She’s so funny sometimes, I love her.

Later tonight, Abby (16y) and Danny were watching TV. Abby was throwing handfuls of popcorn at Danny, who was crawling around on all fours. He was racing the dog (Daisy, part labrador, part samoyd [snow dog]) to eat them off the floor. Seeing stuff like this really makes me think that perhaps “weird” *is* a genetic trait. And “funny” for that matter.

Tomorrow is xmas eve… the day before the big day. Aside from doing as little as possible, we’re doing the church thing, then the family gathering thing afterwards, then the “try and sleep because you know your little brother is going to try and wake you up at 7am” thing that night. It’s only 10 minutes of 12 midnight and I’m already completely exhausted. I think it’s from the food though. Those delicious sweets and goodies….

off to bed with me. |-)