I had a terrific homecoming. Mom, Zach, Matt and I went for pizza at Piece, a Wicker Park pizza place I adore. It was nice to eat without the hammy corporateness of D.C. or the enduring stench of New York. Just good food and clean sidewalks.

Then I went home and fell asleep on the couch watching Jurassic Park. Then Zach, Mom and I went to see Emily's twenty-minutes-of-pure-awesomeness play, "The Tragic Fall of the Blind Tightrope Walker and the Glorious Rise of the Traveling Circus," starring a dozen or so of my close friends who have been rehearsing all summer while I was away, in The Backyard Theater (guess where that is). Then Zach and I helped clean up and then we all gathered our troupe of raucous youth and headed for the beach, where we ran around in the water and played red rover and freeze tag. Tragically, Emily's glasses got broken in red rover, in an ironic replay of many a second-grade drama. Then we went to Clarke's and ate pancakes and I regaled everyone with tales of the strange lands I had visited, lands of Wal-Mart and lands of garbage piles and lands of cowboys. Then it was around two in the morning so we all went home I slept late the next day. I'm sure I did something on Monday, but I can't for the life of me figure out what it was... then yesterday two of my dad's younger siblings, John and Jill, and Jill's too-cute-to-be-true baby Ruby, came down from Ithaca (Jill) and Boston (John), on their way to visit my Great-Grandma K (short for Kerchenfaut), who lives downstate in Piper City. What a long sentence. Anyway, Dad and Jill/John/Ruby and Zach and I went out for Mexican food, then came home and chilled. And now it is this morning.

What's up for the rest of my summer? Finishing up issue four of Say What and finding some sort of job, mainly. I don't have orientation until September 18, so I'll be without all my friends for a month or so, which will give me a ton of time to a)do nothing, b)work, c)think, d) do nothing, e) do nothing.