Christmas was a good time. Laura and I went to St. Louis where we stayed with my brother, checked out my parents new apartment and only had to listen to a bare minimum of my dad's lectures on the relationship between ancient Egypt and it's influence on early Judeaism. Go ahead, ask him about it sometime, he'd looooove to tell you all about it.
My brother had brewed a couple of Belgian beers which we both drank in profusion. The dubble was excellent, his seasonal pumpkin beer was the best I've ever tasted but his other Belgian brew was so freaking alchoholic that I got gunshy from it after the first night.
My Cousin/Sister has once again proved herself to be one tough ass little lady. She bounced right back from an elective surgery and barely took a single pain med.
My Dad is still chugging along. He's still reading everything published in English or French about his favorite subject and at this point could probably go head to head with Dan Brown if there was every a "Davinci Code" Jeopardy special.
Mom is kicking ass and taking names. She is on a major charm offensive with a large stuff toy company and will probably have them eating out of her hand by the summer.
Jono is Jono. Teaching, making art, taking classes and raising Milo, a dog rivalled only by my own. If we move there, I'm sure Laura will do everything in her power to find him a good woman.
Laura and I took a good hard look at St. Louis as a possible place to move. St. Louis has changed a lot in the last decade since I moved out. The downtown is developing at a pretty good clip, but not quite fast enough that I would move down there anytime soon (last year St. Louis was voted the most dangerous downtown in America.) The cost of living is so freaking cheap it makes my head spin, and I already have friends and family there.
There's just the matter of confronting my 18 year old self. I have a good decade and about 20 pounds on the little shit, but he is pretty wiry and determined. My parents, of course are totally against the idea of being within driving distance to their future grandchildren and tried to talk me out of it the entire time. Carrboro is nice, but things aren't gelling anywhere close to what I would have hoped. What I realized in moving here and also spending a little bit of time in San Fran and the rest of the country is that nothing is like New York. Nothing. There are quality people everywhere, you just don't get that kind of buzz that you get in New York.
New Years was spent in Chapel Hill where Laura and I had a great meal and spent the night in a nice hotel. I passed out 10 minutes after midnight and Laura and Noreen spent an hour on the phone talking about what shitheads their husbands were (apparently John was something of a liablility on New Year's Eve and had to be escorted back early).
2007 is the year is going to be a pretty big year. If all goes according to plan, I might be a business owner and an expecting father before the year lets out. If not, I'll probably have a huge crisis of meaning and have to figure out for sure what the next 25 years of my life will be about. High stakes all around, it's exciting shit.
