I find it's hard to do all the back story after a break, since all the details of the various events that have transpired melt away and I'm far too undisciplined to take notes and I'm left with just a few highlights. So I'll just kind of give you a thumbnail of those and we can start fresh. First, had a lovely shptoz, right off the plane. Then I went up and saw the burnt farm for myself, which was worse than I had anticipated. It was a strange experience, becuase many details are still intact, but it is basically destroyed. So that was sad and everything smelled like fire and death. After that, I attended a series of holiday parties with family and friends. It was kind of exhausting, though of course also very sweet and a rhapsody on the joys of family and community, which I now mostly lack. Then I had some cookies with Vincent Gallo, who I never really liked that much.

Around Christmas Eve, I briefly caught a bad case of ennui after installing a home theater set up, but it passed.

There was a brief incident in a bar in which my brother somehow managed to silmultaneously seduce a waitress and a local woman playing pool, who had an eight ball tatoo on her mons pubis.

Lighting the Hannukah candles was also very sweet, with various children each night, and even Christmas night we lit the eight candles, so that was nice and jewish.

Then I went to see my dad read some of his poems, which was quite impressive. Plus I had a pineapple juice at Bendix.