Its not easy to fill in the blanks, since I have been out of service for over two weeks, so I'll just give you an overview, starting with the end. I got a ride to the airport from a flabby tattooed guy who told my he was 6'4, 270, and was in prison, for cocaine. He held forth without taking a breath, for the whole ride. Mostly he was spouting statistics about race and arrests, correlated to race and calls to the police. He was using the word perpetrators to describe the criminal suspects.

That was the cab to the airport in Newark, which was just before the flight to California. Before that, I was mostly dividing my time between working on the farm, which I am happy to report went from having a burnt off roof to having a brand new roof during the time of my visit, and working in the city for my actual job which pays me. Not just me alone, but also my brother, Theo, and, for two days, a Tibetan former monk named Jumpte, who was very nice and sang in that monastic gutteral voice. I'm not going to suggest that the big push of work wasn't a little tiring, especially a couple of the days of extreme physical labor and danger of working on the roof, which left everyone involved pretty pooped out, and me shivering in the fetal position, which my hands in permanent claws. But the point is, now we can look back and laugh and we have a proud roof with skylights that came out very professionally.

One day, I managed to get giardiasis from the pond, which had unpleasant conseqences, and resulted in seven days of Flagyl and kind of ruined the effect of my staying at a fancy hotel, because I was focused on getting enough Gatorade to stay alive, rather than on roomservice. I did order some mashed potatoes and they came in with the cart and the guy was kind of making me uncomfortable, and I'm not sure I would order room service again.

One evening upstate after working on the roof, we went out for mexican food at a random restaurant near the thruway, and happened to run into Perry who was on his way down from a shoot in Vermont, which is what I would call a pretty good coincidence.

Also managed to get a roof deck built in the city, as well as put in a hot water heater in New Jersey. So there was a lot of contracting going on. On top of that, when I went in to pick up my honey's grandmother for a dinner, driving her mother's car, the battery exploded. So I had to run aroudn and find a new battery and install it, which, considering it was New York City and I had no tools, went extremely smoothly, in that I found a place that sells them, took a cab there and back and the whole thing took less than an hour. Plus it made me feel resourceful.

Aside from not spending enough time visiting people who may resent me or have their feelings hurt, I would have to say the whole trip was satisfying. I did however get to see how Grafs live, in their extremely orderly apartment with their tidy baby, and I did see Jordan's baby's, one of which, Elias, has sea monkeys and a pet clam in a fishtank. And my own nephews and nieces are shooting up like weeds.