olympics, ghetti, grad school...

So Cory and I had an emotional, teary farewell thismorning as he headed away from Charleston...

just kidding.

After this summer apart, we exchanged a high five, a slap on the back, and a
-- "hey. be good until next week, champ"
- "not a chance, babe."

It feels good for things to be slooowly getting back to normal...!

Friday night was my first night out in downtown Charleston (other than CB's bachelorette party) ... we went to Vendue Inn (fun rooftop bar... and there was an anniversary dinner on the rooftop next to us, so we watched the guests dance and clink glasses and it was all very pretty) and Big John's, which is near and dear to my heart. BJ's was sketchy as ever (of course), and we had such a ball seeing Josh and Cam and other camp folk and friends.

The funniest part was that a random bar guy tried to pick up Cam's roommate by signing lude things to her in sign language. He didn't realize that she was out with a flock of people who had worked at camp for people with special needs -- and Mark, who is very good at signing, was there with us. So Mark started signing back, throwing the guy off his game.

It was all very classy.

Last night was a wonderful evening of wedding talk and baked ghetti (spaghetti for deprived readers who have never appreciated "ghetti") with Tyner and Zeke and Hannah and Rivers. And the Olympics. I love the Olympics. It's like field day for the universe. And Zeke has decided to arbitrarily start loving the Olympics... to the point where he has a dry-erase medal tally going on the wall of Tyner's new apartment.

Mom has decided the Olympics are a cruel competitive display of the US's oppressive tendencies.

"We don't need to flaunt our superiority to these poor, deprived nations."

... and I finally got to see Hannah. After far too long. ... it was just nice being around people I have known for awhile, talking about this-and-that and not worrying about school or research or moving. I have a week to just "be."

I'm excited to have time this week to just putter around Charleston and get stuff done for Grad School, too. I still have about a dozen people I'd like to contact about research, so that endeavor will eat up a lot of time... but I like reading articles and following their work, so it will be fun. I'm still ahead of the game, too -- my goal is to finish all of the preliminary stuff and get my recommendations requests done by the time school starts. Hopefully, I'll finish everything this week and just print and mail once I get back to Furman. I don't want to spend my senior year worrying about what comes next, you know? I want to enjoy "the moment" as much as possible.

Phelps is a beast, by the way. A beast. But we realized he doesn't close his mouth when he talks, so I am going to be distracted from his beastiness from here on out.

Thanks, Zeke, for ruining Phelps' beastiness.

Between the Olympics and Edwards, TV is worth watching these days. Oh, and the new season of Project Runway helps, too...

I just love watching CNN, ABC, and the National Enquirer on the same TV screen. I think it's absolutely hilarious, actually... there's not much more to say about Edwards, other than reiterating that he's scum and his poor wife has cancer. The baby-daddy thing is an interesting spin, but really -- who cares? He cheated on his wife, and I don't care to know the extent of the consequences. Whether he has a child doesn't change the magnitude of what he did; the networks just want to stretch it all out.

So the networks just keep talking about why they didn't break the news when the National Enquirer released the first stories. Clearly, they just have different calibers of source credibility. But all of them want to keep talking about this stupid affair, so they'll debate he-said-she-said until the end of time.

Good news: my brothers got home from their Gilligan's Island game. They took the boat to an island and camped overnight. They caught their own fish and battled mosquitoes. Eric can't drive the boat, but Pat can. Pat can't navigate, but Eric can. Eric's afraid of sharks and the dark, but the other guys know how to kill beasts. One of their friends was a line cook at a seafood restaurant, so he cooks for them. The crew resembles a mildly self-sufficient society.

Now, happily back to civilization, they have decided to go to CiCi's and try to eat the entire buffet. No exaggeration. Eric just got yelled at for eating a Nilla wafer because he is the boys' main source of "eating power."

Being home is strange but wonderful. I've missed pulling in the driveway to see dad swinging a hockey stick around the garage, trying to kill mud wasps. I've missed pulling aside a shower curtain to find Boomer, belly up, waiting for someone to give him water. I've missed mom's "decoy boxes" of healthy cereal that actually contain cookies she's hiding from Nolan.

It's nice. I'm home.