I got back in Ann Arbor a couple of hours ago after 10 days at home, 5 days in L.A., and another day at home. At least emotionally, it was the most turbulent 2.5 weeks of my life. I don't know how I could summarize it in any comprehensive way, so I'll just present the following lists:

Things I've Done Since 12/20/06 That I Wish Everyone Could Do:

1. Spend a glorious New Year's Day in Pasadena tailgating and watching one or more (I'd actually recommend exactly one) football teams you care about play in the Rose Bowl.
2. End said glorious day eating the best Korean barbeque in the Western Hemisphere with good friends, and for dessert crane your neck to watch one of the craziest finishes to a college football game you'll ever see.
3. Stand up for your brother as he marries exactly the right person for him.
4. Walk around a neighborhood you never dreamed you could live in looking for an apartment that you actually will live in sooner rather than later.
5. Spend Christmas with your father after fully expecting that last year's Christmas had been his last.
6. Make a really good best man's speech that everyone else at the reception seems to enjoy just as much as you enjoyed writing and delivering.
7. See a movie as good as Letters From Iwo Jima at a theater as good as the Arclight.
8. Fall in love with your favorite city all over again.

Things I've Done Since 12/20/06 That I Wouldn't Wish Upon Anyone:

1. Have to leave the place you want to live, knowing you're probably over half a year away from returning at all.
2. Take a cross-country red-eye flight that lands at 6:15 a.m. and have to drive an hour home.
3. Spend said flight fretting over whether the parking lot takes credit cards (it does), because you don't think you have enough cash on you to pay, nor any in your bank account to extract thanks to bad information from the financial aid office.
4. Be the best man at a Catholic wedding, where the set-up requires you to kneel during the parts where the rest of the guests get to sit.
5. Spend the wedding of someone 5 years younger than you wondering whether you'll ever find the right person who wants to spend a weekend with you, let alone the rest of your lives.
6. Have to pull your father's underwear down so he can take a dump, because he can't do it for himself.
7. Cut your trip home short because you just recharged your batteries with a glorious vacation, and every moment at home is draining it again at a rate you cannot fathom.
8. Know that each time you say goodbye to your father it could be the last time, and for the first time see in his eyes that he knows it too.

1 Thing I Have Done Since 12/20/06 That I Both Wish Everyone Could Do And Also Don't Recommend To Anyone:

1. Eat a lifetime supply of cookies in 17 days.