Turkey day, etc

I brought AJ home with me for Thanksgiving, and he was such a trooper! He had to deal with my whole clan-- four nights of family, meeting people, and answering questions (like, how did you get that name? and are you treating her right? You know, all the fun stuff...)

It was pretty great. We had a good week-- saw lots of family, some of Chicago (including the Bean, of course!) and ate a lot. Aside from AJ's being allergic to my house, it was great fun.
I got all sad, because I realized how much I miss both my biological family and my college surrogate family-- you! I know that I didn't appreciate my family much when I was at Yale, because I didn't need to. I had friends as close as family, whom I could rely upon for pretty much everything. And here, it's not quite the same. Grad school is decidedly less fun than college. But having you folks spread out over the whole country/world does make me appreciate my family. At least they're all in the same city, and I can visit them all at the same time!
Yesterday, Rita talked me into driving down to DC to meet her, Ben and Marcus for dinner. Dinner was lovely (my first fender bender was less lovely-- nothing to worry about, though). I got this fantastic picture of Ben and Rita on the ride back: stay classy, kids!

Oh! And, since I got a camera for my birthday, the photoblog is back online. Check it out.