This past week has completely flown by.  I put together a draft of our next research experiment, finished off my holiday shopping, and spent an evening building a collection of family photos to fill a cute little frame my sister found for my grandma.  I’ve met up with Leslie and her sisters and gone out with Colleen and Jon a couple of times, but mostly I’ve stayed home and visited with family.  Christmas was a day-long extravaganza that started with just the immediate family, then migrated to my Aunt’s house to see my dad’s side of the family, and ended with 30+ of my mom’s relatives coming over for dessert and drinks.  I think the photos speak for themselves:

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I can’t remember the last time we had the whole family together like that… with so many cousins, it seems there’s always at least someone missing (and aside from being home for a couple of weeks each December, for the last couple of years that person has been me).

So now I’m realizing that I leave in less than 48 hours, and sort of wishing that I was staying longer.  There’s no special someone I want to rush back for this year, and visiting with family has been pretty relaxing.  I’m still having plenty of teary moments when something around here reminds of when Twinkle was staying with us, but they’re finally starting to ebb.  Thankfully I didn’t take her to the nearest coffee shop, so I’ve had the ability to retreat there when being around the house has me a little too depressingly nostalgic.  Yesterday I hid out there for a few hours and tore through a book on audio engineering–at least when I get back, I’ll have some fun new recording projects to try in my home studio.

I was kind of hoping to have a chance to try snowboarding with my little brother Kyle while I was home, but I had research to work on when I first got back, and now the weather has turned all warm.  At the very least, I got to take some cool photos of him on a couple of homemade jumps in our backyard.

Kyle pulling a 180

So we went out for drinks and some dinner and chatted for a few hours.  I was pretty shocked by how closely our personalities seemed to match, my thoughts constantly oscillating between that and things like, “OMG her smile is so cute!”… so yeah.  It seemed to go well, and I was in a pretty good mood.

The next night the two of us went to a party my friends were hosting.  She seemed a bit more distant this time, though it may have been the overwhelming numbers of new people… I usually get pretty shy in that sort of situation, too.  Less ambiguous was when, on the ride home, she said that she wasn’t really looking a relationship at this point in her life.  Fair enough (and possibly open to interpretation, but I think it was her way of saying she wasn’t interested).  We hugged and parted ways for a couple of weeks (I flew back to Detroit the next morning), but I’m still hoping to hang out with her some more (and maybe even meet her friends!) when I get back to town.

Wednesday was a busy day of shuffling from Corvallis to Portland to Minneapolis to Detroit to Rochester Hills, and combined with the time-loss flying from the west to east coast, was over before I even knew what was happening.  At least I scored a fantastic martini to pass the time in MSP.

And today… today has been weird.  The last time I was home, I was introducing it all to Twinkle.  I’m still catching myself looking around for her when I head upstairs, or wondering if she’d like a cup of tea, too.  I’d finally gotten over this in Corvallis; I didn’t realize I’d have to do it all  again in Detroit.  On the upside, my mom took me and Kyle shopping for the evening and I snagged a fabulous old-school Detroit Tigers t-shirt and some new Doc Martins.  Still searching for that ever-elusive pea-coat (the one that will actually fit me) but there’s plenty more time to continue that adventure over the next week and a half…

Last year Twinkle saved me from a lonely shut-in weekend and invited me to her family’s dinner, and kept inviting me back daily, the entire time her family was in town.  Simply spending evenings watching old movies with her dad and step-mom made me feel more welcome and loved than I can adequately describe; I’d made friends, but didn’t realize how hard it would hit me when they all left for the holiday and I stayed behind.  Having a place to go and people to visit during that time was the best balm for homesickness I could have asked for.

Even without Twink around this year, her brother repeated the invitation, and I’m really looking forward to it.  Her family is wonderful, and it’ll be great to spend the holiday with them.  He even asked me to drop by early with my guitar so that could jam a little bit–slightly intimidating, since I’ve heard him play and he’s amazing, but it should be good fun.  I have to admit, however, that this feels a little bittersweet; depending on where things go with our relationship (which even I can’t truthfully describe right now), I have the sense that this may be the last time I really feel like a part of her family.  I hope that’s not the case; I don’t want to have found such a loving family only to lose them so swiftly.

Anyway, in contrast to last year, Will and Katie hosted a friend-Thanksgiving this year.  They held it tonight, before people began to leave town, so we were all able to get together for a pot-luck (in the best sense of pot-luck, no mysterious goo here) dinner, drinks, games, and gossip.  A wonderful idea, and they pulled it off perfectly.  It feels great to know that in just a year, I’ve met such an amazing group of people.  I suspect for most of them, it’s mostly another chance to socialize and enjoy a Saturday night, but for the transplants in our group, it really helps to make the west coast feel a bit more like home.