Ah, vacation is a lovely thing.

Kitty and I went up on Tuesday to visit Shadow and Kender in their brand new house in Knoxville, TN. (Well, new to them.). Kender is the person I refer to as my “sister-by-choice”, because while we aren’t blood-related, she fills that need in my life for a sibling that I never had. She’s been commuting from Nashville to Knoxville (spending most of the week in her parents home in Spring City, an hour away), so that she could work on finishing up her PhD in Medieval Literature. Shadow finally finished his residency and got a job at a hospital in Oak Ridge, so that Kender wouldn’t have so far to go. They were just getting moved in when we came up, but she was still a marvelous hostess.

This was also the first opportunity I’d had since last year to see their daughter, who is now 3, and now capable of holding coherent (if somewhat disjointed) conversations. She really is a darling…there are times I regret my own childlessness. Not often, but sometimes…

I ran an AD&D adventure for Shadow and Kender, since they haven’t really had the opportunity to play since they left Illinois a few years ago. Everyone seemed to have fun.

Friday was another Monkees concert. This is deidrecorwyn‘s current obsession. I enjoy the music, but could really do without the obsessive nature of the fans they tend to attract. More on that another time.

We drove back down on Saturday afternoon, and I got back in time to run down to SFSummer to play some music with Harper. I got called home a lot sooner than I’d have liked, but I had a great time while I was there.

Hrm. I don’t seem to be very talkative today. I think I’m really not ready to air in public the things that are really heavy on my mind right now. Maybe later.