Whew. I am all blogged out. I've been working for a few hours now on building the first half of my Christian Carnival post for Wednesday, and I'm glad I got a head-start, because its a lot of work. Of course the way I decided to write it contributes to that, so I have myself to blame, in part.

Tomorrow its back to the West Village for more work on the now-revived possibility of a Toys-R-Us project. Hmm. Hope that doesn't keep me too late because I have to get back in time to represent my chosen establishment in our first round of the "Wing and a Prayer" competition - a bunch of guys from church here in Hoboken have decided to pit our respective favorite wing-serving establishments against each other to determine who, in fact, has the best wings in town. So that should be fun.

Then more work on the CC post and hopefully I'll have it up by a decent time on Wednesday.

Also on Wednesday, I'm going to be published on RelevantMagazine.com - its actually a blog post I wrote quite a while back, which I submitted to them. They waited to publish it until they re-released their updated version of the site, which is now launched. So its a big day for me, of sorts. I'll link to the article once its up there. I hope and plan to write more for them in the future.

I feel like if I don't recap the vacation now, I never will, so you're going to get it fast and furious.

I got a standby seat and in fact it was in the first row bulkhead, which wasn't too bad. So I got home late Friday night near the tail end of my brother's 21st birthday party. Saturday was driving up to Nevada City with my youngest brother Joey to lunch with my grandparents and take a brief trip to the lake near their house. We stopped and checked in on my parent's new real-estate investment in Auburn, about a stone's throw from the building I was born in. That night mom made tacos - one of my favorite home meals. Sunday was church, then lunch and packing the car. We drove to Hanford, the city my sister Robbie is living and studying in, and caught the evening service at the church she works for / studies at. Dinner with the family she stays with, then crashed in a hotel room.

Monday morning we were off for Santa Barbara, where we met up with brother Jonny and his buddy Dillon who were winding up their whirl-wind car tour of the state (they hit Yosemite, San Diego and of course Tijuana for switchblades, LA, and who knows where else before meeting us). We all had lunch with our adopted great-aunt Marge, one of the nicest and most generous people I know. Then we all trekked back up coast an hour or so to Pismo, and set up camp.

Camp was a nice grassy area situated just behind the sand dunes and eucalyptus trees that separated us from the beach. The beach was long, maybe a couple hundred yards of sand from the dunes to the water at points. We were about a quarter mile down from the pier that juts out from downtown Pismo. Lots of boogie boarding, swimming, beaching, eating, shopping, and playing Mafia around the fire at night. I moderated, for the most part, to the chagrin of some. But they kept asking me to do it, so I did. I am a good Mafia moderator. Go to sleep!

Thursday afternoon we got in some last minute boogie boarding and then struck camp and drove home, with a stop at the ever-beefy Harris Ranch for a nice dinner. Sister Margy, the only one not with us for the camping, had flown into Sacto that same day so I got to spend Friday shopping downtown with her, before we returned home to get ready for the wedding we all went to that night. It was the daughter of my parent's church's pastor. Nice gal/dude, nice wedding, really nice reception, I'm talking like swanky-NYC-nice reception. Then I drove the rental car back to the airport and hopped in an exit row seat back to JFK. J-lo picked me up and gave me a ride back to the boken Saturday morning, where we had breakfast. I proceeded to hide in the cold dark comfort of my room for the rest of the day, sleeping a large part of it away.

And then it was back to routine. Went to check out my buddy Peter playing in one of his baseball games on Sunday morning, drove out there with the roomie and his girl, and churched it up last evening.

I think that's about it. Oh yeah, there was a ton of marine life in Pismo - from sea lions / seals coming literally right up to us in the surf as we boogie boarded, to whales flopping about just a couple hundred yards out (freaked out the parents since we were boarding about halfway out to the whales), to pods of dolphins in the morning waves, riding the surf with the boarders. Oh and here's a picture (phone cam) of the fam from the wedding.