Love Hurts

This was sent to me by my friend Sarah. Hilarious...and true. Happy Belated Valentine's Day!

The Gifts

Wow. I'm exhausted. It's been a wonderful whirlwind weekend of friends and family. We've been in DC and Baltimore - both right near my old neighborhood, so I tried to see as many people as I could.

We'll do these one entry at a time.

The first day in DC, I met up with my old high school buddy, Kevin Gift and his wife Laura. They have two sweet little babies now. Hallie, the smartest three-year-old I've ever met. She loves to chat. The second their car pulled up, she looked at me and said, "Hi Michael! Sit with me, Michael!" And then she wanted to hold my hand all night.

We went to an awesome restaurant where they brewed their own delicious root beer.

Hallie and mother Laura

Little one-year-old brother Xander wasn't having the best of times, but then it's pretty hard to be a one-year-old. Takes a lot of work to do anything. Such a nice guy though. Here he is with his Daddy.

Xander and father Kevin

We all tried to catch up in a very short period of time (about two hours), as there's not a very large window when you have two younguns.

Then we went out and bought me toothpaste.

Friends Marathon

I've got a little catching up to do here on the blog, so I'll delve into the New Years' Eve stuff in a later entry.

Coming in to New York City, I had this great idea to try and get in touch with a bunch of friends, regardless of the fact that I had very little time to do this. After our first Newark show, I went out for a late night meal with Koo Chung, Jinny Kim (they're engaged now!) and John Bonaventura (who's also engaged now, but his girl wasn't able to join us).

They were part of last year's tour. You know, this one:

We talked about life after the explosion, relationships, work...everything. And had chocolate cake. John likes to drink his wine on the rocks. He says that every time he orders it, the waiter brings the ice in a separate glass, cause no one can believe he would want to ruin a perfectly good glass of wine like that.

I mentioned to Koo that I've been looking to get a BlackBerry, but it just kept not happening, and Koo said he'd just bought an iPhone and didn't need his Treo anymore. Bang! I've got a new phone. And I love it. I've finally joined the texting world of five years ago.

After going to bed much too late, I woke up much too early to have breakfast with Robin Lai and Jae Ko at Cafe Europa.

They were also in the band of said exploding tour. It was wonderful to see them again, and it really felt like reuniting with fellow trauma survivors. That giant Arkansas fireball bonded us in a strange and permanent way.

That same day we played our second Newark show, and it was attended by one of my very favorite people: Ben Pedersen.

Afterwards, we headed back into the city, had warm bubble tea and dumplings at Saint Alps Teahouse, walked the streets of the East Village, checked out the bookshops, and found numerous things to laugh at. Like this:

Apparently it was garbage night in NYC, according to this ubiquitous sight:

Once again I went to bed much too late, half expecting to feel sick in the morning, but I've switched to new vitamins, and I've been feeling good for a couple weeks now! Yay!