sechan19 | On Family.

I spent the past couple days in the beautiful Nevada desert with my Gramminita.

In the last eighteen months, I have lost both of my biological grandmothers--and I am still not anywhere near being over the loss (or, for that matter, the additional loss that I and my family have faced recently). However, I still have 'Nita. 'Nita is my late Grandad's widow (he married her after he had divorced my Grammy), and she is a jewel: warmhearted, funny, welcoming. I really love being with her, but I don't see her nearly often enough.

It was a peaceful jaunt. We mainly talked about how our lives have been in the last year or so and played Mexican Train Dominoes--one of 'Nita's favorite games. Apparently, she and her cronies often get together to play the game (usually for quarter-stakes). This may be why she licked the stuffing out of me in round one. In the second round, however, I did improve and even developed a fairly stable strategy.

I came back down out of the high desert yesterday afternoon to treat my best friend, N., to a birthday dinner. Our birthdays are only two weeks apart, and we have almost always celebrated them together. This year was 29, and N. wants to do something fabulous for our collaborative 30th... like go to Hawaii or something. I'm down for that, but the feasibility of such a endeavor will depend in large part on my summer '09 schedule. The MA will be done then, and I'll probably not be in Japan until the following fall, but I had thought of attempting to find a museum internship of some kind. I favor the idea of getting some more museum experience under my belt.

Next week I'll be heading down south to visit my aunt and uncle and cousins (father's side), and I also hope to have lunch with my uncle B. (mother's side) at least once. I'm now two weeks out from my departure to Tokyo, and it still seems as if there are so many folks to see and so much stuff to do. But I'm squeezing in as much as possible and enjoying the moments that come.