A Quick Weekend Home

I spent President's Day weekend back home in Rhode Island, catching up with my family. My older brother, who is stationed out on an air force base in Montana, had leave, and so I made sure to make the trip to see him. He is normally never on the East Coast, and I was looking forward to spending some quality time with him and the rest of my family.

In case you don't know, I have an older brother, who's 24, and a younger brother who's 19 and a sophmore at BU. This makes me the middle child, and the only girl. It's not a bad situation really; being the only girl has made me tough, and as a result I don't put up with any crap from the opposite gender. This turns out to be more helpful in the dating world than one might think.

Anyway, my brothers and I used to fight alot when we were kids (who didn't squabble with their siblings?) but now we're in the strange process of forging adult relationships. We actually have to make time to call each other and maintain contact; after all, we now all live in different states. Unfortunately, this distance is likely to increase with my impending graduation, and with both my brothers in the military. Who knows where we'll all be living in a few years? That's why brief moments when we're all together, such as this weekend, are important.

So on Saturday night my brothers and I met up with some of my cousins and mutual friends, and we went out to a Japanese Hibachi grill (I don't know if I spelled that right). The food was amazing, and it was great to catch up with everybody. After that was over we all went to a pub and had some beers, with my underage younger brother regulated to designated driver (hey, we've been there).

On Sunday my brothers and I went out for lunch with my cousins. I have three cousins that live in Rhode Island: A girl who is 25, another girl who is 23, and a boy who is 20. They all live in Providence; the oldest share an apartment, and the youngest is a sophmore at Brown. In typical family tradition, they are all brilliant, good-looking, musically talented, and they also know how to drink. Couldn't have it any other way.

So while we were having brunch, an old man at the table next to us passed out. Two of my cousins are trained EMTs, and they got up and started checking his pulse and breathing, and generally keeping an eye on until an ambulence showed up. The old man was fine (he had low blood pressure, so at least it wasn't a stroke or anything), and I was amazed at the swift actions of my cousins. I swear, everyone in my family is so accomplished.

I had a good time catching up with the family, and before I knew it the weekend was over and I had to head back to Fordham. There's a total lunar eclipse tonight, and I plan to lie out on the quad and watch it all go down. I am not ashamed of my nerdiness. Until next time....

p.s. I realize that there have been some issues with leaving comments... I adjusted the settings on the blog, so now hopefully everyone can comment away!