Notes from Lexington, MA

I'm back in Mass, y'all. I returned to the east coast on Wednesday night. Pretty uneventful travelling, which was just fine for me. Yesterday, I spent most of the day in the hospital, waiting for my sister to get out of surgery. She had a bike accident last week and broke her collarbone. That's the "clavicle" to you, Neil. God, I hate you!!!!!.............can we still go bowling?

Anyway, yeah fell off her bike while biking home from her company's Christmas party. She's a bike messenger in Philadelphia, and the company had the party at a bar, free drinks for all. You wouldn't think that biking after drinking would be dangerous, but then again, you would. It's surprising we don't hear more "Don't drink and bike" ads. So yeah, she doesn't remember falling off, since she got knocked out, and apparently someone found her and called 911 and even put her bike in the ambulance with her. But Kate has no idea who it was. Somewhere out there is one wicked awesome person.

Anyway, she was in surgery and me and my mom stayed there most of the day. It's amazing how much coffee you can drink if there's very little else to do. By the end, I was ready to go in there and perform the surgery myself. I mean, how hard could repairing a fractured clavicle be, anyway? Luckily, at that point we were told we could go up to see her in her room. I was fine in the waiting room, but for some reason I just get kind of weirded out in hospitals. I sort of started feeling lightheaded, but I was ok. After a while, we left and got Chinese food and watched "Napoleon Dynamite". I have now officially introduced my parents to it. I have done my good deed for the day.

And today is Christmas eve. And I wrapped my presents and put them under the tree. You know, when you put them all together like that, they really don't seem very significant, like they don't properly symbolize the blood, sweat, and tears that went into thinking of and getting them. But that's not really the reason for the season is it? No, no it's not. And before I get too sappy, I'll stop.