Vacation Blog, Day 5:

Back home, and man am I ever glad. I actually had a good time, except I can’t sleep except in my own bed or a motel bed. That’s why trips to the in-laws’ tend to get limited to a maximum of 3 nights, because by the time I get home – like now – I’m wrecked.

Visiting the old home town tends to do that to me, too, whichever old home town it is. The headline to the left was the big breaking news in my most recent old hometown’s newspaper the day I took a stroll down the main drag. Hard to believe I left all that for Christmas Island, but there you have it. Love does strange things to a man, even a bastard.

Speaking of love… The wedding we were there for went off without a hitch, by which I mean no one actually physically perished. There were the usual eleventh-hour stress-related internecine dramas and wounded feelings; we set out for the chapel with only the vaguest directions to another Southern California town, nobody was answering their cell phones and we only had two bars left on ours anyhow and we were running late; I was the official videographer and my camera battery died about half-way through the service; oh yeah, and I had a case of scorching indigestion all day long.

In spite of which all that (I managed to plug the video camera in juuust before the battery died and I destroyed the memories of their special day forever), it really was a beautiful, fun ceremony. On a hilltop, overlooking the sea — best yet, I judge the groom a keeper. Start to finish, as weddings go, it was a very satisfactory experience. And The Man Cub grabbed the first dance with the bride at the reception!

That was yesterday. Today was all travel, travel, travel, unpack, nap, try to get back into my own skin, no matter how ill-fitting and unseemly it is. Even now, all I can think about is how comfortable my own bed feels… and I am still on vacation…