So getting to DC was hell. I show up for my 5 p.m. flight, and they tell me that my flight was changed to 4.30 -- except no one informed me. I was so irritated. I mean, if you change my flight, at least EMAIL me and let me know. You sent the confirmation to me, so I KNOW you have my email address... Then, I called the 800 WE CARE number to express my displeasure with Continental, and the wait was 45 minutes. I wasindignant, but not that indignant. I tried to call today again, and it was still 45 minutes. Again, I'm not that indignant. And I'm even less indignant than I was on Thursday. (You know, this was the same problem I had when they almost arrested me in Paris last summer; by the time I got home, I wasn't indignant anymore.)

It was great spending the weekend with my cousin. He's the one who was in Afghanistan and I met some of his friends from the war (you all remember we are at war in Afghanistan, right?) It was weird because they know a side to him that I just don't know. I mean, they spent 24/7 together for over a year. They went through hell together. It's not unexpected, I just mean, there is this entire life that the family doesn't know about (and he won't tell us about.)

Oh, this was a funny story. The one guy says to me: "the first time I heard of your existence we were in a tower on like day 30 and he told me about his lawyer cousin who carried a lunch box purse." I guess when you spent 24/7 with people in those circumstances: (1) incredible bonds form; and (2) you talk about the most random things.

Then I got to se my other cousin, who was coming back from her spring break in Honouras. She flew into DC around 11 pm., and was driving back home the next morning around 9.30 am. So she came out with us that night, and crashed with us and my cousin drove her back in the morning. It was a regular reunion (and trust me, we were mocking the family who weren't there...It's what we do...)

I totally wanted to adopt a squirrel. There was this squirrel by my cousin's apartment. And he begged. Literally, whenever you walked out on the balcony, he ran from somewhere and ran to right underneaththe balcony and stood on its hind legs, this front to int he air. Totally begging. It was cute. (Incidentally, he really liked chips. Like Tostita ones. And if you threw him two of them, he'd take one, go bury, and grab the other and eat it. Seriously, I adored him.

I landed a little after 8 last night. I had a 10 pm soccer game. I didn't make it. If my game had been a 9, I would have gone, but 10 was so late. I was exhausted.

So when I was in DC, my cousin gave me this book that he said I had to read, Losing Julia, by Jonathan Hull. It's both a love story and a war novel, and it's incredibly powerful. The narrator is experiencing the war, then the next paragraph is an 81-year-old talking about regret, the next paragraph 10 years after the war ended. The most interesting part is that sometimes, the narrator isn't even sure when or what it is, the mark of an 81-year-old confused man waking from nightmares that were real, and not sure if he's wake. The prose is powerful, and beautiful. ("Old age is best spent in the editor's booth, whittling a life down to its greatest hits, which are played over and over again until the tape finally snaps.") I read it within 24 hours, I couldn't put it down.