Suddenly, silence

It's rather unnerving to suddenly have one's house and day to oneself after a week of entertaining guests. Oddly enough, I can't say I particularly like it.

Daniel and his family are a wonderful bunch, and I say that not because they brought me peanut butter, bagels, books and DVDs (though I won't pretend that doesn't have something to do with it).

I find it inordinately cool that they would travel a quarter of the way around the world to see us (Paris might have exerted a certain pull, I understand, but we'll not dwell on that). All four of them are so fun to be around and such through-and-through good people it's impossible, on their departure, to be grateful that I have my livingroom back. That of course holds true for Zack, Jon and all our other recent guests as well, but none of them have quite the same impact as a full-on family of four. I can't imagine any combination of me and my sisters Daniel's daughters' age that wouldn't have been unbearably obnoxious after a week of travel and its numberous discomforts - heck, even Amynah and I get a little tetchy after too long on the road. These guys remained unfailingly pleasant, humouring my numerous "you just gotta see this" moments even when lunch-time was long past and we'd driven two hours to see the World's Biggest Cuckoo Clock in Germany and then failed to actually see said clock (that said, we saw some pretty freakin' big cuckoo clocks).

Anyway, I'm sad to see them go, even if I'm going to have to spend the next week washing invisible Guacamole out of my clothes (Guacamole Girl was in full flight yesterday. Adopting the identity of Super Villain "Wet Blanket Man" had no efffect).

In any case, I hope they had as good a time as we did. Better yet if the tales of wonder they share inspire other people to come here as well.

Now I must get to work on the reading material Daniel brought me for the article I'm doing for the News. Now that is a dedicated editor.