I don't know, but put your head between your legs, and get ready to kiss your arse goodbye, just in case, deb.

Narrator, there was a really funny two part piece on the Red Sox, Yankees, and well...Lego-vision. Part 1, Part 2.

Oooh! Lilty, part two is up! See up there.

I was just thinking about how amazing it was that Nilly was able to make it to so many places in one trip. The fact that she made it to DC for, what? 36 hours? Just makes me so damn happy. Total gift.

My pictures will be ready Sunday. Also makes me happy.

I have peanut butter cup ice cream. Yup. Happy.

ETA: I have no position on baseball teams.

I was just thinking about how amazing it was that Nilly was able to make it to so many places in one trip.

Jen, isn't it amazing? I still think NoiseDesign is a champion for making the 400 mile drive in each direction 24 hours apart, to show her the centre of California. And I was extremely privileged to be able to host her, and have so many people together under my roof. Many thanks to all concerned, but most of all to Nilly herself, for providing the impetus for me to stuff the stupid disease into a closet for a week and show off the way I used to. I'd not willingly have missed a minute of it.

This is a ridiculously huge country. There's a lot she could see on future visits: New England when the sap's running and the leaves are really turning, a ride around Minneapolis (I can hear her now, her reaction to being driven around the Lake of the Isles and seeing the entire amusement park, with rides, inside the Mall of America, just brings her right back), finding someone from Metairie to make her purely kosher pralines, riding around on the El in Chicago, the ancient stones at Alamogordo, the Grand Canyon....

I have no position on baseball teams, either, but I'm in favor of peanut butter cup ice cream.

And I'm with Deb on smaller and more eclectic cities. I'll share a secret. I've had a bit of a phobia about cities since a sudden and completely unexpected attack of something similar to claustrophobia in Philly.

But I loved San Francisco. I couldn't get enough of the architecture, the juxtaposition of styles. Make of that what you will.

This is a ridiculously huge country. There's a lot she could see on future visits:

Snow.

I ended up pretty surprised with myself when I fell in love with so much of Los Angeles. I may be from S. California (San Diego) but I really expected to tolerate living in LA at best, and this city really has become my adopted home in a way I never would have expected.

I don't really know what NY in the sixties was like. I know the NY I grew up in. It's impossible for me to walk down a street in NY, except maybe some parts of midtown, without seeing the history. The summer I worked at my dad's office, one of my favorite places to sit and eat lunch was a bench in City Hall Park from which I could see both a church where George Washington once worshipped and the WTC. If I turned very slightly, I could see the Chrysler Building. (Chrysler? Is that how that's spelled? Something doesn't look right.)

I love how I can wander around the city and see all the layers of history. Just around Washington Square Park, I can point out trees and streets and buildings and clearings that reflect the whole history of the city. I love finding the weird little random remnants of older periods within the modern city. I love sitting on the exposed granite in Central Park and realizing that this stone, which seems so wild and unplanned and timeless, is the same stone that allows the hundred-story skyscrapers to stand. I love wandering down Broadway, starting up in Morningside Heights and getting down to the bottom of Manhattan (OK, it's a kind of long "wander," and I've only actually done the whole thing once, and then slept for a really long time) and seeing just how different all the neighborhoods are. Basically, I just love New York.

It's come to my attention that I have been a dick in taking some undeserved accolades and also in not sending out the anonymous accounting by now.

I have to send you all individual emails with the accounting and your ID number, and I've been inexcusably lazy in doing so. Thus far, I've only sent it to a small handful of people, and will get through it ASAP.

Also, 58 Buffistas contributed to this gift (I feel like it was a personal gift to me! Though I know that's not the way it really is. Having Nilly spend time with me was a gift, I feel). Several more Buffistas took time off from work to host Nilly and others, and to organize dinners and parties, and I'm sure they also felt like it was a gift and not a sacrifice.

What I mean to say is, of course anyone could have taken the donations and laid a bit of groundwork. I'm certainly not special in this regard, and apologize if I've hurt anyone's feelings by appearing to take far too much credit.

And I'm with Deb on smaller and more eclectic cities.

The Titan arums in the UW-Madison greenhouse. We gots 3 or 4 of the stinky buggers. Kettle Moraine State Park for its glacial geography. Devil's Lake and Wisconsin Dells (ride the ducks!) And, it's a 5 hour drive to Minneapolis. Her next visit should be all in the center. Start at the headwaters of the Mississippi and follow it all the way down. Galena, IL (home town of U.S. Grant), Hannibal, MO (home of Samuel Clemons) and on down. Maybe stop in some bigger cities like St. Louis and Memphis, ending in NOLA.

Heh. I still want to know what happens if the Cubs play the Sox in the series. Does the sun implode, or something?

Yes, yes it will. Unless, of course, the Supreme Court steps in and declares that the Texas Rangers won the Series.