Le week-end

So I drove to my brother's place in North Carolina over the weekend; my brother had possibly been going into surgery -- or something -- for a narrow esophagus, and my parents were there, with the dog. So, in order to demonstrate solidarity with my brother, and in order to see the dog, I packed some stuff in my suitcase and hoofed it to Durham after work on Friday. It's only a three hour trip, and my parents offered to pay for my gas.

It turned out that all the doctors did was dope him up and shove a camera down his throat. They found some scarring on his throat that was somehow allergy-related -- don't ask me, my mother was saying this stuff like it makes sense, because she herself is a nurse -- but evidently nothing really required intervention. But that was on Friday, so when I first saw him that night, he was hungover from the medication. Therefore, not much fun.

On Saturday, we went on a tour of local organic farms, because my brother is a hippie who went to University of Michigan and is all environmental and stuff. I wasn't particularly thrilled about the farms, but it ended up being more fun than I expected. One of the farms, Celebrity Dairy, had the cutest freakin' goats imaginable. One of the little (goat-)kids started chewing on my jeans, which, while it should have been annoying, was way to cute to be annoying. I took eleventy-thousand pictures of those goatlings -- so many, in fact, that I actually wore out the batteries in the camera. Unfortunately, the camera wasn't even mine, it was my parents, so I can't even share those with you! Just trust me on this: baby goats are adorable. Also, I have become fascinated by goat eyes, with their horizontal pupil. That's just cool! Plus, my parents bought me some of the goat cheese they had for sale, which is absolutely delicious.

We also went to a vineyard and winery, Horizon Cellars Winery, on the tour, and took part in a wine tasting. I'm not a big fan of wine, but I'm told the wine wasn't half bad, and my dad ended up buying a case of it. They even bought me a bottle of Chardonnay, because I said I liked that best. Well, it was the least wine-like.

Yesterday my brother took us to his place of employment, and then out to one of the sites he works on. It was an abandoned farmhouse, with some evidence of squatters living there, and a vulture living in the attic. I probably have ticks living on me now, giving me lyme disease, and it's all my brother's fault! We take sibling our rivalry seriously. Then, largely thanks to my incessant needling, the four of us went to see Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Which, seriously, was hilarious, and I think I may be in love with Jason Segel now. We all liked it a lot, and I think I laughed the hardest in the theater. I seriously had tears in my eyes as I was walking out of the theater, just from laughing so hard.

After that, we went to a sushi place to have the best sushi and the worst service I've had in a long, long time. Seriously, a party of ten folks was seated after us, and they had eaten and left by the time we got our dinner. It was ridiculous. And afterwards, with a belly full of raw salmon, I drove home. I had a lot of fun this weekend, even if I was just hanging around my family.