Christmas Eve, it turns out, is a good day to fly cross country. The folks taking their babies and toddler's to grandma's are already there. Just don't fly through Chicago. On our second leg (we connected in Denver), the plane was three-quarters empty and B and I each napped in our own row.

My mother, my sister, and my brother Peter (home for a month from the Philippines and planning his engagement to Sara, not to be confused with Arthur's girlfriend Sara) met us at the apartment of Kim a friend of my mother's, where B and I will be staying, as I am allergic to my parents' cats and therefore can't stay at their apartment on 92nd.