Somehow,  I managed to spend about three weeks at home between Memorial Day and Labor Day. When I look at any one of the reasons I was away, it makes sense in a vacuum. Taken as a whole, I am promising myself that I’m not going to repeat that next year.

But as I said, each individual trip was important, either in some professional or personal sense, and I can’t point to any one and say “Really should have passed on that.” In particular, two things stand out:

1. Going to Hawaii with Lisa and the boys, and David’s S.O. Mary Macaluso. We had a wonderful time together and the boys and I busked out on the patio of a coffee place right next to the ocean in Kona. It was glorious.
2. Playing music for the boys’ cousin Sarah Gancher at her wedding. And then having her sit in with us on fiddle:

But I’m glad to be home, and modulo a three-day NYC trip in October, I’m not getting on an airplane until Thanksgiving. Lisa and I had dinner at Mamacita’s Mexican restaurant in downtown Asheville this evening, then she drove to choir practice and I walked home, inhaling the deepening twilight over Mt. Pisgah. There may be better places to live, but not for me.