…A week I’ve taken off as part of my avail­able vaca­tion days. There’s some­thing sat­is­fy­ing about being paid to have fun. We haven’t seen each other in over half a year, so the five days will be cal­cu­lated and pre­cise, squeez­ing in the things that we’ve been mean­ing to do together in every avail­able second.

On his way over, John was also able to pick up a small care pack­age from my par­ents, com­plete with new dress shirts, loose leaf tea, home­made banana bread, gin­seng (LOTS of gin­seng that I can now add to chicken soup), and an assort­ment of books that I’ve been mean­ing to bring.