Ciao, South Jersey

We spent our last few days in South Jersey fitting in last-minute visits to friends and trying to find an apartment. One activity was far more successful than the other.

First, we visited our friend Danna, now living in the netherworld of Central Jersey, as she's started her postdoc at Princeton. Only weeks before Danna had - contracted? Acquired? Developed? - appendicitis, and I spent a goodly portion of our dinner pumping her for details about her illness and surgery.

I've had a well-developed fear that I'll get appendicitis and die for over a decade now. Indeed, I've often been known to say "I think I have appendicitis" at the first sign of gastro-intestinal discomfort. It's always been gas.

Anyway, Danna's medical science training and pragmatic attitude on life helped her to separate fact from fiction in the appendicitis debate. Here are her helpful clue for fellow hypocondriacs: Pain on one side of your body is a bad sign.

I think she means here in your midsection area, and obviously not if you've been like stabbed or something.

She was also full of great surgery details, including the fact that the pumped her midsection FULL OF AIR, and she looked like she was NINE MONTHS PREGNANT, and the air settles in all kinds of crazy places LIKE YOUR SHOULDER, and you expel this air in exactly the way you think you would.

Aside from the rogue pockets of air traveling my body willy-nilly, I'm totally ready to have my appendix out.

Then we stopped by to visit the Heines, a family of three rough-and-tumble boys and a younger sister. If I ever have boys, I'd love them to be like this: boy's boys. They like sports, and wrestling, and animals, and they seem to hate most girls. We had gigantic pillow fights and sumo-wrestler fights, and we spent what seemed like hours looking at books on snakes and lizards and other creepy-crawlies.

Ryan, tapped out as a Sumo


Sean and Brendan, getting some Sumo action.