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Ahhh, home sweet home, baby. As lovely as it is to be away, especially in a place as insanely gorgeous and idyllic as the Hamptons, it is great to be settled at home, too. Here I am, unpacked (yes, I am unpacked, I who loathes major-buzzkill-downer-vacation-is-over-unpacking, I just bit the bullet and did the dirty deed and now I am sooo chill, yeah), sipping an ice-cold Pilsner Urquell, snacking on afreshly-picked tomato (from my pots on the deck, sliced, with a sprinkle of salt), downloading photos, and catching up on my email and (obv) blogging. I’m about to whip up a little pastasomethin-somethin, I think angel hair and (more) tomatoes and perhaps a touch of cream. Arugulasalad with shaved Parm because the arugula looks shockingly decent after a week in the cooler. Basically, total comfort food, quite restorative at the end of a long day of travel. And even though it’s only from the east coast, a long day it is – Hampton Jitney to Flushing Queens to cab to LaGuardia to long hang at the airport to flight to MSP to waiting for luggage to no-AC-cab to our house… That’s eight-plus hours of travel-time, ack, and I’m ready for a little (healthy) comfort food. Yeah! Vacation is nice, but home is good too.

So, the last couple of days of our trip, the sun (sort of) shone. Great beach day on Friday, with huge waves, actually kind of scary-huge. And very wet – just when we thought we had skated past high tide, oh no, we got totally soaked, as did all of our belongings…books, umbrellas, towels, chairs, butts-in-chairs. Irritating but minor. John, his bro Tom, and their friend Jamie Frankfurt did some swimming (there was no way I was going into waves that big, Kiawah this was not, ha) and Nathan did some wading while I lazed (and dried my butt) on the beach finishing A Thousand Splendid Suns, which I loved, loved, loved.

Yesterday (Saturday) afternoon a thick fog rolled in (see above, I happened to catch the back yard just as it oozed over the pool), so after a lovely lunch at Atlantic Golf Club, and while Tom and Valerie graciously took the kids to the beach, John and I roamed downtown EH, browsing Book Hampton, Citarella, and watching Danny Glover parade by in an anti-Iraq-War protest.

When everyone returned home, and showered off their sand, we launched into preparations for our last dinner – beef tenderloin on the grill and more sweet corn. Let me pause here for a moment to explain the Annual Levy Sweet Corn Spectacle. Let’s see, there were nine of us for dinner last night – John, Nathan, & moi; John’s parents Dot & John; John’s bro Tom, his wife Valerie, & their two kids. I think we shucked and boiled 28 ears of corn and all – yes, all – were consumed. No, we didn’t each eat three ears of corn, nothing that rational or simple. Valerie and I were in for one each. The kids maybe had two each, max. Dot, two, perhaps three, certainly no more. That leaves, if my math is correct, more than five ears each for the three Levy men. Yep. Buttered and salted and inhaled, type-writer style – ding! – in an unusual sweet-corn-consuming ritual, it really has to be witnessed to be believed. The Levy men are famous for it, deservedly so.

And then, just like that, it was all over. After a dark chat on the front porch, it was time to pack, and sleep in our cozy (gorgeous, thank you, Dot) beds, and make our long way home. Summer 2007 is drawing to a close, my friends, I know you all feel it too. Sigh. It’s been a great one, hasn’t it?