Quite honestly, I can barely stand to watch this video anymore since it took me seven bajillion hours to make it and if I never hear the opening bars to Paul Simon's Graceland again it will be far too soon, but if you don't mind the fact that you're going to get the chorus stuck in your head for the next two weeks, here's something that captures pretty accurately the trip I took with my parents and sister last week to Memphis, Tennessee.

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My Christmas stocking contained both deodorant and concealer, which leads me to believe that Santa Claus is telling me to take a hint. Then again, my brother Tom received tooth-whitening products from no fewer than two separate family members, one of whom was me. (We don't only give each other personal hygiene items for Christmas, in case you were wondering. Nope, they work quite well for birthdays as well.)

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A couple of weeks ago, I received an email from my mother, the closing line of which was this: "You must ask Tom about his almost-romance with Pippa Middleton. He was doing so well with her and then he blew it!"

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For my dad's 60th birthday last week, I wanted to do something really fun. My dad and I talk a lot about the past---nostalgia runs in our blood, I think---and we both love to reminisce. Inspired by Jordan Ferney's Postcard Birthday Poster, I started batting around an idea: what if I could get everyone from my dad's past to contribute a memory they had of him? What if I had all those people send their memories to me, and then I put each one into an envelope---sixty total, of course---and had him open them, one by one, on his birthday?

That would be a lot of memories, right?

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First of all, thank you so much for all your well wishes and congratulations on my new gig; I read each of the comments with such a smile on my face because sometimes the Internet is just such a lovely cheering section of a place, isn't it? I love it when everyone's so nice to each other. Hey, you're excited about something? Hurrah, we're excited for you too! You're sad about something? That's okay, come here, we have tissues.

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I'm heading down to San Diego this weekend to hang out with one-third of my family: my dad and my sister Susie. It's an unusual combination, but luckily there's a new Househunters episode on HGTV every thirteen seconds.

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They flew from Gatwick into Las Vegas last night, after a three-day delay. My dad made the eleven-hour, 650-mile round trip journey to pick them up and bring them back to San Diego. Everyone go hug your dad right now! Ours has been excused from giving anyone a Christmas present for the next four hundred years.

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What's supposed to be happening right now is that my dad's supposed to be on his way back from LAX with my brother and sister in tow, hearing all about the movies they watched on the 11-hour flight from London and the woman in 36B who got drunk and wouldn't stop snoring. I'm supposed to be in the front seat, tagging along for the company, and my mother's supposed to be back at home with a roaring fire in the fireplace, putting the finishing touches on her Hurrah, We Are Reunited!

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Hey guess what, I still exist. Do I have an excuse for my pitiful posting record over the last week? I do not. I guess we'll just say that I was busy being young and alive and leave it at that, shall we? Young and alive!

Actually, I have been doing several things:

1. Surprising my mother

There's nothing better than pulling off a good surprise. Last weekend, to celebrate a birthday my mother would probably rather not admit to having, my dad, my brother Tom, and I pulled off perhaps the best one ever.

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This is my parents and today is their 35th wedding anniversary.

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