Times like these

I've been scrambling like heck to finish posting our vacation photos from our Scandinavia-Russia tour last April, and yesterday as I was sifting through shots from our second day in Moscow, I came across this cute pic:


I now officially miss my brother.

Don't worry, I'm not about to turn this blog entry into a gushing geyser of sap. It's just that the past few days have been a veritable roller coaster of emotions, and it's nice to find relief in a moment of sibling silliness captured on camera. Perhaps it's true that as we grow older, the simple joys in life become a great luxury: late-night marathon phone conversations with my best friends, falling asleep in the middle of reading a good book, pizza/DVD session with my sister, meeting up with my students, a hug right when I needed it most. These brief happy interludes kept me strapped safely in my seat as my life loop-de-looped during the past week. And now I'm looking forward to getting away for a while, when we go visit Bens in Beijing in August. I could use the breather. And more silly sibling pix.

In the meantime, this Foo Fighters song keeps running through my gradually-clearing-up head:

It's times like these you learn to live again
It's times like these you give and give again
It's times like these you learn to love again
It's times like these time and time again

Here's to better times ahead.