Spring was punctuated by two jarring events: a move into a house that needed extensive work to be habitable, and a trip across the country to visit LA and teach at a camp in Texas.

I had been feeling what I thought was homesickness for a few months, so I was thrilled to fly back to LA, play for my cousin Natalie’s wedding, and visit a few of the haunts that had been calling my name. The first place we went was Birds (pictured above), a restaurant I love so much that I lived in 5 apartments within a few blocks of it, with walking distance to it a major criterion. We were set to hit Hollywood Billiards afterward, but discovered it abandoned and the corner it had dominated, decimated. It made me sadder than it should have.

The wedding was wonderful, the streets were a reassuring grid, and the sushi remains why I bitch and moan about how terrible the fish is here in DC. It really is not even a close call, and in DC, places charge you more and act like they hate you unless you have one of those White House credentials dangling on a lanyard.

But LA is no longer home. I’m still looking for a place to love, for it to love me back.

Still, it’s nice to know that the soju mojitos at Hugo’s and the observation area at Van Nuys will be there for me.

Then it was on to Lone Star SCOR!, which was an incredibly rewarding experience. A proper academic, I was instantly able to run down the list of inadequacies delivered in my lectures, but managed to stay positive: were it possible to address every aspect of a complex topic in a single go, you wouldn’t need a workshop in the first place.

I got back to DC and busied myself during the college-less, hockey-less, virtually student-less months leading up to summer with a sense of foreboding.

I was right. By the time summer was in full swing, I would lose my beloved “cello mama” and darling cat to cancer, which has run like a thorned vine through the last 30 years, taking with it more than a few pieces of my heart.