The doc came back with a solid, but unwanted answer: my father-in-law has pneumonia. It's in his lower left lobe of his lung, which if I'm not terribly mistaken was the same place I had it many years ago (more than 10 so I've stopped counting; I refuse to accept I'm getting that old already). On doctor's orders he is supposed to be down for 10-14 days; this translated into two low-key days, which suited me just fine; this also meant we were not to go to the coast, which had the rest of the family a little bummed. We had also entertained the idea of inviting some of Holly's old school chums over for a BBQ, but since the friends in question all had little kids (one under a year old) we figured exposure to pneumonia wouldn't be good social form.

Not all was lost. As I said, I was perfectly happy to be low-key, but as it turned out it wasn't low-key enough for me. One of the things I love to do on a vacation is read, and lately I've been wanting to do more writing (of a fiction nature). Up until this point in the vacation there hadn't been any free-time available to do either (unless I cheated on sleep and I wasn't about to do that with pneumonia so close by). For some reason I didn't get much reading nor much writing done, I did however take naps, a thing I almost never do. There might be a good reason I took naps and it might have something to do with me still feeling a bit queazy. So I spent two days resting doing a little reading and a little writing and doing some tech support on my mother-in-law's iBook.

I could go on at length about how important evenings are to me, and perhaps I will at some later date (and probably over at Chilling Words). No matter how good a day starts if it doesn't finish good it can't remain a good day in my memory. The two days we spent with my in-laws finished great. Each night we watched a movie together and had a good time. Actually, the first night, the night after driving, I made them a chocolate hot-milk sponge cake which everyone enjoyed (maybe a little too much).

While we may not have done as much as everyone planned, we did get to spend time with family in this second stage of our vacation, and that was important. Apart from the pneumonia taking my father-in-law out of commission nothing terrible happened. Despite it, we still managed to have a good time. Even the 10 hour drive home was enjoyable, but that was largely due to the quality of the audiobook we enjoyed.