We are back from Epic Sibling Wedding Trip during the month of October #1. This trip took us to the east coast, NYC and various points in Connecticut, where Autumn has not really begun, despite all the PR materials claiming such.

We flew into JFK which is normally an ugly nightmare. No longer, at least if you are flying with American Airlines. Brace yourselves. The terminal they have been building for 20 years is COMPLETED AND OPEN. It is a modern marvel, the size of Heathrow with clean bathrooms like O'Hare. It is Kubrickesque, with entire white rooms containing nothing but giant silver columns. There are helpful native English speaking workers in red vests to point you in the right direction. You then take a spiffy monorail to the new Howard Beach Subway station to take the A Train into the city.

We hung for few days in the Boerum Hill nabe of Brooklyn with good pals, Charla and Mike. The night of our arrival was Char's actual birthday, and Mike made a Argentinian feast of steak and potatoes. Much wine was drunk and homemade birthday cake eaten. A lovely dinner party on a stolen Tuesday night.

The weather for our entire trip was either warm, humid and threatening to rain, or humid and raining, with both the warm and cold varieties. The strangely New England tradition of not being able to give directions and just having you "follow me back to the highway" was fully in place all week. My Uncle Al lead us past not one, but two, perfectly good entrances to 84 east, in broad daylight, because there was "a difficult curve in the road" on that section of I-84.

The wedding itself was at a beautiful perennial garden in Stonington, CT called Kentford Farm. Both bride and groom, my sister Carole and Scott, were deliriously happy and lovely all weekend, despite the weather. They had been married earlier in the year in a little civil ceremony, so the pressure was off.

Back in Southington, I got to hang out with my old friend, Cheryl Hilton, gossiping until way into the night, and on another evening going out for a hilarious dinner with Lisa (Kochol) Carroll and her little family. Because of the weather, Steve and I were unable to go to the Apple Harvest Festival or Lake Compounce, both local traditions. Steve didn't care about the Apple Harvest, but was really bummed to not go to the oldest amusement park in the US, and ride the wooden Wildcat Roller Coaster.

The trip home was long but uneventful until we got to Burbank, where it was revealed that they lost Steve's suitcase, but not mine. They delivered it the next day.