Today I got an email from someone saying that a relative of mine had been caught with a BB gun in Lawrence and then subsequently charged with illegal posession of a gun or something like that. Bad move, evidently - but his father's reaction was a bit over the top. He permanently kicked his kid out of the house.

Now - this dad is not exactly what we would call an upstanding citizen. He has been arrested before (as a teenager) and has spent a few nights in jail due to DWI. Now his son shames him a bit - the case appeared in the local press with no names - and he gets kicked out of the house? To me this sounds completely absurd.

After two sunny weeks in Brazil, the missus and I landed in New York last Sunday, exhausted from a thirteen-hour trip (not counting the two-hour wait for a connection in Rio) that brought is back to a fifty-degree, rainy New York City.

The weather has since changed, and as I look out of my Staten Island apartment, is a beautiful day with temperatures around 84 degrees. Great as we approach Memorial Day, a national holiday in which we remember those fallen in the many wars this country has fought in throughout its history.

After resting from the flight, we set to get back to our daily routines - after all, the bills are not going to pay for themselves, and there is work to be done. Last Tuesday, I attended an event for the launch of Central Park Summerstage – the two-month long series of concerts to which I eagerly look forward to every year. On Wednesday, there was a reception for an collective art exhibit of Lower East Side artists (will be writing about it for the NY Press) and then on Thursday (the day I write this) there is a local event here on Staten Island.

In the meantime, I also did a bunch of interviews – including The Indigo Girls and Rio Gringa (with whom you are probably familiar with by now) that have kept me quite busy – right now, I am working myself through the pile of CDs that arrived in the mail while I was away (you can imagine the dirty looks I got at the Post Office when I went there to pick them up).

Soon enough things should be settling down to normality.

It was great to be away for those two weeks, but at the same time it's good to be home. I sort of got used to living in New York ,walking around with my MP3 player (it's not an iPod) without fears of having it yanked away from me – Rio and Fortaleza are wonderful cities with warm people, but to have to be constantly looking over your shoulder it a bit of a hassle. But of course there are the amenities – the 2-real caipirinhas by the sidewalk, the sea breeze in your face, the friendliness of the Cariocas and Cearenses – this is something I always look forward to.

Back to work, now... thanks for reading.