Yesterday my parents, J, Nora and I piled into the car and made our way to the Baltimore Aquarium, which was one of my favorite places when I was little. We walked through the freezing cold along the harbor, bought our tickets and spent a couple hours among the various species of fish and plant and the crowds of other children and parents and grandparents who’d had the same idea.

There was something incredibly heartwarming about watching my daughter make her way through the same paths past huge shark-filled tanks I’d once walked, and pointing excitedly at bright, darting, exotic fish.

But perhaps even better was the hilarity of driving there and back, packed tightly in the front and back seats, yelling at my father for pumping the gas pedal in a motion sickness-inducing manner and checking his Blackberry when we were sitting at a red light (”I was stopped it’s ok to do it when you’re STOPPED!”). Funny, busy, insane, hot. But the mundane details of getting there just as good as the actual destination.