*Theme music plays*

I'm back in the States! It was a bit of a wild ride home, but I'm finally here. We landed in NY on the 7th after a 4 hour delay involving a lot of circling and sitting in some place called Bradley, CT. But this was really a great opportunity for me to develop my Tetris skills with the in-flight video games option. They a couple days in New Haven, CT to visit a friend and learn about the fast-paced, action-packed dice game called Farkle. We then headed back to NY only to realize we had stored our luggage at JFK but were flying out of LaGuardia. Maybe I said a lot of bad words. I can't remember.

Thus, we missed our flight, actually, we missed gate closing by about 15 minutes and had to stay in NY another night. But we luuuuuuucked out the next day when we flew standby all the way home the next day. Plus, I got to meet this sweet kid who was very interested in comparing the extendable handle of my carry-on with his mother's. I think he found hers more impressive because it had 8 sections whereas mine only had 4. Or 4 and 2, depending on if he was counting with two hands or one. Either way, he conducted several studies.

So, I've just been back in the valley, relaxing and washing clothes, etc. I cancelled my trip to Portland because I'm quite out of money. Partially due to the fact that Verizon took it all in order to set me up as a "new user". At any rate, it should arrive by mail Tuesday-ish and I'll let you know when I have a new phone number. Woot!