I'm back. It's good to be home. I always reach a point in Oxford where I get tired of the usual stuff and look forward to going home. It's a nice change of pace.

I realized that I have a very love/hate relationship with travel. There are some things about it that I love, and there are some things that I hate, but I don't think the result is completely balanced. It all depends on the trip. Some bullets:

Things I love about travel

• I love train stations and airports. (There are some minor exceptions, but I definitely fall in the "love" category for this.) I feel like train stations are kind of a step back in time - they're very old-fashioned, but they get the job done. I also think airports are a good way to get a taste-test of a particular culture. You want to know what a city/state/country is known for? Look in its airport gift shops and restaurants. I honestly don't mind having long stopovers in airports because you can look around, shop, eat, go on the Internet and people-watch.
• I love that travel has advanced to the point where you can be in three countries in one day. (I know this is not a big deal for Europeans, but in the US it's not so easy.) Yesterday I started my day in the UK, spent about 4 hours in Canada and ended in the US. In many ways it doesn't feel that different (they all speak English) but there are enough subtle differences to make it cool.
• Side note: I think I can finally hear the difference between Canadian and American accents. I mean, this is obvious when the person is a native French speaker, but primarily English-speaking Canadians do sound a bit different from Americans.
• I love going through customs when it's not busy. It kind of feels like I'm on some secret government mission. And getting the stamp in the passport is always cool.
• Side note: It's kind of weird how if you're traveling to the US from Europe, etc. and you have a connection in Canada, you go through US customs in Canada - not Canadian customs. It actually makes things kind of easy, because you go to collect your luggage from a special area only for people connecting to the US.
• I love having three different currencies in my wallet - except when I'm trying to find change. Once I had to lend my sister some money and told her she could take it from my wallet, and it drove her crazy to have to sort through the "weird octagon-shaped coins" to get what she wanted!
• I love it that I am now at a point where I am something of a plane/airport "expert," and I can explain to people where something is or which form you need or why people sitting next to each other may not be boarded at the same time (some airlines board windows and middles first, then aisle).
• I love how technology has advanced to a point where you can call anywhere in the world on your cell phone to let people know that your plane will be late, or how easily you can track your flight or someone else's using the phone, email or airline website.
• I love getting to where I need to go. This doesn't involve the traveling part, but the reaching the destination part.

Things I hate about travel

• I hate hate hate the actual traveling part. I get motion sickness very easily and am very claustrophobic, so eight hours on an airplane or train is not fun for me. Even worse are the little puddlejumpers that go from New York/Philadelphia/Toronto to Connecticut - you really have no room.
• I hate packing. I'm terrible at it. I always bring too much stuff. I also can't tell you how many times I've broken suitcases - sometimes my fault, sometimes the airline's fault.
• I hate having screaming kids on a flight. I know it's not always the kids' fault or the parents' fault, but there are some times when the kid is just being a brat and I don't know what to say/do because I'm stuck in the vehicle with the kid and parent for the next 7+ hours.
• I hate how expensive the whole deal is. Even if you save money on a really cheap flight, you make up for it by having to travel out of your way to the cheaper airport, buying expensive food, and dealing with all kinds of expenses that don't come in the ticket cost (like checked-baggage charges).
• I hate how inefficient the whole deal is. I especially hate it when the line to check in is massive and you see a group of flight attendants chatting rather than checking people in. Also, getting on and off a plane is just ridiculous. I'm not sure how it could be made any better, but it's annoying.

Tonight I received a delightful birthday surprise:

These are from my lovely friends Justin and Darcy. As they knew I was going home for my birthday, they wanted me to have these early so I could enjoy them :)

The photos don't do them justice. It is a gorgeous bouquet. And it's sitting next to my desk, so I can enjoy it while I write. Yay!

I can forgive MAC for Dame Edna because of this.

A far better sight when walking down the street each day! :)

So on Ugly Betty, the Meade Company is suffering because Connor (their CFO) took all their money. Daniel and Wilhelmina are now selling all their stuff and paying for things out of pocket to keep the company afloat.

Couldn't this be somewhat easily solved by selling off some of Meade's titles? Alternatively, couldn't Betty's filthy rich boyfriend Matt buy up some part of the company? On that same note, if Matt is filthy rich, why doesn't he buy a magazine company instead of trying to YETI his way to the top?

I've been having a lot of really weird dreams lately. I know that they say that dreams come from stuff you've been thinking about before you go to sleep, but I've never had them be such a blatantly obvious combination of things I've been thinking about before.

For example, I'm helping my mom do invitations for my grandfather's 90th birthday party. My grandfather had 12 siblings (he and his youngest sister are the only ones left), so my mom has a lot of cousins. We've spent a lot of time lately talking about which cousins belong to which siblings. One night I had a very weird dream in which they all kept showing up. It was present day and I knew quite well that these people were no longer alive, but they were there.

I had another dream that involved the Plaza Mayor in Madrid, an evacuation, my brother, a kid in a football uniform and someone hiding in a washing machine. And yes, I was thinking of or saw pictures of all these things earlier that day.

My mom thinks it's stress as these dreams all had very stressful undertones to them. But I just found it SO weird that as soon as I woke up from these dreams, I knew exactly why that combination of things took place in the dream.

I forgot to tell y'all a funny story yesterday.

My sister Maggie, who is half my age, heard some New Kids on the Block songs for the first time recently. She asked me about them, and I told her how they were popular when I was a bit younger than her (maybe 11 or 12). I don't know if she heard the old school stuff or their comeback stuff, but she really liked them.

She was out with my mom this weekend to see the new Jonas Brothers' 3D Concert Movie and she started asking my mom about concerts Kelly (my other sister) and I went to when we were her age. My mom told her about Boyz II Men, which was our first concert, and that reminded Maggie about New Kids on the Block. (I think the "Boyz" part made her think of the "Kids.") She couldn't remember their name and her description wasn't triggering anything for my mom, so she called me.

I finally figured out what she was talking about, and when she asked my mom if she knew about NKOTB, she said yes. And after further investigation, I knew why my mom couldn't figure it out from Maggie's description: Maggie thought the New Kids on the Block were a band from the fifties.

Kids do indeed say the darnedest things. :)

It's a shame that Ugly Betty didn't come out sooner. It might've convinced me to do a doctorate in Communication, as it would have made an awesome dissertation topic. It has everything a media critic could want: representation of men, women, minorities (especially Latinos), homosexuality, consumerism, beauty. If I were crazy rich and had time to spare, I'd totally consider it.

These are the kinds of crazy thoughts that one gets while writing a dissertation chapter on a book that is so dull that critics debate not only when it was written, but also how knowing when it was written can tell us why it's such a dull book. I kid you not.

I *so* heart the Persiles, if you haven't guessed already. ;)