It is December 1st and it is well over 60 degrees here in New York. We have the windows wide open and I am wearing a t-shirt. Hooray for global warming!

That's right, folks, I'm back. Finally, happily.

Flight back to JFK was WAY better, not least because I upgraded to first class. Goddamn, I love first class. I have a tip for any of you fliers out there, especially now with so many empty seats on the flights. Never ever buy a first-class ticket. Wait until you get there, and then pester the airline counter people about whether all the first-class patrons have shown up yet. On several occasions I've been upgraded for FREE by using this tactic. However, that only works if all the seats in first class are filled. So you have to check. If there are empty seats, you can get bargain-basement prices on them. Yesterday I upgraded for $200 -- about $500 less than it would have cost me just to buy an FC ticket. So cool.

I wouldn't really even have felt justified except for feeling like such crap. I got nowhere near enough sleep on Thursday night, and the result of that was fairly extreme nausea by about noon Vegas time. I had to make my clients stop off at our hotel so I could buy and eat some Dramamine in anticipation of the ride to the airport which I was afraid was going to make me throw up. After the usual rigamarole at the airport, which wasn't nearly as bad as it was flying out there, and in which I actually did NOT get checked for a "random" search, we went to go eat at a horrid diner in our terminal. I ate some, and by the time we were nearly finished with our meal, between the nausea and the coma that was descending upon me from eating a bunch of Dramamine I was in a major state. I had to have client cohort bring me into the first-class club (they were already flying FC) so I could sit in a comfy chair. I sat down and passed out until he woke me to go board. Felt terrible about it, but there was really nothing I could do. Had I attempted to stay awake, my conversational abilities would have been limited to drooling in their direction, and I have a feeling they would have had a hard time interpreting that as actual remarks.

And in First Class I didn't even have anyone sitting next to me which meant that I could put my head on the little seat-armrest-platform thingie with my TWO pillows without having my head in some businessman's armpit. I also managed to sleep through the delivery of both the Meal (gross, salmon, yucky, but dammit I was going to get my $200 worth) and the Cheese Platter, forcing me to bug the FC waitstaff lady many times. But they are terrifically nice to us there and her only job was to make us Expensive People happy so I did not feel too badly about it. I always wonder though why we're not supposed to tip them. It seems like a tip-worthy profession, especially when a very groggy patron is constantly and tardily bugging you for more food and wine. I did pass on the chocolate-chip cheesecake, however, because that just sounds foul.

My meeting with Obnoxious Client yesterday consisted of me sitting in front of Photoshop for TWO HOURS and nudging hideous blues and greens tiny tiny fractions of a hue in either direction. We were trying (desperately, having been attempting for weeks) to get him to decide on a freaking color palette he likes. And of course what he chose will blind all but the most myopic of his visitors, but I don't care anymore.

Came home and checked a few diaries out but mostly spent hours with my boy guiding him on his new RPG for the playstation. I hate actually *playing* those, but we have discovered that it works quite well and is fun for both of us if I sit there and backseat-drive him through the game. I hate playing them first because all the RPG games have different controls and it's really really hard for me to get my brain to equate "R1 + Button2 + Red" with "jump". I have excellent hand-eye coordination, but I have terrible brain-to-button coordination. I'm only okay at games where lots of random button-pushing results in something positive. The second reason is that if I'm at the helm those games make me really sick to my stomach.

And very sweetly all the pets had obviously missed me incredibly. I was swarmed when I got home. It's expected from my dog, but even she was going on for longer than usual, hanging on me and standing up to kiss me and pushing her head up against me. More surprising was Boy's Kitty (The Kitty) who was all over me like I'd been bathing in catnip. He's not usually so affectionate. Also expected from my cat (the Cat) who always misses me and when I come home he gets up on something closer to eye-level to me if I'm standing and yells at me to come pet him. And when I sit down he immediately has to be in my lap. It's extremely cute.

Oh, did you expect me to be interesting? Come on, give me a break, it's my first day back after a stressful and stupid trip to Vegas. I'm only starting to recover. I'm sure my entries will get better over the hours.

More later.

onehanded