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Well, I’m finally home and cognizant of the correct time and day! The project went really well, I think I managed to impress a couple people, and there was rumored a possibility of doing this again next year. It’s funny, because while my vacation tastes tend to run more toward the “hey, let’s go see and do cool stuff in places we haven’t been to before!” kind of thing, after a few days in a beautiful tropical environment where you can just sit by a pool, with or without an umbrella drink, and let all your worries evaporate from your mind in the hot sun, I have to admit there’s something to be said for the “we’re going away to relax and do nothing” vacation as well. I don’t think I could spend more than a few days doing it without getting bored senseless, but I can definitely see its merits. Fortunately, work kept me quite busy most of the time, so I didn’t have the opportunity to get bored.

Sunday evening, I was sitting out on the terrace, having just ordered my dinner. I was reading my book and seriously nodding off, as the traveling was taking a toll. I was jolted back to consciousness by an explosion of sound coming from my right, where there was a small stage and some sort of allegedly traditional but stereotypical-looking Polynesian dance routine, complete with hula girls and flaming torches. As the sound dissolved out into the night air, I willed my sandwich to arrive faster, so that I could escape to the relative quiet of my room. I woke up once around 1 am, but made it back to sleep without too much lost time. Monday was all about meetings in the morning, and chilling out a little more in the afternoon. I took a swim in the pool and laid out in the sun a bit. I got in a good workout, and then had another fairly early night.

We arrived about 15 minutes later than we’d wanted to on Tuesday morning, but still well before any class participants. We knew we’d need to set up the room ourselves, so we set about doing that, and trying to find the right person to help us with a few logistical matters. People started to file in, warily looking at us, clearly hoping that we wouldn’t torture them with boredom over the next two days. All I can say on that front is that we certainly tried not to. The first day started off a little slowly, with people resisting my efforts to participate, but by the end of the day, we had introduced an activity that had everyone participating, which was good. We were given the presentation materials and they were okay…not what my co-presenter M or I would have done, and not completely tailored to the audience, but we made it work.

That night, for whatever reason, I woke up at about 1:30 in the morning and either elected not to go back to sleep, or I just couldn’t. I had some changes I wanted to make to our presentation, but I had crashed early that night, so my mind was racing with the things that I knew I needed to accomplish. I made a couple of phone calls (before I realized that Verizon may very well turn up an astronomical phone bill as a result. One person told me that they were charged international rates for calls made to and from Guam. They had to fight to prove that Guam is, indeed, part of the United States, since it’s a US territory. There are even US post offices there. It counts. I’m prepared for a long conversation if our bill is horrifying.), then officially got up and pulled out my laptop. The second day was better, people were looser and more comfortable by that point, so they talked and asked questions more. We burned through the material quickly and were able to wrap up by lunch time, finishing with a group exercise that got everybody going and really pulled everything together. Overall, M and I felt as though the trip was a success, and he was very complimentary of my contributions, which I appreciated.

After we wrapped up, a former co-worker of M’s who is now on Guam offered to give us a brief tour of their part of the island, and I’m so glad we took him up on it. It’s a teeny little tropical island, but there’s plenty of breathtaking scenery to be had, particularly around Tarague Beach, on the northern end. We were driving down a gently descending road, lined with lush vegetation, when we came around a corner, and the road dropped away sharply. The view out across the beach, which is surrounded by a former palm tree plantation (still noticeable by the too-perfect rows of trees grown for coconuts, which aren’t indigenous to the island), is beautiful and enormous. Once we got down to the actual beach, the sparkling white sand contrasted with the pale aqua of the water along the shoreline. About 50 feet out from the shore, the water turned a very dark blue – we were told that it signified a 60-foot drop off in the reef, where all too many people had gotten sucked under the tide. So…beautiful, but I’m not likely to venture out too far without a tow line.

I decided to go for one last swim before I left, since my flight departed at 4 am on Thursday. I wanted to get out into the bay, but was told that the coral along the bottom was very sharp, and my footwear was inadequate. Well – next time, I suppose. Since I never did get to take that kayak out.

After a relaxing afternoon in and by the pool (keep in mind that I still managed to retain my ghostly pallor), I headed back to my room to pack and attempt a nap before leaving for the airport around 1 am. I ordered dinner, which was okay – nothing to really write home about, but not awful, either. I took a nap, and woke up late…whoops. Fortunately, I still had two hours to get to the airport and the Guam airport is not large. At all. I made it there with 90 minutes to spare before my flight departed, so I was able to check in without raising my blood pressure. They upgraded my seat from Guam to Osaka to a first class seat (which would have been even better on my flight from Osaka to San Francisco, but I will happily take what I can get!), and after I spent a little time perusing the duty free shops (which are, apparently, open at 3 am in the Guam airport), I settled into my seat to wait for boarding.

The flight to Osaka was a little bumpy, but nothing unpleasant – I slept through most if it, as I imagine the rest of my fellow travelers did. We arrived in Osaka, and I was glad that I hadn’t attempted to put on any makeup, like I did on my way there. I had arrived in Osaka the first time looking as though I was in the middle of the world’s longest Walk of Shame. Not good.

The airport was quite empty and most things were closed as it was still early morning hours. I had been hoping to find out some information about Osaka and the surrounding environs so that I could leave the airport during my ten hour layover. That was not meant to be, so I found some WiFi, sat down near an outlet, and did some e-mail and read some articles, etc. At some point I drifted off to sleep for a bit (hardly surprising), and did a good bit of just plain wandering around the airport. I even tried to watch a movie on Netflix with their “Watch It Now!” feature, but apparently it doesn’t work if you’re outside the U.S. Boo… I

I did amuse myself and pass the time by people-watching. I noticed something that I’ve seen in Vietnam and that we saw all the time in Taiwan – people wearing clothing with English writing on it that makes no sense, and is occasionally borderline obscene. (In some cases, way across the border into full-blown obscene.) Now, I see people here with clothing and accessories that are characters from a particular Asian language that I’m sure also make no sense to the native speakers of said language. Including my tattoo – it actually needs one more character to mean what I want it to mean, so my original reference book lied to me. But at least it doesn’t mean “raging whore” or something. It could be worse.

But getting back to my point. I think my favorites were a girl wearing a white t-shirt with “Lost Brother” written on it in a handwriting-style font, a kid wearing a blue shirt with a gold print that said “Golden Eye” and “True Love” on it, and my favorite, a girl who was probably in her early 20s wearing plaid knee shorts, white sneakers, and a blue shirt that said “I Like It Tasty” on the front.

Awesome.

The hour finally arrived for me to shuffle down to my gate. I stopped for a bowl of udon noodles with tofu and green onions (yummy….), and went to my boarding area. The plane took off on time, and all was well.

Until dinner.

You see, I’m occasionally lactose intolerant, and when my body is under stress (such as criss-crossing the international date line a few times in a few days), it comes roaring back to life. And it’s uncomfortable, to say the least. So I’d called the airline, after a dairy-filled meal from my way from San Francisco to Osaka, and asked for a non-dairy meal for my return flights. They said that all they could do was a vegetarian non-dairy meal. I said that would be fine – I was vegetarian for a long while, and I’ve had plenty of delicious vegan food in my life.

This was not that food. This was a cooked tomato in its juice, with five pieces of baby corn and some bland yellow rice with no spice or flavor to speak of. Plus a bread roll with margarine (fine), and some bizarre gelatinous dessert-type thing. Oh my. I was hungry, and it was edible, it just wasn’t…well, it wasn’t what I would have voluntarily fed myself ever.

It was somewhat compensated for by my amusement at a guy in front of me who got up to get his bag out of the overhead compartment, displaying much crack in the process, whose shirt said “SO Wonderful!” across the back.

Indeed.

After many more hours in the plane, during which I watched “Prince Caspian” (very good) and “What Happens in Vegas” (irretrievably stupid, but I must admit to laughing out loud in a couple places) and slept as much as possible, we arrived in San Francisco. I made my way to my connecting flight, through a security line that was way too long, and stopped to get dinner at a burrito place, then sat down to wait for my final flight to board, which happened about 6 minutes after I arrived at the gate. Nick of time, much?

The flight back to DC was delayed because the pilot and first officer were delayed from a previous flight, but we did eventually make it into the air, without any significant delay. Unfortunately when we landed in DC, they couldn’t get the jetway hooked up to the plane. Just…couldn’t. The pilot thanked us for our patience, then chuckled and said “like you have a choice…” After all the power cut out on the plane and we sat through another 10 minutes or so of waiting, during which time the guy next to me looked at his watch and said “oh hey – my flight to Frankfurt is boarding now…”, we finally were allowed to exit the plane.

I was glad that I hadn’t checked any bags, because Special K and I found each other quickly and went out to the car to start the drive home. Until we realized that there was no food in the house, so we made a brief detour to the Silver Diner, where I had a crab cake and he had a crab cake melt, and then went to the house. We stayed up for a little bit, and eventually collapsed into bed around 2 am. This was actually a good idea, because I slept until a little past 9 am without waking up. Or probably even rolling over, since I was so tired.

And then we flew to Cincinnati that day. Seriously. I unpacked and packed simultaneously. We had long-standing plans to go see J and S, and a little thing like a trip to Guam wasn’t going to stand in the way of that. Our weekend went by far too quickly, even though it was a long one, in a blur of good food and good friends and all those things. I’m really happy to see that they’re settling in well in Cincinnati, but I’d be lying if I said I don’t miss them lots. E is getting so big it’s just crazy, and he’s so freakishly articulate for a kid who is not-quite three. He counts, he reads, he talks in full intelligible sentences, it’s amazing. He will also eat just about anything they put in front of him, which is something Keith and I aspire to. I realize that all kids go through phases, but if we end up with a picky eater in our family…well, that’s going to be one skinny kid because I’m not making separate dinners for everyone. But E scarfed up chili-rubbed tilapia, jicama salad, and pasta with pesto and zucchini with the rest of us, it was great!

Monday rolled around far too soon, and we spent the morning pretending that we didn’t live so far apart anymore. But then we had to get ready to go to the airport and couldn’t get around it any longer. Meah. We headed home, glad to be home, but sad to leave.

And now I’m back at home and back at work and finally done with my expense reports. It’s been a crazy couple of weeks, and the cats have given me a couple accusatory looks, as if they suspect that I was trying to abandon them, but I think that overall, they’ve forgiven me. In the coming weeks, Brunette is getting married (eeee!!!!), Special K is going to CA on a business trip, and I’m attempting to do as little as possible. I’ll let you know how it works…