sweet juniper!

I wake up in an airport. Like automobiles, inside they all have the same instinctive design: my first thought is which one is this? It has been more than two years since I've flown but the Old Life comes back to me: document review in Tucson; depositions in Minneapolis; trainings in Manhattan. I have woken up in airports before, but never with one of these on the floor next to me:

I blink. For a second the janitor pushing his cart through the lonely concourse is the piragua man, his spray bottles of green disinfectants and red germicides and purple window cleaners exotic syrups waiting for cups of hand-shaved ice; before I add chemical hallucination to that provided by sheer exhaustion, my wife hands me a squirming baby, saying "your turn," as her eyes shut.

This morning I woke within the high-thread-count sheets of a five-star hotel built in 1646, and eighteen hours later I'm trying to keep my eyes open in the misery Dulles Airport. We've spent an incredible week with the beautiful people and landscapes of Puerto Rico, and now through some mangled English the United Airlines gatekeeper communicates that it's 30 degrees in Detroit. I don't want to believe her. I've never been a blogger who gives the play-by-play of every day; I like a few days to reflect on the currents of life, so I'll probably have something to say about it next week. But today I'll just say we had the best time, thanks in part to readers' wonderful advice.

I did take some pictures. If you stick around, I'm sure I'll play the annoying neighbor: dimming the lights and forcing you to sit through them until the carousel projector clicks to white air and you can finally escape the dank shag carpet of our den.