First and foremost, the song I like by Deborak Cox is called “It’s Over Now”, not “Please Forgive Me”. Pardon my error.

Second, I am still in the British Airways Terrace Lounge. I feel like this place is my tomb. I will die here for sure. I keep on staring at the flight announcement board, waiting for something good to happen, but alas, there is no hope, it seems like I will neer get out of the airport.

Oh wait, I think it told me to go to Gate 38. It is possible that I am leaving this god foresaken place called Heathrow. yes, it is my flight…and it is time for me to go. finally, after hours of endless waiting in this cess pool, I am almost free. which is a good thing, because otherwise I was going to play on the tarmac out of sheer boredom.

Sitting in the British Airways Terrace Lounge, surfing the net and writing this journal entry. You have no idea how bored I am because I must suffer in this lounge for 2 hours, surrounded by loser people who’s greatest accomplishment will be the ability to bathe on a semi-regular basis.

On the plus side, I look more fabulous today than I deserve, given the fact that I have been in airports or in transit for about 24 hours now.

Hej da (there’s no little circle thingy above the a on this UK keyboard…go figure)

I am on the plane (again), where it seems to be a good time to write these journal entries. We are currently over the Atlantic, about two hours away from London, where I must connect through to catch my final flight back to Stockholm. There is a sense of excitement and relief to be back, but also getting ready to get back into the daily grind.

I am still pretty wasted from partying in Atlanta. I got sick three times on the flight from Boston to London. And I was doing so well on the flight from Chicago to Boston. I am sitting in business class on this flight, but since I sacrified dinner to the porclean god (or air sickness bags), I feel like I am starved, but I dare not right eating again. I actually think what has happened is that I have been getting sick if I take ibuprofen, as I have done twice and I have gottne sick twice. My body is looking for things to get sick on, so I just ate some pretzels…that ought to do something. What, I am not sure.

Onto another subject, when I was in Boston, I purchased the “Unbearable Lightness of Being”, which is one of my favourite books ever. However, once my sister saw it, she had to have it, so I gave it to her. Why would I give her my brand new book? Perhaps because I believe that the best place for a book you’ve already read is in the hands of another reader who can get the opportunity to discover the same magic that I did when I first read the book. So that is me, a bit altruistic in nature at times, but generally speaking, I am an asshole.

And my stream of randomness today…has anyone tasted the new chicken nuggets from McDonalds? They say now they have more white meat, but I’ll be damned if I can taste white meat. Or even chicken. Sigh…

I am on the plane as I am writing this. Being home this week has been a pleasure, but it has also been very challenging. While the wedding was wonderful and a chance to relax, being home around Thanksgiving was not a chance to relax and get away from it all. Quite the opposite. When I got back from the wedding in New Orleans, my day was filled with errands and tasks, go pick this person up here and drop this person off there. Loads of friends to see and everyone wants more time than I can really give them to have it be meaningful. It was so stressful that I had a constant headache from Tuesday to Thursday evening. And it was at the apex of my disenchantment that I made a crucial discovery…a vacation is not the same as a holiday.

A vacation is an event one takes to relax and get away from the stresses and pressures of responsibility. A holiday is an event which by its very nature (specific in scope and deliverables, multi-faced, with many variables) is prone to cause stress. Over the past few years, because I have been taking vacation during holiday periods (specifically Thanksgiving/Christmas), I have usually come back from vacation in a worse physiological condition than when I began.

So now I made a choice. I decided that I would have to seperate vacations from holidays.

The good news in this is that now more of my time will be focused on fun and relaxing activities. And I will adjust my vacation schedule so that I now take one vacation in the first half of the year and the other vacation during the second half of the year, with annual home leave of 1 week to remain unchanged. I think using this approach will ensure that I don’t go back to Sweden feeling mentally tired and exhausted. I sure hope so. Otherwise, the bad news will be that I will have no choice but to stop going home for the holidays and instead focus on vacation and my mental well-being.

As fantastic as Thanksgiving was (four generations sitting down together for a meal), I am not sure I can do holiday travel right now. I hope my solution above works. I really do…. :-/

For those of you who have never gotten to know Chuck Kraemer, he a media personality well read and well-respected. The following below is called the “Ode to Christmas”, which he used to do yearly for many years. The 2000 version was the latest that I could find, but funnily enough, it is still very appropriate.

Lord… and Taylor. Anne Taylor. Ann & Hope, Anne Klein, Calvin Klein, Cuisinart, Kodak, cotton polyester, budget stretcher, store-wide, half off, dot-com.

What have we done? To Christmas?

What have we done to Christmas indeed? Maybe I am so heads-above-the-clouds to believe that Christmas should be about who we are with instead of how many toys we rack up into the house. Maybe I do forget that in my youth, all possible all I really cared about was the presents, whereas what I care about now is the company I keep during the holidays. Maybe I feel stupid because I think that it is the thought that counts behind the gift, rather than the store’s return policy. I don’t know. What I do know is that since college, I have come to dislike christmas.

blah….i am bitter about this…time for pills…

Calgon take me away (I’m in the office while on vacation at home because I can’t think of anything else better or useful to do than surf the net…I am lame…)

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How compatible are you and your stupid net friends?

Maha’s wedding was absolutely beautiful. Maha was stunning as a bride of course, there was an open bar, and the entire evening was a success for them. For which I am glad.

Steve and I went out again after the wedding. We partied all night again and then stoped for some pastries on the way back to the hotel. We helped this woman who broke her ankle, went back and packed, and then he left for Atlanta and I left for Boston. Since I only had 8 hours of sleep over the past 4 days, I was really tired when I got home, but I managed to squeeze in dinner with Jason, and then came back and got a solid 8 hours (from midnight to 8am) and I feel a lot better now.

Today involved making a trip to the post office, and I have to go pick up a relative from the airport and then meet another one of my friends for dinner at the Cheesecake factory.

Tomorrow will be about being involved with the family in different ways, and for making a final list of things that I have to accomplish before I leave. And finally, I changed my flight arrangements to Atlanta so that on Friday, I leave Boston at 6am and get into Atlanta at noon, giving me more time to party in Atlanta before coming back to Boston on that Saturday and making the trek back to Stockholm.