Aaaaaand we're back!

I'm sitting here racking my brain for a lovely quote about travel or some such thing to open with, but sorry, I've got nothing. I am a jellied sack of jet-lagged mush--albeit a content one. There's something very satisfying about the routine after you return home from your travels, unpacking and doing laundry and getting settled back in, having survived your journey intact. 

The trip was great. Saw some very cool stuff, met fun people, ate tasty food (although I think I could stand to go a year or so without seeing another french fry). Almost met my end in York by taking a bad step off a curb, which sounds dumb but is surprisingly easy to do when you let your right-lane instincts take over in a pinch. Learned of the joy of hot coffee and rum in a pub in Edinburgh after nearly taking flight in one heck of a windstorm. Went to Manchester and...well, not much happened in Manchester. It rained, I bought a dress.

One thing that completely blew me away was how polite and friendly British people are. If there are any Brits reading this blog, and my stats tell me there are approximately one of you, then kudos to you on being so damn civilized! Maybe I just felt that way because I was visiting from Los Angeles, where your chances are about 30-30-40 of running across: a) a nice normal person, b) a phony pod-person, or c) a raging asshole. And, once you've been living here a while, you have about the same odds of being one of those yourself at any given time.

Angeleno aggression notwithstanding, I had a big smile on my face today as my taxi flew down Lincoln Blvd. Most of that had to do with the sunshine and the warm breeze whipping my hair around, but also because I'm excited. I got the break I needed, I read some great books (more on those later), and I'm ready to get back to work. I've got a big month ahead of me--it turns out that I'm going to the Big Sur writing workshop in March, and the amount of work I have to do beforehand to prepare is frightening. Like, I want to go stick my head in the pool and scream frightening. But it's going to be okay.

Anyhow, I need to go pick up my cat now. So happy to be back!