Back to life, back to reality

We spent our New Year's Eve crossing time lines from South Africa to the US. Our South African Airways flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg departed at around 1 pm. We said goodbye to my family in style by having bites to eat at Ocean Basket - Larry just had to squeeze in some Kingklip and prawns before we left. Hey, what can I say? The boy evidently has his priorities straight!

Our layover in Johannesburg was about 8 hours. My best friend from High School and her husband met us shortly after we landed and took us to Emperor's Palace (the former Caesar's Palace) next to O. R. Tambo International. We moseyed around there for a while and ate a little at News Cafe. It's always fun catching up with friends.

At around 7 pm we headed back to the airport to get the arduous security checks out of the way. Just when you thought they were through checking your passport you would enter another checkpoint. And then another. Ad nauseum. Then came the body search - always a pleasure. They luckily separated men and women for this.

There is no way to get around it; 17 hours is a long time to be in the air. I'm so thankful we were on the new Delta 777 planes that have the interactive TV screens behind each seat and oodles of movies to occupy my time with. I even slept 6 hours!

And still, nothing can prepare you for the pure nastiness of your body after that long a flight. You smell like drool and airplane seats and blankets. I don't even want to talk about what happens in your mouth. "Did I eat the blanket before we landed?"

The airport/immigration staff all seemed a little more jovial than usual due to the fact that it was New Year's Day - a good day to catch them with a sense of humour!

We finally returned to Pensacola to some absolutely dreadful weather. It has been quite Arctic. Here in Pensacola we usually get cold at 45ºF/ 7ºC. Now we're entertaining temperatures like 32ºF/0ºC and 27ºF/-3ºC. I've begun to think 45ºF/ 7ºC is warm. Quite sad!

Other than freezing our patooties off, we've been adjusting to work again. It has been quite a task. The first day breezed by because of the large workload but the rest of the week so far has been quite slow and boring. I suppose I'm not used to keeping myself occupied lately as our time in South Africa was chock-and-block with activities. There wasn't much time for lazing around.

Come on Friday!!!! Then again, I'm not too thrilled about the weekend because we are supposed to have highs of around 15ºF/ -9ºC. We're just not geared for this kind of weather. That, and we were completely spoiled in South Africa with gorgeous weather every day. Beautiful sunshine and highs of 77ºF/ 25ºC. This is not helping me with homesickness.

But, I supposed all good things must come to and end. Actually, no! I want to know why. Why do all good things have to come to an end and and all the rubbish lingers?

So, now that I've let you know how sorry I am for myself, life is great and I'm glad that this is a new decade for a new game plan.