I'm ba-ack...

between Atlanta, Georgia, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, via Delta

It's over! I'm about an hour and a half from home and I couldn't be more excited.

A quick recap is in order, I suppose. I bought a bunch of goodies for the fam in the duty free store. Deidre tried to do the same, but her credit card kept getting rejected. It turns out the credit card company thought it was funny someone was traveling around Europe spending money. They called her twice, but it's hard to get messages back in the states. I helped her out and got more points out of the deal.

The flight back to the states was great. It was a 9 hour flight, and I think I slept for 7½ hours of it. I think Patrick got a bunch of sleep too, but Ellen and Deidre didn't fare so well.

For those of you unfamiliar with the check-in process coming to Atlanta from overseas, here's the basics:

• Come into the concourse E. It's where all international flights come in.
• Go to customs, where they stamp your passport. It helps to have the form they give you filled out ahead of time. You get to stand in the resident line, but it doesn't move all that much faster than the "visitor" line.
• Pick up your checked luggage. But not with everyone else, you pick it up in the special checked luggage section in concourse E.
• Go through security. Apparently we don't trust other countries to check bags properly. I guess this is with good reason; they are not nearly as thourough in other places. But you have to go through the inspection with all of your luggage.
• Re-check your checked bags. You're not allowed to go through the airport with checked luggage.
• Go from concourse E to baggage claims. You can pick your luggage up again from there.

Anyway, after this I got to rent a car. The biggest one they had. But even with all that room we barely got four people and their luggage to the airport. It was so nice to be able to drive a car again. Well, not necessarily to drive, but to be in control of where I was going; I wasn't at the mercy of a train or a cab driver unfamiliar with the inner workings of the English language.

We went right over to the hotel. My room was absolutely palatial compared to what we stayed in over in Belgium. My room was at least 2½ times larger than before. The king-sized bed was great. Even the elevator was large and refreshing; it was literally larger than the bathroom I had in Brussels.

We all made it over to the service center in one piece. I had forgotten how bad Atlanta traffic could be. It took us like an hour to get to the service center. Unfortunately with all of the rain, the ground was a soup consisting mostly of long grass and Georgia clay. But we quickly went in for our presentation. Honestly, I probably wasn't in the best headspace to understand what was going on, but after three weeks of powerpoint presentations, I think I absorbed the material pretty well.

We were all starving, so we stopped at Chick-fil-a on the way home. I don't know what illicit substances they put into their chicken batter, but they have some of the best fast food you'll ever eat. Mmmm... waffle fries.

I forced myself to sleep at about 10:30 (4:30 AM Brussels time) and made myself stay there until about 7:30 (2:30 PM Brussels time), when my body refused to stay comatose any longer. I went downstairs and treated myself to the most wonderful breakfast I'd had in at least a month. Not only did they have bacon, sausage, and bananas, they had someone there to make fresh waffles and omelettes as well. Heavenly.

I made it to the picnic promptly at 10:00. It was early enough that I *won a door*. Actually, a $20 certificate to Starbucks. (Actually I think the correct term is "Fourbucks", 'cause that's about what you spend for a coffee...) They had jackets and T-shirts for everyone, so now I too can look like a corporate shill. Everyone else from the trip eventually made it. I got to do some shmoozing too, so good times all around.

The nice thing about Georgia is that everyone likes to eat. We had a gob of good food: hamburgers with all the fixin's (except for cheese for some reason), BBQ, potato salad, baked beans, and cole slaw. These were topped off with (of course) iced tea and lemonaide.

I had a slight hiccup going through security, and then my flight took off a little late. Hopefully we'll make the time up. I think I've only got about an hour until we land.

There's no place like home.