Hanger Over

It's a cross between hung over and jet lagged. That drained, tired feeling you get from having flown all the way around the world only to return to the time zone you started in. Well, I actually don't know if that was the world, or just the Logan Airport tarmac, but we spent 3 hours on the ground yesterday before finally taking off at 9:15. I had left home five hours earlier to catch my 5:55 flight. My poor uncle Danny also left home - and waited three hours to pick me up. AirTran had just one employee on the ground in Baltimore yesterday; she worked the baggage claim. So they had zero information coming in on what flights were late, etc. We had a good - but late - evening; opening presents at midnight with two sets of cousins and then driving home only to get up for work four hours later.

Christmas at home was good, too, and the Lord of the Rings thing was almost lived up to its considerable hype, no thanks to a three-hour-late departure going to Boston!

For Christmas I received Best Buy and Barnes & Noble gift cards, stocking stuffers, two "real" shirts (that's what my French uncle said), a fleece jacket, some poetry by Naomi Shihab Nye, a program that helps design family trees, and probably some more things I'm forgetting.