2005-06-27 - 7:40 a.m.

So after two months, several bajillion miles, more airport food than is good for anyone and three broken suitcases, I�m sitting at home in London at an unreasonably early hour, the lag we call jet poking me in the ribs at 4am this morning and hogging the duvet until I gave in and got up.

And so back to real life, reality at this point meaning a frantic search for employment, the need to lose several hundred pounds of fried catfish-induced lard and a stack of laundry that rivals the Great Wall of China in its ability to be seen from outer space. I left some of my swimwear in my case from my kayak trip down the Caddo River in Arkansas, and now (perhaps to be said in the style of Ralph Wiggum) my suit smells of wet. As does everything else.

The case-handling buffoons of the TSA (the American airport security �forces� who treat luggage like they�re cracking shellfish at an all you can eat seafood buffet) managed to mangle my locks and virtually knock a wheel off my (admittedly cheap) case. This despite the fact I took ten minutes to show them how to open and close it. You have to coax the flippers like timid woodland creatures, but they appear to have sledgehammered it into submission. The lesson here is that cheap luggage is false economy � I need some Titanium mothergrubbers that aren�t going to fall apart at the seams if I put in one too many pairs of undercrackers.

Besides, formulating a long term baggage solution will be a good distraction from that fact that I�m patently unable to hold down any kind of normal job/relationship/regular sleeping pattern, and help keep the summer less depressingly introverted than it might otherwise have been. The fact that I could have made more money the last two months selling lucky heather or fixing pegs is a slight worry, though.

Good job I didn�t spend the last few weeks racking up monstrous hotel bills in places where it�s eight dollars just for thinking about opening the bottled water in the mini bar�Oh.

Still, at least not having working hours means that my jetlag can slip by unnoticed. Hell, drifting in and out of consciousness on the couch is practically my M.O. these days. Given I�ll be as old as Jesus in a month, though, it�s probably no bad time to catch up on some quality shut-eye while I can. Step Into The Nap.