Home!

  Tontitown, Arkansas, United States
Friday, June 1, 2007

This entry has a theme song (for those of you willing to download 3.5MB):

00 Song

 








...and for those of you not willing to do so, I've included the lyrics below to give you a taste:
 
Home...by Michael Buble (a cover??)
Another summer day
has come and gone away
I'm in Paris and Rome,
but I wanna go home

'May be surrounded by
a million people, I
still feel alone,
just wanna go home

Oh, I miss you, you know

And I've been keeping all the letters
that I wrote to you
Each one a line or two,
"'I'm fine baby how are you?"

Well, I would send them but
I know that it's just not enough
My words are cold and flat
and you deserve more than that

Another airplane,
another sunny place
I'm lucky I know
but I wanna go home

I gotta go home
Let me go home
I'm just too far
from where you are

I wanna come home

And I feel just like
I'm living someone else's life
It's like I just stepped outside
when everything was going right

And I know just why you could not
come along with me
This was not your dream,
but you always believed in me

Another winter day
has come and gone away
It either Paris or Rome
and I wanna go home

Let me go home

And I'm surrounded by
a million people, I
still feel alone
and let me go home

Oh, I miss you, you know

Let me go home

I've had my run
Baby I'm done
I gotta go home
Let me go home

It'll all be alright
I'll be home tonight
I'm coming back home

___________________________________________________________ _______

Yet again, I changed my mind.  This time is the last, I can guarantee.  Instead of heading through Guatemala and Southern Mexico for perhaps another month of traveling I decided that 14 months was really quite enough.  One day I simply woke up and felt differently about returning in some way.  It's not that I was dreading the return before, I just wasn't ready.  I can't say that any specific event pushed me over into the "ready" category, but it absolutely happened.

So, I got a refund on the Guatemala ticket and bought a ticket home from Panama City.  Home in this case is in Arkansas with my family since I am homeless and unemployed.  A few family members were expecting me and met me at the airport for a little reunion, but I was able to surprise one of my sisters and my mom.

Backing up...

Several of my shipmates on the San Blas cruise left early to catch flights, leaving four of us on the boat with the captain.  I, in turn, left about a day and a half before the other three to take care of some business in Panama City before flying home.  Luckily (or perhaps unluckily) the other three rocked up to the hostel I was staying in on Tuesday night, the night before my 7:20AM flight back to the US.

OF COURSE we immediately went to the supermarket around the corner to buy a couple bottles of vodka to celebrate the end to my journey.  Vodka drained, we poured ourselves into a few taxis with other hostel-mates to hit a few bars (whorehouses may be a more accurate term given that there must have been hundreds there).  More drinking and dancing led to me returning to the hostel with about 45 minutes to spare before my taxi was to pick me up for the airport.

I was still drunk as I loaded my bags into the taxi.

Made it through security, found my gate and promptly fell asleep.  A Delta agent woke me up about an hour later to tell me that my flight was in final boarding. 

Ouch.  My head hurts.  I'm not drunk anymore.  I'm hungover.

My flights to Atlanta and then Northwest Arkansas Regional airport were uneventful.  I couldn't sleep a wink...guess I was too hyped about the reunion.  I drank loads of water along the way which eventually sorted out the headache.  It's a good think since I only had time for a quick shower before jumping back in the car to go to The Eagles concert....for free!  I returned in the middle of Wal-Mart Shareholder's Week, which is a big deal around in this 'hood.  Wal-Mart sells such a large percentage of albums in North America that they get pretty big names to come and play for free for their Associates and Shareholders.  The next night I saw Kool & the Gang and Hall & Oats.  J Lo was the main attraction during the meeting itself, but I couldn't arrange to get smuggled into that one.

So, I'm home...and it's already weird.  I'll try to wrap everything up in one final entry sometime in the future...

I submitted my CV for seven different positions already today.  Ugh!!