"Whiskey, and a whiskey"

Ah, back home. Where you breathe in that wonderful dry desert air, mixed with sea salt. Where the temp's in the 70s in the middle of December.

Where breast size, representation, and soy milk in your sugar-free latte are of top priority.

(*sigh*) Things are definitely back to normal.

First thing I did off the plane was take a beach jog - 'try to sweat out a nasty consecutive two-day hangover. My roommate Hugh and I had our class over on Thursday night, after already hitting the sauce hard on Wednesday night. I woke up on Friday morning feeling worse than Nick Cage near the end of Leaving Las Vegas.

And gosh, it's always nice to see the real beach again - the smell of the salty air and the roar of the high winter tide when it's closed-out.

I inadvertently stepped into another one of the those unfortunate beach vs. lakeshore conversations with one of my classmates Thursday night. She's from the Chicago area, so you know where she stands on the subject; I was about to ask her to leave, but then the food was ready, and food always takes top priority.

This three-week reprieve from J-school feels like that moment in Matrix Revolutions. You know, where Trinity flies the ship up over the cloud cover to briefly encounter real, non-matrix-tainted sun for the first time in her life. "So beautiful," she whispers.

Then, of course, the ship abruptly dips back down under the clouds, crashes into the computer city, and Trinity gets impaled by steel wiring and dies.

Excellent. What a crappy movie.

Speaking of movies, Cronkette and I decided to play it low key last night and caught Ocean's Twelve. 'Great stuff -I'm such a fan of this ensemble and Soderbergh's style on these flicks. One thing is certain: I'm gonna see Twelve at least another five times over break. They could turn this into a Freddy/Jason type of franchise - with 20 sequels - and I would be in heaven. There's just no topping the "Oceans" movies...unless your name is Corleone and you work for the Genco Olive Oil Co.