I highly suggest everyone upgrade to flying First Class from now on. You meet nice people. You get booze shoved at you. They serve you MEALS and HOT TOWELS and WARM NUTS. It's not loud, there are no babies, and there is legroom and places to put your CARRY ON.

It sure makes it a lot more tolerable when your plane is delayed 2.5 hours, to know you'll not be squished next to a fat man who takes up all your space. Heck, sometimes you meet a very nice attorney who is flying down to Miami to get some liposuction and arrange some settlements, and she gives you a good idea to put your house in a landtrust to avoid capital gains taxes.

Oh, Skye. You rock.

Oh, First Class. You rock harder. Despite the fact that the flight was THREE HOURS LONG (usually 2.5) it flew by. I read some magazines, I ate a turkey wrap and had four vodka gingerales. I had a grand old time talking to my seatmate... hell I would have been fine with it if the flight had been another three hours!

Of course, by then, I would have been hammered.

But whatever.

Bottom line? Fly first class from now on. It is awesome. It was much more satisfying this time, than the time I flew to Madison first class. That was just boring. All they did there was serve me Coke in a glass, instead of a plastic cup.

Oh, and Maryland has a lot of trees, and the buildings are old and historic, and I never thought I'd appreciate Victorian Neo-Renaissance buildings or 1812 Dormered rowhouses as much as I did. Or Mid-19th Century Brownstones. Or Art Deco Skyscrapers. Or Depression-Gothic Skyscrapers.

I MISS ARCHITECTURE. I MISS HISTORY. I MISS TREES AND AZALEA BUSHES AND DAFFODILS AND SYCAMORE TREES AND ELM TREES AND BEECH TREES.

And I miss English. And wide streets where traffic zooms past me... me, who has become a slow driver since moving to Miami. It's odd not to be in a crush of traffic. Odder still is when people are zooming past, when I used to be doing the zooming.

Oddest still is when there is traffic, but it moves.

Oh, sure, I scoffed when some places in D.C. wanted me to pay a covercharge at 2 a.m. when they were just going to be closing in 1/2 an hour... And yes, there will be annoying things about living up there...

But I yearn to take it for granted all over again.

I yearn to be bored that the National Gallery of Art is still running the same booooring Monet exhibit, and I yearn to be bored that the Phillips Collection is still exhibiting Luncheon of the Boating Party. And I want to be sick of the Walter's 16th Century Flemish Collectors Study exhibit, and their medieval art collection. I want to be tired of the Sackler. And the Freer. And the Corcoran. And the Hirshorn. And the Baltimore Museum of Art. And the Museum of Architecure. And the Postal Museum. And the Circus Sideshow Museum.

And I want to be bored of eating Ethiopian food in Georgetown. And French Food in Alexandria. And I want to decide not to go biking along the C&O, because I'm too hungover. And I want to decide that going to Mount Vernon to sit in the Gardens is too much effort. Or that going to the Cylburn Arboretum is too much work.

Here...what? I can go to the beach? I've gone to our three museums eight times. I can go to Ft. Lauderdale to the Swap Shop? I can go to Fairchild Tropical gardens again?

Everything here just feels so unimportant. So new, so unestablished. It's like Canada, but I'm in America, and it's hot, and no one's nice, and no one speaks English. In Canada last summer, it was unreal how new everything was. Hell, they only got their flag in the '60s. Our National Anthem was written in my hometown... where I used to go on Saturdays to fly kites and watch the gantries load the containerships.

I guess it's just another homesick post. Yeah, there are annoying things about the Baltimore-Washington corridor. Ice storms sort of suck. As does Terrorism. But it would be really cool to be looking for a house, and find a nice rowhouse, built in 1805, that was actually in my price-range. Yeah, I'd probably have to repoint the brickwork, and have the thing structurally reinforced, but whatever.

What am I doing here? I'm not leaving yet. But honestly? What am I doing here? Shouldn't I be leaving before the honeymoon is totally over? Shouldn't I want to come back? My friends tell me that after they left Miami, they miss it.

I'm not so sure I really will. I'll miss my friends. And I'll miss routines. But this hundred-year-old marshtown that God keeps trying to wipe off the face of the Earth (for good reason)? I'm not sure I'll miss it so much.

So, my original point - it's nice to fly first class.