I composed this while waiting for my flight last night.

I’ve spent the day in New Jersey, on the road for business. The travel has been less than smooth, with weather delays causing headaches for my connecting flights. I should have been on the way home now, but Independence Air is still waiting for my chariot to arrive to take me to Dulles.

On the way to the office this morning, I had a very interesting conversation with the limo driver, a Russian immigrant. Having spent four years of my life facing down what Reagan dubbed the “Evil Empire,” I have a lingering curiosity about our former enemy. Rather than exhort me to visit the country of her birth, though, she instead advised me to steer clear of it. To her, Russia was far too dangerous, both from the crime and the unpredictability of the government. She thought Putin was returning the country to its dictatorship past. I listened with interest, but really became intrigued when I saw a website headline which also suggested Russia’s turn towards dictatorship. She may be right that it may take 100 years before Russia is safe.

The Boingo account I activated for our trip to Italy continues to provide dividends. Boingo makes it a breeze to find Internet access when you’re on the road. It has already paid for itself many times over. Unfortunately for my stay in the Newark airport, service is only available at a handful of gates.

I’m looking forward to the weekend. It’s the first post-Italy weekend we’ve had, which means we can concentrate on home stuff for a while. Half the lawn still needs mowing. The garage needs to be cleaned out. New blinds need to be installed. And my office needs to be tamed, mess that it is.he

We can also do some gardening now: hanging plants for the front porch and a garden to be planted out back. Also, we’ve collected a few bids on fixing our landscaping in the back yard, which will allow us to finally fence the backyard.

Early this morning, we were awakened by an unfamiliar sound. A steady, low rumbling becan to shake the house. As the first train we’ve heard in weeks, it would have been unusual enough. This train, however, was the latest one since we’ve been here, rumbling by at 1 AM. I didn’t have to see it to know it had a huge load. I heard a hundred cars, twice the usual amount, pass by; its huge diesels howling like banshees into the night. It was a haunting sound.

Well, it looks like my plane will arrive after all. Look for some more posts this weekend, when I hope to catch up with an Italy report.

A footnote. My plane didn’t take off from Newark until 9 PM, almost two hours late. Weather-related air traffic control delays were to blame. I didn’t arrive home until 11:30 PM Friday night.