Holy smokes, batman

You know that feeling where your head's about to crack and it feels vulnerable and dull like an egg that was boiled three weeks ago and left on the table to collect dust? Neither do I.

I was in Laos a week ago. A week ago I was in Laos. Now I'm back in the land of freedom fries where everyone's huge and old. (Thai people are so small...and they age so well, Thailand feels like the land of children now. My mind is filled with visions of skywalks filled with Thai uniforms.) It's cold here. And the sky is brilliantly blue.

The refrigerator's different. This is more disturbing than it should be. Apparently, our old, brown, faithful fridge bit the dust the night before Thanksgiving, and now there's a looming, white, sterile, foreign intrusion in our kitchen. It's very white. And big. And it doesn't hum--it makes a quiet, hissing, boiling water sound instead. Reality blinks every time I walk into the kitchen.