Alll by myself....

Coming to you horizontally from my couch in Columbia Heights. It's been a looooong day of traveling, but a totally smooth one, which once again made me feel silly for worrying.

Our last night out was most excellent. Once Liza awoke from her beauty sleep, we drank a glass of Central Otago wine, and looked through all the pictures we'd taken on our journey. And then had another glass of wine and looked through Italy pictures. And then more pictures until there was no more wine. And then decided dinner might be in order.

For our last meal we went to Pier 19 on the waterfront. We split scallops and a filet, and any hopes Liza had of still convincing anyone she was a vegetarian went right out the window. We'd been kind of laughing all day about the fact that we keep going to the same 3-4 places for drinks, so decided to try someplace new. After one beer I said, "look, I just want to go to the fireplace at Barmuda." I mean, why mess with perfection?

At Barmuda, we were able to grab a coveted spot in front of the fire, and much like every previous time there, quickly became the center of attention for any group of males 40+. I had a nice long talk with Philip, who owns a winery in Canterbury and hates pronouns, and Liza had a nice long chat with some guy from Melbourne who was in town for a conference. It was great except none of these guys bought us drinks. WTH!? As the night wound down, who should show up but our dance party friends from the previous night, who acted very weird, and didn't really talk to us except to "bludge" from us. And with that, we went home for a final round of pillow talk.

THis morning (or yesterday morning?) as soon as the alarm clock went off Liza said, "I'm not excited about anything that's about to happen." Neither was I. She dropped me at the Queenstown airport (but not before asking what my favorite airport was, one area we had not yet explored in our conversations), and we had a quick goodbye to avoid complete emotional breakdown, and that was that. Vacation over...hell begins.

I had a nearly 2 hour flight from Queenstown to Auckland, then had to grab my bag and race over to the next terminal to check in for my international flight back to the States. I'd been really worried about being late for this, but worked out perfectly so I walked right on the plane (but left my Natty G jacket at security, and claw marks on the outside of my plane as I begged them not to make me go. 12 hours later, landed at LAX, probably my least favorite airport, and spent six hours there before my five hour flight to DC. On both of those legs of the flight, my seat wouldn't recline. So basically have been sitting straight up for 17 hours. I think I feel worse than after skiing.

Anyways, thanks to those of you who read along. Ultimately the blog is more for us to remember our awesome, flash time in middle earth, so sorry if you were bored with the details. But you know what, I'm not sorry, because you're an idiot and you eat a lot of chicken. JK...for some of you. Probably one more post tomorrow then wrapping up until next year. We're talking about Argentina. I've heard they have really great wine there...