A Very Good Place to Start

Last Thursday it was cold and rainy in Seattle. It seems like it's been cold and rainy (or cold and snowy) for 12 months now. The rain on the windows of the plane was doing that streaky G-force thing where even the rain seems stretched out of proportion by take-off. Freaks me out, frankly, but nothing a Screwdriver won't fix. The first leg of the flight was already a success upon boarding. I was assigned a middle seat and was worried because I was one of the last to board. It was with great relief that I discovered myself seated between 2 women who were both contained within the province of their own seats, if you know what I mean.

Then I couldn't help but notice that my window-side seatmate had a Kindle, so I asked her about it and then we started chatting and then in a thing pretty rare in my plane travel experience, we chatted all the way to Denver. She's my new BFF.

There was just enough time in Denver to get to my gate, make some calls and board the plane again. This time I was next to a quiet teenager boy-type, which was fine because Mommy doesn't typically befriend people on flights and Mommy was still pretty anxious and just wanted to drink some wine in peace.

I gotta say, except for enduring the boarding-take-off-deplaning-reboarding-landing thing twice, flying through Denver to Omaha is a very civilized route. You don't spend too much time in the air on either leg so time passes quickly AND your legs don't start feeling like they're going to throw a clot and your going to die there. So needless to say, I felt very civilized and almost cosmopolitan when I took my things and started down the jetway in search of my Poodle. Who was right where he said he would be and who looked oh so cute and ready for some hugs and kisses.

He whisked me off in Rhonda the Honda to his superfantastic loft apartment in twinkly, bustling downtown Omaha.

OK. The first part is true. Downtown Omaha neither particularly twinkles nor bustles. If you consider, as I do, the downtown of a city to be the place where they keep all the skyscrapers, Omaha doesn't even have a downtown. What passes for a "skyline" there is, frankly, laughable. BUT the downtown in Omaha isn't that.

Downtown in this case refers to the Old Market, the area which was Omaha's heart from the beginning, where farmers sold their wares and where warehouses and factories grew up. It was an area which, according to the brochure I read, actually thrived into the 1950s, only beginning to die off then with the advent of the supermarket. The area was relatively quickly reclaimed, with all the old brick buildings being renovated into apartments, condos, shops and restaurants...keeping the structural integrity of the old brick intact. It stands as a model of the sort of "sustainable community" people always talk about in terms of all the amenities being within walking distance. Granted JP (and others) still have to drive to work so they haven't got it 100% yet but it is a wonderful, charming district that is both historic and functioning. You must love that. I command you.

JP showed me to my room, we had wine. He called Minogue.She came over. I didn't take her picture. Dammit. Because she was very cute and because when I saw her I hugged her like we'd been friends forever even though I only knew her virtually and through JP.

The 3 of us went to dinner, which was delicious. Then went back to the apartment where we talked until 11pm, at which point Minogue had to leave and then JP and I sat up and talked until 3am. (It was only 1am by my clock so it was hardly late at all). And then we went to bed and even though I was in a new place and a new bed, I fell asleep and slept the sleep of the just and exhausted.