Salt Lake City has the best airport in the United States, and I’ll tell you why: It has smoking rooms.

Look, I realize that, in America, smokers are pariahs on the order of plague-dogs carrying the super-clap (New! Now With Spontaneous Combustion!), but what you people really want to be asking yourselves is, “Do I really want to spend six hours trapped in a tiny metal tube rocketing through the air jam-packed full of crabby, bitey people who haven’t had a cigarette all day?” Seriously, how hard is it to add a few rooms with ventilation so I can go out and have a smoke at the airport? I rarely have enough time to trek through security just to have a smoke. All the airports I’ve seen have ample room to slap even an open-air deck in the concourse somewhere, so smokers could step outside and smoke. But noooooo, smoking is evil.

One of the turtles in downtown Midland. For non-Michiganders, Midland does this every year, with different kinds of statues. Businesses sponsor them, and local artists decorate them. They're displayed all summer.

At any rate, despite the reason for being there, we had a lovely time visiting everyone in Michigan. I even got to see some of the Totally Turtles displays in downtown Midland this year.

We were pretty exhausted by the time we got home, though. Last-minute travel plans involved having to fly into O’Hare in Chicago, then driving to Michigan. We drove back to Chicago to leave, too, leaving way early so as to avoid the morning rush hour traffic. I was glad to miss that, but it did result in us sitting in O’Hare for several hours until our flight left.

The cats were thrilled to see us, and Jazz was ecstatic when I picked her up from the kennel. All she wanted to do was cuddle, and was annoyed she had to keep jumping from chair to chair to cuddle with us both all evening. We napped hard when we got home, got up long enough to watch this week’s True Blood, then went to bed and slept like the dead.

This morning, I had to head to the grocery store first thing this morning for coffee and milk, and, much to Jim’s amusement, I came back with yogurt, blueberries, and granola for breakfast.

“You’ve gone native!” Jim said.

“Aw, now, that’s not fair. I liked granola in Michigan, too. It’s just that it costs your first born child to buy it there, so I never did.”

Actually, after six days of mostly fast food and junk food, we were both craving healthy food, which is what lead to yogurt and fruit for breakfast. And what good is yogurt without crunchy granola on top? Although Jim pointed out that he’d never realized that granola was any good until he moved here and could get it fresh. I hadn’t really noticed until he mentioned it, but it’s true. Granola in Michigan is always stale and rock hard. Like, break your teeth hard.

Gone native or not, I’m glad to be home. I love visiting everyone, but I think I prefer to plan ahead to do it. The last-minute thing was exhausting and stressful.