The Iron Man Returneth

Mark finally came home yesterday morning, after circumnavigating the globe in 9 days. "Eighty days? Pheh! Real men do it in nine!" says he. After meetings in Texas, China, and Israel, presenting at a conference, and more nights upright in airplanes than in beds, he should be an absolute mess -- and he isn't. Oh, sure, by the time he got to Israel he'd developed swollen ankles -- but, sheesh, one transcontinental flight will do that to me. And when he got home yesterday morning, without the adrenaline that had been the wind beneath his wings, he was tired enough to spend much of the day napping. But he was not the mess that anyone who had transited 24 time zones in 10 days should be.

How does he do it, you ask? Well, homeopathic has a lot to do with it. Our dear friend Sonja Benjamin, world-class homeopath, put him on a regimen of Arnica (yes, that same stuff you take when you've overdone it on the tennis court or injure yourself running), which is apparently the classic remedy for jet lag. Having spoken with him from his last stop in Israel, where he sounded nothing short of chipper, I can attest that the stuff works for jet lag as advertised.

Sonja gets to reap the benefits, too: we're all going out tonight, Mark & me & Sonja & her husband Walter, an iron man in his own right-- for jazz, drinks, and art that has escaped the Louvre, at the High Museum. Tomorrow morning, we plan to sleep in. And then, perhaps, things will return to normal.

Well, normal for us. Which is really not normal at all. :)