Back From Vacation...

…and oh, what a rude awakening it is!
My first day back to the ol' millstone, and I worked almost a twelve-hour day!
I miss Mexico!
I had quite the adventure, I must say -- I think it was maybe my favourite vacation time of my life. There were 28 of us in our group -- family members and friends who gathered for the wedding of my nephew. I was the first to arrive, more than a full day before everyone else, which meant I was also the first to leave. However, things did not go quite as planned and I managed to snag an extra day out of it at the expense of my airline company. When I arrived at the Puerto Vallarta airport on Saturday night [after several delays], the two pilots of the plane announced to all 180 passengers that they could not fly us home. Seems that the combination of delays managed to somehow exceed their allowable working hours. Flying us back to Canada would have taken them above the 13 hours of uninterrupted travel time.
There was mass pandemonium at the gate. A half hour later the pilots re-emerged from some sort of conference held in full view of us all, and told us that we would all be shuttled to another hotel to spend the night. We were bussed back to the terminal to retrieve our luggage and then taken to another gorgeous all-inclusive resort. We spent most of Sunday there, generously partaking [trust me] in all the free food and booze.
There are so many pictures I could share with my readers, [and some I can't] but since this is supposed to be a blog about books after all -- I thought I'd show this one picture. The main resort I stayed at during the week had a zoo within it. Ostriches, monkeys, peacocks, deer, etc. -- and, of all things, a crocodile.
I was reading a novel by T.C. Boyle at the time, called Water Music. As I was walking by the croc-enclosure one afternoon, it seemed like the thing almost posed for me, very similar to the cover of my book. Here's a picture of it, and vid-clip.
By the way, I'm not sure what sort of sound effects I was making toward the end there -- please forgive me, I was half-loaded at the time…