I read the other day that a bit of burnt toast helps with a hangover. Some theory about carbon adsorption in the bloodstream and effective impurity filtration. I read about some guy who swore by it, always burning his morning toast after a night out. It seemed to work for him, but I thought the entire thing altogether questionable.

Last night, after a rather wretched week of work, a week where the universe and all within it conspired against me, where office hours and politics bore down heavy like a ton of corporate bricks, I met up with Matt, Bob, Charlie and a few others for what I swore to myself would be "just a couple drinks." Maybe a beer or two, maybe a cocktail here and there. I was exhausted, mentally spent, and I desperately needed some rest. My plan: I would stay for twenty, maybe thirty minutes, and head home at nine, in time to get enough rest for an early morning today.

How time flies when the company is delightful.

How alcohol flows when time flies.

Somehow I managed to leave before midnight, and after the fifteenth attempt at goodbyes, thanking everyone for protecting me throughout the evening from the too-friendly tall man in the red jacket (Matt so graciously played the part of my husband during the episode), I piled myself into a cab for the journey home.

I got to work on time this morning, my brain still reeling and the room whirling gently about me as I ordered breakfast. "Eggs and tomatoes on wheat toast, please." As I waited in line for my order, I thought about last evening and the new friends made. I thought about the good time had, I thought about the alcohol consumed. I looked up at the short order cook just as the bread came out of the toaster. "Uhm, excuse me?" I said. "The toast. Could you put it through the oven one more time?" He looked at me puzzled. "I'm just trying something I read about the other day," I said. "Could you, uhm, just burn it a little?"

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Five days in Key West: five days of glorious warmth, of salty island breezes, of a hundred cats and chickens running wild, of pelicans and hawks and seagulls flying high, of shorts and tee shirts, of sandals and flip flops, of endless blues and greens and pinks and reds and yellows. Ahh, as with most vacations it was altogether too short. We arrived back in New York late last night a bit browner than we left, a bit more relaxed.

Thanks Key West, for demanding so much nothingness. We'll be back again soon enough.

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After an uneventful flight, we arrived in Miami Wednesday night and immediately began driving south towards Homestead, where we found a tiny motel a little off the main road with rates discounted after midnight, perfect for late-night stragglers like us. We checked in with the bleary-eyed nightshift and fell fast asleep.

The following morning I awoke early, excited at the first day of vacation and being altogether silly, making strange faces and funny voices until Greg laughed himself awake. We threw our luggage into the little rental car and continued south on Route 1.

What glorious, glorious weather!

As we left the mainland, we kissed the southeastern tip of the Everglades goodbye and mentally prepared ourselves for the three or so hour trip hopping down the keys. Past Key Largo we drove, past Plantation Key, past Islamorada, past Layton, past Marathon and over the Seven Mile Bridge, past tiny keys with names like Little Duck Key, nothing but the multi-shaded turquoise Atlantic surrounding us to the left and to the right.

We arrived in Key West sometime after lunchtime, stuffed from a quick roadside stop to grab a bite to eat and exhausted in the pleasant kind of way that the early stages of vacations can sometimes be. We've been soaking in the tropical warmth since, lounging poolside and watching sunsets, munching on key lime pie and sipping on cocktails, lazy beyond description.

It's truly amazing what a couple days away from reality can do. The slow pace of life, the surreal air of relaxation, everyone smiling and happy and content.

A guy can get really, really used to this.

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I want to write, I don't want to write. My brain's been in a rut lately.

I want to write about the dinner I took my mom to Friday night for relatives celebrating their newborn son, and about the excitement that happened at the restaurant. I want to write about the message awaiting me when I got home that my friend's mother had died, and about how I squeezed Greg's hand as he hastily swiped at the tear that fell to his lap during the Sunday morning funeral. I want to write about the book I'm reading where the mother has just died giving birth, and about how uncomfortable it made me feel to read it now. I want to write about the pigeon couple nesting outside our bedroom window, and about how they're no longer nervous when we peer curiously at them and the tiny egg they're nursing. I want to write about my hairdresser's dog that had died, and about the puppy with the same name that looks just like the old one that just replaced it.

Birth and death. Mothers and children. Sometimes life saddens me so.

I want to write about things I see, I see so much, about this and that, about everything and nothing. But I'm distracted these days and have no motivation when I sit before an empty page. I scribble some, uninspired. I write a bit more, and I delete.

Maybe I'm suffering from seasonal affective disorder. My dentist told me a few days ago that he was really feeling the winter this year, and I agreed. Perhaps a few days in Key West will cure me of the winter blues. We're heading there in a few hours.

I can't wait.

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Last night I tipped the cabbie a twenty on a nineteen-dollar ride home. "Where is the nearest car wash?" he had asked, his voice lilting and soft in the polite way that South Asian manners dictate. "I need to shampoo."

My colleagues and I spent an evening out yesterday together, the nine of us traipsing down to Churrascaria Plataforma, the Brazilian rodizio-style restaurant sitting just in the shadow of the bright lights of Times Square and the Theater District. There we spent a few hours, gorging ourselves like wild boar on the endless rounds of beef and pork and chicken and lamb and salmon that made their way to our table. Flip the coaster to green and they keep piling on the meat; flip the coaster to red and you've lost not only your meal ticket but in the high-testosterone atmosphere, your dignity. You've lost, been beaten by the system.

The first in our group to surrender was the Bulgarian. The last two standing, the Guyanese and the Brazilian, both chugged along steadily and noncommittally, eyeing each other and the considerable mountains of cholesterol in front of them. Their coasters stayed green, screaming Bring it on! to the lines of waiters and their giant skewers. The rest of us had long resigned, sitting back to watch the spectacle with our pitchers of passion fruit caipirinha and glasses of port. Soon enough they too had had enough, and one by one they flipped their coasters to red. Bastante!

We knew we had all had impossibly too much to eat. After dinner we made our way through the cold night air, groggy from the cachaça and sluggish from the heavy fare. We spilled into a bar a few blocks down and promptly devoured a round of beers. "Okay," I said, "let's get this show on the road." I ordered the first round of shots.

In the four hours of debauchery that followed, we drank as much as we dared, and then some, losing count after a dozen shots each. Snake bites, kamikazes, lemon drops, sex on the beach: all of them mammoth, all of them toxic, one after the other and in rapid succession.

It was some time after midnight that I managed to break free from the enormous tide of peer pressure to stay, and piled myself into a cab. "To Queens, please." I said. "Queensboro Bridge, yes. Queens Boulevard. Yes, okay." I convinced myself that I was coherent before slumping into a comatose heap in the backseat.

The poor cab driver, he didn't know he had one of those types in his car.

It must have been the last shot, I told myself; it must have been the mix of alcohol, the dubious quantities of this and that. It must have been the roads sloshing everything around inside me in the worst possible way. Whatever it was, somewhere right after we had crossed the East River, somewhere in a cold and darkened Queens, I put both hands to my face and threw up.

"Sir, are you okay?" The cabbie slowed to a stop. "Please do not throw up in my car," he said, almost apologetically as though it were somehow his fault. "I will stop and open the door for you to throw up." I heaved violently and threw up again into my hands. In what seemed like an eternity but really was nothing more than half a second, I sat there, examining what I had produced. The thick, warm liquid lay dripping through my cupped hands, speckled with pink and the consistency of day-old batter. It felt strangely satisfying. The cabbie opened the passenger door and I tossed the contents of my hands outside before heaving twice more into the snow. "Oh, oh, oh," he said, as he handed me a paper towel. "Oh no."

We rode the rest of the way home in silence, the windows down to let in the cold air. As we rolled to a stop outside my apartment, I handed him two crisp twenty-dollar bills. "I'm really sorry for the mess," I said. "I'm really, really sorry."

He looked at the bills and smiled. "Don't worry about it, sir, don't worry about it. I know it is not your fault, I know it is not your fault." He pocketed the cash and sighed gently as he slowly surveyed the landscape of the backseat. "Where is the nearest car wash?" he asked. "I need to shampoo."

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Sunday morning finds me in a warm corner of the bedroom, curled up like a cat and looking out through the window at the lazy expanse of western sky. I spent the last hour just sitting here under a heavy blanket, doing nothing but watching through the trees the sun rise slowly to the east. We've been in Vermont since Thursday.

It's always a treat to have a long weekend, it truly is. This time, we both took Friday off from work, driving north Thursday night to do a bit of skiing. It's been a brutal winter this year, and this weekend though a touch warmer than last is certainly no exception. With windchills below zero it's certainly been cold, and our bodies ache that satisfying ache after two days of the outdoors.

As I sit here now typing this, the valley below is beginning to stir, and I think about when poets talk about the sun kissing the hills. Because right here in Vermont, right now, in that short and magical time called dawn, when the sun's early morning rays stretch low over the land's gentle rolling and washes everything over with soft light the colour of roses and lilacs, I feel it within my grasp to know what it is they mean. Because when the tops of the hills and the trees and the distant, faraway mountains glow in that somber hue, when the apple orchard and the tiny farm below and the fields and fields of untouched white slowly wake from night's cold slumber, I can pretend to understand why it is that poets make rhyme and writers write books and painters put paint to canvas. And it is right then and there, just for that briefest of moments, I close my eyes and hold my breath and make believe I can see it all.

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