The Aerosmith version, not the Gene Autry version

You know the song I'm talking about.*

Mrs. Blog and I returned to the UAE yesterday from the United States of Awesome yesterday. A country, I should add, that was true to its promises of delicious food and good company. For instance, I had barbecue in four states and margaritas in three. I even saw a bald eagle, soaring on the winds of freedom. And by freedom, I mean eastern Iowa.

Actual Arthur Bryant's sandwich consumed by actual blogger.

How great a visit was it? During an afternoon at my friend's bar I ran into this guy. That's a bonus vacation experience you can't put a price tag on.

It's always a difficult transition back to the Middle East, with the little differences driven home almost immediately. There is simply no way to soften the impact of arriving at an airport festooned with construction barriers and signs that lead nowhere.

Like this but with 150 percent more plaster dust.

The jet lag doesn't help either; I am writing this with the help of unhealthy amounts of caffeine and equally unhealthy amounts of sleep deprivation. On the bright side, though, the imbalances in my body chemistry might help me appreciate the royal wedding a little bit more.

Anyway, dissociative feelings aside, it is good, at least, to not have to consider another long plane ride in the immediate future. Now, if we could just find some way of staving off the onset of the oven-like summer....

*And if you don't, click here.

The story of my life

It's official. The Internet is now everywhere. On my desktop, my laptop, my phone and even, as it turns out, my childhood.

For the first time in history, every home I have ever lived in is now visible on Google Street View... with the exception of the Budget Building, whose Abu Dhabi locale a) doesn't have a searchable address and b) Google probably doesn't want to bother with anyway.

And I actually had a lengthy post planned out, as you can embed a pannable, zoomable Street View frame in the blog. Wouldn't it be neat to show people all these places, I thought to myself?

Yes, Smarter Self replied, but it would be a lot less neat for anyone with a keyboard to be able to see your entire residence history, steal your identity and use it to start an online brothel in Bangkok.

So never mind.

Suffice to say it was a roller-coaster journey from Midtown Kansas City to almost Abu Dhabi. As I said, Google, like good customer service and excellent club sandwiches, has not yet arrived in the UAE. Perhaps someday it will, and when you type "Muroor Road, after Delma Bridge, opposite Al Wadi Furniture... no, farther down. Yes, stop by grocery" it will pop right up on Street View.

For now, though, I think I'll just enjoy entertaining applications of technology and basking in the fact that I have lived in a lot of great places.