Mall Trauma

Landed in Melbourne at 9:30 in the morning...a 17 hour difference from Chicago... Rosalie and I were out of the airport by 10:30 and safely ensconced in our rooms at the Hilton South Wharf an hour later. Great hotel, right on the riverfront, attached to the mammoth Melbourne Convention Center and an even bigger direct factory outlet mall. I went shopping for an item my lovely wife-to-be requested, only to discover, after two hours of endless wandering through a bright maze of fashion retailers and shoe stores, that it wasn't available at any of the thousand or so vendors in the mall. Lordy. There's nothing like a seemingly endless maze of shops to discombobulate a jet-lagged tourist. We retreated back to the hotel with a few impulse purchases, and I beat a hasty path back to my room to collect myself. Wasted away the afternoon getting settled in and wired up, while realizing just how out of whack my body was...everything was creaking and cracking and all sorts of novel aches and pains started to come out of the woodwork, all while I was stumbling around in a thick fog of sleep-deprived stupidity. I watched 4 movies on the plane, a documentary, and read a bunch too, and only got maybe an hour of sleep in over the course of that long, long flight... In desperate need of a reboot, I got online and sought out an early evening yoga class to help me get settled into the here and now... best move EVER...