Have you ever been on a flight and thought to yourself, “Man, I’d be much more comfortable if I were naked”?

Well, brace yourself, because if you happen to be near the German town of Erfurt on July 5, you may just have the opportunity.  A travel agent there is currently planning a nudist day trip to a Baltic Sea destination, during which travelers can actually disrobe on the plane should they so desire (and it’s a nudist day trip - no time for modesty if you’re traveling at 30,000 feet).

All I can say is, I hope they turn the temperature up.  Planes tend to be a bit on the cold side, and that would be unfortunate for many of the male passengers.

Those crazy Germans.

A couple of months ago I wrote an entry relating to Santa’s “ho, ho, ho” thing and its banning in Sydney, which of course drifted into a tongue-in-cheek rant about feminism. Upon checking Technorati the other day, which is the dominant search engine and link tracker for blogs, I was surprised to find that this blog had already been discovered by a self-proclaimed feminist on the women-powered BlogHer.com. Though it may not have been utterly complimentary to me (and my last name was listed as “Caitlin,” something I’ve had to deal with all my life for whatever reason), I still feel proud about my post because, let’s be honest, the key to a good blog post is its ability to trigger healthy discussion. Anyway, you can read Suzanne’s entry, “Slut, Slut, Slut! Merry Xmas!,” on the BlogHer website. Thanks for the shout-out, Suzanne! And no offense was meant by my attempt at a humorous entry.

It doesn’t matter now, regardless.  The idea was shot down - it originally stemmed from the thought that blurting out “ho, ho, ho” had the potential to scare little kids - and Santa can keep up his old habits.

I figured I’d finish up my lunch break by posting an update. If you visit this regularly, you’ll note that the template keeps changing. I think I’m going to settle on this one, though. I like the blue-gray-black look. Very sleek.

Meg and I celebrated our two-year (!!) anniversary on the 13th, and she treated me to a weekend at Harrah’s in Atlantic City. Unfortunately luck wasn’t on my side, but Meg was making money everywhere - video poker (she got four Ace’s - who does that??), penny slots (all I could hear was “ding, ding, ding, ding, ding” over and over again, and her first ever poker game with real poker players and real money. So she was happy, and because she was happy I was happy, and it was just a great weekend. As much time as we spend together during the week, it’s a nice change when we can go away for a time and leave behind phones, computers, work, etc., just spending time together.

Becks and Ness, two of my good friends from university, have booked their flights over to the States for a ten-day visit over Easter weekend in March. I’m so excited! Undoubtedly AC will be on the cards that week as well, because I can’t see either of them turning down free alcohol; plus, it’s just a fun place to be.

In other news, I feel really strange and surprisingly upset about the death of Heath Ledger. I think it’s because it was so unexpected - he was young, clean, a new father, and, from what I gathered from interviews, quite a nice guy. It’s just a shame, really. 10 Things I Hate About You, the movie that I watched nearly every day my freshman year in college, will never be the same.

I haven’t taken a vacation since I started the job that I currently hold; yes, I’ve taken a day off here and there, and the end of one week when Meg’s brother graduated from Marine boot camp, but it’s never been like a real vacation. I ended up having to cancel on our plans to go to Cyprus with some university friends back in September due to the fact that just flying over there would have cost me over $1200 - a bit obscene, really - and things were busy at work and basically all the odds were against it.

In any case, I finally made it to London two days after Christmas. Meg came with me, as well as our friends Anita and Karen, and we stayed at my friend S’s house; she, coincidentally, just came out a few months ago after much speculation, and I was eager to check out the London gay scene with her (not that we ended up doing much of that, but never mind). It was a fabulous ten days, rowdy, crazy … though in hindsight, if I were to go back in time and take the trip again, I would probably change a few things, not sleep many of the days away, visit more sights, that sort of thing.

We decided, upon much deliberation, to go to a club called Wish for New Year’s. If only they had a place like that in the NYC-area! It was a wicked club - two levels, the basement bit playing thumpy electronic/techno music, and the upstairs bit playing alternative, sing-a-long kind of stuff (think The Killers, The Fratellis, all of those fun groups). We went with a group of S’s friends from around the UK, all of them uber-trendy lesbians with killer haircuts (which I want to imitate, but I’m a pussy when it comes to new hairstyles, so we’ll see how far that goes), but sadly we never really got a chance to interact too much. I did meet Miss Gay Manchester, who was off her face but hilarious and very nice, and it’s kind of cool to say that I’ve met a minor celebrity, anyway. S ended up going to a house party later in the evening, and Anita and Karen went home as Karen wasn’t feeling well, so I spent most of the night dancing with my girlfriend and our friend James, who’s simply fabulous - straight, but fabulous. A good night, in general, and a relatively cheap one with good music. Can’t go wrong with that.

The rest of the time in London was spent meeting up with friends from school. It was the first time I’d seen most of them in over a year, and it was great to catch up. I miss that group and all of their eccentricities. On the upside, a number of them are planning visits to the States in the first half of this year: three definitely, another two or three maybe.

Anyway, now I’m well into the daily grind once again. I think my aversion to taking vacations from work stems from the fact that, even when I take a day off, things change, methods change, goals change. In a start-up, especially in the software industry, things just seem to happen so fast. In any case, now I’m back to work and it’s crazy-busy, but everything we’re doing is so interesting that the only problem I have is that there are only so many hours in a day!