I began this entry at the time posted, 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 5. I have finished it, but it is now 4:32 p.m., and I've only gotten through maybe the first five hours of the trip. So instead of a one-entry overview of the weekend, this will be a serialized account (as I usually do). I'll try to get through it tonight, but who knows if I'll fulfill my promise.

Something must be done about the overwhelming sense of dread that comes with returning from vacation. I hear stories about people who come home feeling refreshed and rejuvinated, ready to return to work and looking at the day with fresh eyes.

I think those people are heavily medicated.

I am not ready to go back to work. I have a mild case of feeling refreshed, but I think all it's done is lessen the feeling of malaise, that sense that there's a dark cloud hovering over me and only me that usually accompanies me to work after two days off. On top of it, I'm working Tuesday -- tonight -- rather than Wednesday, because I took Sunday and Monday off instead of Monday and Tuesday to make the three-day trip to New Orleans cost a single personal day, rather than two vacation days. I watched Casey wake up, shower, dress and eat breakfast this morning in a foul, gray, Grumpy Care Bear mood because it was 24 degrees outside and she had to be at work at 11:30. I was quiet and reserved, but only because my work day doesn't begin until 5:30 p.m. To put off my sadness, I called Dave and Jess and made plans for lunch. I could've held onto that $15, but I felt it was a small price to pay for a few more hours of pleasant happiness before I go to The Office.

So now I'm doing laundry and hoping to get it all done before I leave for work. It was a great three-day trip to the Crescent City, though the weather could've cooperated a little more and I suppose I could've taken a more active approach to planning things, but I had a fine time nonetheless.

Casey and I got up at 4 a.m. Saturday -- only three hours after I'd gotten there -- for a 7:05 a.m. flight and managed to shower and be out the door by just a little after 5 a.m. We were on Newark Airport property by 5:30, as we'd planned, but we didn't get to the terminal until the 6 a.m. side of 5:45 because the economy parking lots are located past the end of the runway and we'd just missed a shuttle to the terminal right as we parked. So we stood there in the predawn cold awaiting the next bus while two planes roared overhead as they landed.

We didn't expect too many travelers at 6 a.m. on a Saturday, and as other passengers were dropped off at terminals A and B, there did not seem to be many. Then we got to Terminal C, home of Continental, and it looked like the day before Thanksgiving. The ticket counters had people extending beyond the end of the roped off queues, so we asked if we had to wait even with e-tickets. They told us to go down one level and there we found check-in paradise: Not more than two people standing at the end of the queue, where a Continental rep scanned the agents and told you where to go when a computer opened up. Casey and I just had to stand there.

Checking in and checking our bag was a breeze -- not more than 10 minutes -- and we made our way to the security checkpoint. It was my first time flying since September, and although I'd been to the airport twice and been familiar with the increased security of signs reading "Absolutely no knives beyond this point," the elaborate system at the checkpoint was new. It appeared to be a newly constructed set of x-ray machines and metal detectors, all redone in a terminal renovated within the past four years or so. We stood in another roped off line and had our boarding passes looked at before approaching the metal detectors.

Casey put her bag and coat down first and went through as I laid mine on the conveyor belt. In that time, an old man in a cheery mood taking very small steps shuffled his way through while his wife placed her purse on the belt. When the man got through the detector -- a long one, which took me several steps to pass through -- the guard asked him to remove his hat (something like a fedora), and he did so with a tip and a bow. While the thought of a gent who could not win a race against a crawling baby being used to smuggle something beneath his hat was amusing to me, it showed just how the security measures have improved. Whether that's because Newark was the origination point of United Flight 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania, I do not know.

Hunger caught up with me on Concourse C, so I ordered hotcakes at McDonald's and ate them while talking with Casey. When I'd finished at about 6:35, we continued down the concourse to our gate, which was located at the very end. While eating, I'd listened to some of the announcements over the intercom, mainly because the destinations attract me: "Will Orlando passenger ..."; "Paging Las Vegas customer ..."; etc. Then when I heard "Will New Orleans passenger ..." I didn't take much notice, though I must've subconsciously anticipated what came next: "Casey and New Orleans passenger Dan report to gate C87 for departure." Casey looked at me and said, "Was that us?" I looked at my watch, amazed, and said, "Yep."

So we speedwalked to the gate and boarded the plane (after another ticket-ID check) and sat down in the window (me) and center (her) seats of row 11, but we weren't even the last ones on the plane. And still, with everybody on board 25 minutes before departure, we only got off maybe a few minutes early. But the flight was so sparsely booked that the older man in the aisle seat next to Casey got up and moved across the aisle to sit with his wife, in the other aisle seat.

Casey and I slept through most of the flight, missing out on drinks, though I was awakened by the sound of the simultaneous opening of cereal bags sometime after we'd reached our cruising altitude. Turbulence woke me again around 8:30 -- though it may have been 9:30, since I'm not sure when I remembered New Orleans is in a different time zone and I changed my watch. As the turbulence continued, I thought to myself how there must be extra areas of rough air on the way to New Orleans to induce vomiting and prepare everyone for a stay in the Big Easy. At the time, I thought it was a pretty funny observation, but when I told it to Casey later, she responded with an emotionless "Ew." I think it was the fatigue on my part.

The flight continued without incident and as we began our initial descent, we dropped through the clouds to reveal Lake Ponchartrain below and the long causeway that spans the 27 miles of water from Chinchuba to New Orleans. Our landing pattern took us over the swamps to the west and I gazed at the scene below. Soon we were back over developed land and maybe 1,000 or 2,000 feet from touchdown.

Then the engines revved and we were climbing again, rising in the sky and turning back up into some low wisps of clouds and slight turbulence. The cabin fell silent and once passengers realized we weren't going to crash -- at least not in the recent past, though knowing nothing of the near future -- a few began making a few nervous jokes. "Are we going up again?" Casey asked me. "That's what it seems like," I said. My heart pounding rapidly, I don't remember if her hand was in mine, though if it were she likely would've said something when I clenched whatever it was I was holding. A few minutes later, the captain came on the intercom: "Ladies and gentlemen, this is the captain. Sorry about that, we were on our final approach into New Orleans when we noticed that a front end flap, which helps us slow down when we land, wasn't in aggreement with where we'd like it to be. So we're going to circle around and try again and see if we can't get everything worked out."

About then my heart slowed from the rate of a hummingbird to something closer to that of a human.

As we came around and tried again, I looked out my window -- which overlooked the right wing -- and peered across to the left wing looking for what might be considered the front end flap, or whatever it was. Casey saw this and said teasingly, "Yeah, like you know what you're looking for." Our next attempt was a success -- without incident -- and we were on the ground in New Orleans.