Well, yes, I'm back from good old Kansas City. Friends--particularly those in KC--I am sad to report that my take on this city is, sorry, that it sucks. Part of it is a certain amount of misrepresentation, which I cannot blame on KC; you see, after spending many meetings at airport-based hotels, I was finally led to believe that this time, we'd be at a hotel with retail connections, proximity to the urban center, etc.

This was all true in the sense that "The check is in the mail" is true, provided you sent the check to Provo, Utah and made it out to Diana Moon Glampers. The Hyatt Regency Crown Center hotel is in the city proper, and not 20 miles out of town, but it is also abutted by a four-block radius of city blocks that are, essentially, construction rubble. "Construction," by the way, being synonymous here with "willful neglect." The rubble sat mournfully, bereft of any sign of actual workers doing any kind of construction, like abandoned children waiting for someone in a limo to come pick them up and give them a nice life.

As for the retail core, there was the Crown Center, a mall-ish thing reachable after a long walk through some skybridges known as The Link, which I supposed at least ensured that its users would have a pleasingly rubble-free experience as they sped their way to the juicy stores; I further assumed that The Link was a fairly hassle-free way of making sure that anyone in the mood to shop wouldn't be troubled by the panhandlers below skulking through the desolate rubble.

Unfortunately, the Crown Center was pretty dispiriting. One of my coworkers scampered happily into a Hallmark store to buy awful-smelling candles--she couldn't find these at home? She enjoys the smell of what I swear was Urinal Cakes?--and another bought his boyfriend a little thingy of incredibly-priced cologne from the good folks at Puma. You know, like the shoes. When You Want Your Man To Smell Like Feet! Apparently, branded scents are very big these days. For Christ's sake, Hummer has its own custom stink. I hate colognes. In the meantime, I kept staring at a shop called "Pretzel Time," but its neon sign was kind of funky, so I kept seeing "Pretzel Toe," which was briefly amusing in that I'd probably opt for an odor reminiscent of salty metatarsals before I would one that supposedly evoked that of a Hummer, which is a punchline of a vehicle if I ever saw one.

I hate colognes.

Anyway, the meeting was, of course, boring and endless, featuring long PowerPoint presentations with alternatingly mysterious and/or horrifying phrases. As to the former, here are some gems. Try and stay awake as I simply list them: Hypertriglyceridemia. Micro-array. FISH analysis. (Actually, that last one briefly excited me, as I wondered if we were going to get some serious Abe Vigoda data. Alas, no.) At another presentation (exemplefying the latter), I heard "Think outside the box!" once, and the word "synergy" three times. My notes are murky all around, really. For some reason, I wrote this at one point: "Phase II (randomized), Sorafenib + Tipifarnib . . . " and then there's just a scrawled line trailing off the page, which I assume is when I had my stroke.

Lord, it's good to be back.

Tomorrow: How I Learned To Intensify Worrying And Hate Airline Travelers.