Home Sweet Home...

I am back in Vancouver just in time for Valentine's Day. I am wondering if the B & B still has rooms for the big weekend.

Arriving at the airport at midnight, o-so-relaxed from a month in the Mexican sun, I meet the slap in the face culture shock of returning home. Canada Customs puts their most surly(I hate my job) agent out to welcome me back. She never meets my eye, no smile, but she is full of mumbly irrelevant questions like "Did I travel to Puerto Vallarta to meet anyone?" This girl has just too much imagination and too little sense to be wearing a badge.

Waiting at the luggage carousel, I look up at TV carrying the late night local sports. This is strange because the local TV Sports Guy was actually on the flight from Phoenix with me. Of course, the big-screen is filled with a slam-bang hockey fist-fight, where nobody can land a punch as they grip each other's sweaters and swing around in circles on the ice. A real Canadian Waltz.

Someone just hardly bumps me with their luggage cart and I hear my first Canadian "Sorry!" Regrettably, we seem to use this word as much as Mexicans say "Hola!" Minus the smiles and eye contact.

I make it out to the Airport's Meet & Greet area. I told my husband to go to bed as he had work early the next day. Just warm up the sheets for me, please. I glance around not really expecting to see my Valentine. And no, he is not there. Instead, I meet the eye of BC.'s Premier Gordon Campbell, standing alone, very much by himself in the busy crowd. Like most locals, when he sees me looking, he suddenly has to check his Blackberry. Most of the world doesn't even know Blackberry is Canadian.

I am home.