It’s so strange to return home late at night after working through a long weekend. Other people are well-rested and relaxed, and you’re still trying to sort out what town you’re in, whether you’re still speaking your native tongue, and where you might have put your license after you went through the security screening at an airport five states away.

Those of us who came home on flights last night slowly wandered into the office this morning. It is not a day for difficult tasks or complex thoughts. Today is a day for getting caught up on email, for cleaning the desk, for going over details of the weekend past.

It will not be a late night. I will go home at the appointed time. Things do not need to get done quickly today, although it would be good if a thing or two were to get crossed off the list.

Three of us decided to turn down a party invitation to stay in last night and work on our knitting projects. Suzanne and I are both behind our desired schedule for our Knitting Olympics projects, and Chickona is working on her first sweater.

Much to our surprise, at 8:30, our friends called. Please come to the party, they said. There’s food — and you’ll love the location. You’ll be disappointed if you miss the City Museum, they claimed.

We grumbled. We groaned. But eventually we gave in and agreed to come join them.

And thank goodness we did.

The St. Louis City Museum is awesome. It’s like a children’s museum, but aimed at everyone. So there are quirky things like an architectural hallway with pieces of St. Louis buildings (including a surprising number of doorknobs). And there’s an arts and crafts corner. But there are also slides all over the place. And areas where you can climb through and up and across the building. There’s an aquarium with petting tanks. (Turtles are surprisingly cold to the touch, even when one remembers they are cold-blooded.) There’s a section of caves. There’s a whole outside component (which we did not take advantage of in the balmy teens).

So after a trip where the biggest (nay, only) crowd we saw was when the SuperCross was letting out and where abandoned buildings outnumbered those in-use, it was a huge relief to discover that there was life in St. Louis after all and that people were putting old buildings (in this case, an old shoe factory) to new and creative uses.

St. Louis had been disappointing; the City Museum salvaged my impression of it. And in the process, it vaulted to the head of the line in terms of my best museum experiences.

I’m not quite sure what’s going on with my body, but it has decided it’s exhausted. I mean, sure part of it is the fact that I’m traveling again — and that I wasn’t really excited about this destination. And part of it has to do with poor sleeping cycles — up too late and then again too early.

But last night I arrived back at the hotel at 10 — and crashed hard.

I didn’t wake up when Rudi called. I could hardly pull myself out of bed at 8:30 this morning. And now I’m hearing my bed call to me…

Hopefully, I’ll manage to get out with a friend tonight, because I’d like to see him while I’m in town.

I look forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight (provided the weather in Chicago — don’t ask — permits my plane through without difficulty.

I’ll update you all on the rest of the trip tomorrow. I know you’re eagerly awaiting reports on the Alamo and on the Hootersesque pub I ate dinner at last night…

My first impressions of San Antonio are mixed. On the one hand, the city is surprisingly small and has very little diversity in its cuisine and shopping. On the other hand, the River Walk incorporates nature in interesting ways into the city’s personality.

I’m stuck on the other side of the Interstate from Downtown, next to a tiny University of Texas-San Antonio campus. Downtown is walkable, but it’s not necessarily the most comfortable walk to make from a pedestrian’s point of view. Periodically the sidewalk disappears and crosswalks are at some intersections, but not all. There were stretches of blocks where I was the only pedestrian in sight, and honking cars are frequent. It was a great relief yesterday morning to escape to the River Walk, where if there were still few others out strolling, at least there was no one making lewd comments or gestures.

This afternoon I hope to take in the Alamo (which I saw the outside of last night), La Villita arts and crafts “village,” and maybe O. Henry’s house, which I saw on a map.

While I wouldn’t cry with disappointment if I ever had to come back to San Antonio, I wouldn’t opt to come on my own again. There just doesn’t seem to be enough here to merit it.

A special three beautiful things from my first 24 hours in San Antonio:

1. I woke up briefly on the flight from D.C. to Dallas and happened to look over my shoulder to see the sun rising behind me on the other side of the plane. If you think sunrises are pretty on the ground, you should definitely try them at 30,000 feet.

2. The temperature yesterday in San Antonio was in the mid-70s. I was able to walk around in a t-shirt.

3. We were accidentally refunded our payment on the booth we ordered for the conference we’re attending. After Heather and I set the booth up, she went to go back to her hotel, and I, who had the company credit card info, went to repay for our space. When I arrived at the right spot, it turned out they’d ordered lunch for the exhibitors. So Heather and I managed to get a free lunch out of the deal.