I'm already feeling a thousand times better about this morning than I was yesterday morning.

Yesterday, I woke up with a cigarette and a half in my pack (it's remarkably hard to find a convenience store in Minneapolis) and zero connectivity on the WiFi in my hotel room. I tried my best to cope, but stripped of two of my seven biggest addictions dead not play well on my already overstressed mind.

Add to that the uncomfortable martial law feeling of the city I'd experienced the day before and the dark ominous cloud pressing itself down upon the sky outside my window. (And, as it would turn out, getting actual blogging work done would continue to be a difficulty throughout the day, for a multitude of reasons.)

I was starting to feel like I was doomed to spend the week in Mordor. Believe me, if I could have given the One Ring to Samwise, I would have. (Let him get eaten by a fucking Republican spider. I'm going back to the Shire and smoking pipeweed.)

But today is already different. There's a beautiful, cool and breezy Minnesota morning outside my hotel room. My connectivity is "Very Good." I have twelve "emergency" packs of cigarettes in my bag (still cost less than one pack in New York). And the lovely, effervescent Governor of Alaska Harriet Palin is set to wow the crowds who are prepared to pretend to be wowwed in the convention tonight.

Finally, the all-seeing eye has turned its attention away from me.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go and smoke my 19th cigarette of the day.