Do you think I’m under a bit of stress lately? I’ve certainly been talking about it a lot, haven’t I?

To relieve stress, I usually cook a ginourmous pot of stew or pasta sauce — which of couse is in itself a form of stress…the prep work, the chopping and especially the clean up. There must be better ways to leave your troubles behind.

There is, it’s called travel. I just came back from Vegas and had a wonderful time. I love everything about travel — truth be told, I don’t even mind the circus act that we know today as airport security. I love the language of flying, I love to stare out the window duing much of the flight…and I love, love, love hotel room service menus.

Eggs, over-easy, side of bacon and big pot of coffee…is the perfect remedy after a night of libation and gambling and whatever else it is that “stays in Vegas.”

Do yourself a favor, and plan a really nice trip for yourself and your significant other…but, before you do, take a little blogosphere trip to Fly Away Cafe, a wonderful Blog (isn’t that a great Blog Name?) written by Mary Jo Manzanares. Mary Jo is an expert on almost every little thing related to travel. FlyAwayCafe.com offers tips, how-to’s and overall an enlightened perspective on how, where, when and sometimes why we travel.

Have fun…and DO NOT BRING YOUR BLACKBERRY!

I wanted this be a light-hearted piece about one of my favorite office observations: the difference between how men and women talk at work. You know, men say things like: Boil the frog (ask your boyfriend what that means) or Get a leg up or Sh**ts and giggles…and women say things like do me a favor? or please, or I’m sorry, or thank you.

But I became side-tracked. As I was searching on-line for some references, I came across this Newsweek review of three new high-schoolish book titles of which the focus is how undermining, sneaky and downright mean women are to each other at work. (And maybe just in general) — how we’re supposed to navigate through this stuff and look great doing it! These books are really just $16.00 blogs.

Reading the article just made me want to take a big ‘ol nap.

My feeling is — if someone in HR were to calculate all of the working hours lost as a result of the time spent on this crap at work, there would be such shock and horror over the complete waste of resources, that whole employee manuals would be re-written and heads would roll.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t be aware of the politics of women at work; I’m saying we wast too much energy taking it all so seriously.

Everyone get back to work!

And I’m sure glad I work for me…if I want to compete with myself, well that’s between me and Dr. Phil

Or, how to feel and look fabulous traveling from home to work.

It’s 6:30am, you’re standing at your train stop, it’s freezing, your monthly ticket is somewhere at the bottom of your purse.

Instead of muttering how much you hate commuting and that you’re going to start looking for a job in your home town, here’s my top ten list of things to love about that chunk of time in the morning:

1. Keep saying to yourself that you are never going to get out of your PJs ever again.
2. Put all of your make-up on.
3. Change your shoes.
4. Read Rachel Ray’s new magazine but cover it with Fortune Magazine.
5. Type up the PowerPoint presentation that you swore you were going to do last night when you got home but Grey’s Anatomy was on.
6. Phone your assistant, and speak loudly enough so fellow passengers know how important you are.
7. Fix the ring tone on your phone by down loading a Coldplay song.
8. See if you can successfully text message your boyfriend or husband.
9. Come up with names/logos of your the business you’ve been fantasizing about, such as your new blog about shoes.
10. Sleep. (mouth closed)

There, your at the train station…didn’t that go fast?

Illustration from: Allposters.com.