Recovered from the jet lag and feeling myself again...

It's amazing how jet lag can make me feel down and depressed, but equally amazing how, once cured, I'm back to my normal self again. After retiring at 7pm last night and hitting the sack, missing dinner in the process, I awoke this morning a different person. Washed and dressed by 7am I'd finished breakfast by 7.30am and was sitting with Sam, the taxi driver, riding along East Washington towards downtown. All was good with the world, I was happy with the hotel – based on the fact that to stay in town would have cost me considerably more than the additional money I have to fork out on cabs (my hotel is just $70 per night (or thereabouts) and it's fine. Today for breakfast I had my usual Rice Krispies and this time I found some teabags (they did have tea, despite me thinking they didn't yesterday). Having missed dinner, I had two slices of toast, a yoghurt and an apple.

Lunch time, downtown Indianapolis – but hardly any cars on the road.

It was a good day's work too and I was pleased to see that Crystal Palace held Liverpool to a 3-3 draw, despite the fact that the scousers had been 3-0 up earlier in the match. Palace has been brilliant of late, even beating Chelsea a few weeks ago, much to a colleague of mine's dismay. I still find it odd that they're in the Premiership, but they are, which is good for a Croydon club – or rather Croydon's only club. Croydon, technically, is not my home town. I'm from Sutton, which is about six miles west of Croydon, so I should be supporting Sutton United, but now that I live in the Croydon area, perhaps I ought to start supporting Palace.

Indianapolis is buzzing more than it has been over the weekend, thanks to the convention – or make that conventions; there's some kind of knitting event going on as well as a wire show, plus the convention I'm attending, but the traffic hasn't really picked up even if there are more people around town, including the 'hungry and homeless' – who look surprisingly young and sprightly – and a few of those 'statue' people you often find in places like Covent Garden in London.

What's happening in the news?
 My hotel, while low cost (which can only be a good thing) is seemingly getting better by the day. This morning I discovered complimentary copies of USA Today in which I found the following:-

• Health care spending in the USA has risen at the fastest pace since 1980, thanks to new health insurance laws, which have prompted many more Americans to visit doctors and hospitals.

• A poll shows that Republicans have gained a great deal of popularity of late. A nationwide USA Today/Pew Research Center Poll shows the strongest tilt towards Republican candidates at this point in a mid-term year.

• Nine people have been seriously injured in a high wire circus act. During some kind of aerial stunt, at least nine performers were injured when a metal frame they were hanging from 'tore loose from a metal truss'. Eight women fell between 25 and 40 feet, landing on a dancer on the ground.

American television...

Before hitting the sack I switched on the box, something I don't often do while away, and flicked through the channels. There are so many channels and so many chat shows too. I watched a bit of Letterman – an actress promoting her movie told of how she likes eating clay – and then found two or three other chat shows, all with guests I didn't know. The movie Carousel was on another channel and I watched a few moments of it before getting bored, switching off and falling asleep.