DH and I discovered on this past trip that we are not really vacation people. We don’t do weeklong vacations very well. This revelation came just a few weeks after we had booked a two week vacation to Alaska, starting in Anchorage, going up to Denali, and then hopping on a cruise down the coast to Vancouver. We’re currently working on re-booking for a roundtrip out of Seattle instead, skipping the land tour portion. We’ve decided that we’ll do the land tour on its own at some separate date (and probably save money in the process).
There’s a few reasons, not the least of which is Pancake. Pancake really suffers when we leave for a week. I mean, he has a sitter, and he gets the basic necessities…and he’s not a clingy cat, but he becomes a clingy cat for a few days whenever we leave for an extended period. I cannot imagine how he’d be after two weeks of being alone. The other problem is my work. It is extremely stressful to me to leave work for a week. Our team is understaffed…there’s not a single person on our team that isn’t overcommitted. While my manager does her best to manage the chaos while I’m out, she doesn’t have the time to pursue things actively…which means that projects fall behind. There’s no way for me to delegate everything out because things change on a day-to-day basis, and there’s no way to anticipate what will come up. If I left for two weeks, I’d either have to work periodically while gone to keep things moving or I’d have a huge mess on my hands when I came back. This has almost always been true of my job. I can enjoy five days of vacation (i.e., a vacation around a weekend) pretty easily. It’s the ones beyond that become tough, I think. Around the sixth day of being gone (or the fourth day away from work), I start worrying about what I’ve missed, which really ruins the vacation. And lastly, we just tend to get bored or burned out after awhile. We’ve done long vacations for Bridge before, and by the sixth day of Bridge, we’re brain-tired. We can play, but our play suffers or our mood suffers (or both). For vacations like this past one, where we don’t really have anything set to do, it’s easy for us to become bored, especially if the place we’re at doesn’t have a ton of activities (which Punta Cana had but they often didn’t actually happen). I found myself going to lunch just because there wasn’t anything else to do…or drinking because I was bored…and those are bad reasons for both activities.
The only weeklong vacation that really felt perfect was Disney in 2009. We mixed Disney with Bridge and family visits. Our Disney visit always falls during CES week, so, between that and people still being on holiday, work doesn’t get behind the same way. We don’t get bored because there’s an overwhelming amount of things to do.
So, we’re thinking that after this (now reduced) Alaska cruise, we’ll do our best to stick to long weekend vacations for awhile. We may just be getting burned out. DH just keeps winning things. He’ll be more burned out than me here pretty soon with all of his casino-won/comped trips coming up.
It was a very relaxing trip. Although owned by the same company, the resort was not nearly as luxe as the one we stayed at in Cancun. The travel agent that arranges these trips for Potawatomi (who we became friends with during the trip) told us that Excellence Punta Cana was bought from another resort chain and as such, it’s older than the rest of the Excellence resorts. (If you wanted to go there without winning the trip from Potawatomi, Excellence Punta Cana is cheaper than Excellence Playa Mujeres (Cancun), though.) I do think that Excellence Punta Cana has some unique advantages over Playa Mujeres. For example, Punta Cana has an open-air sports bar with pool tables, foosball, and ping pong. Punta Cana’s dance club is also larger. I did not like how Punta Cana’s dance club seemed to have these random mixer games thrown in every few songs. I mean, I can understand doing that sort of thing if the crowd is not already mingling and dancing, but it was frustrating to get really into the dancing and then have to clear the floor for the dance hosts to run a game. The games were fun and silly, though, and DH won many prizes.
Pictures from the trip are posted in the gallery at this link. I’m probably not going to bother captioning them, but here are a few that I think are worthy of comment, in vaguely chronological order:
Open air airports freak me out. Honolulu had an open air airport. It just feels strange to be at an airport that has no doors.
Granted, in a closed airport, you can never get a good picture of the plane like this one!
There were a bunch of cows between the airport and the resort. The resort was like 45 minutes from the airport, which is a very long time after you’ve been on a flight for six hours and haven’t eaten.
DH tried boogie boarding one day. He was mostly unsuccessful.
I, however, was very successful at sitting in a beach chair and watching him from the shade.
I also did some swinging while there.
We watched the Olympics from our TV in the room. The odd thing was that the resort’s NBC channel was out of Denver, of all places. So, “prime time” Olympics started at 10pm our time (7pm Denver time). Actually, most of our evening entertainment was watching the Olympics. I really have enjoyed Vancouver’s Olympics…the winter games are so much more fun to watch than summer! I loved the down parka skirts that the female greeters wore during the opening ceremonies, and I really liked the US snowboarding team’s uniforms. I loved the opening ceremonies, although I only saw the first half live…I saw the second half at home recently.
On Wednesday afternoon of our vacation, I started feeling not-so-great. (TMI follows throughout this paragraph…consider yourself warned. Skip to next paragraph if you don’t want to know.) As is customary at such places, I’d been drinking so I went back to the room to rest in the shade and also “detox” for the afternoon. That evening, I got ready for dinner, but my stomach felt horrible. We were meeting the aforementioned travel agent, a friend of his, the promotions director, and her daughter for dinner at the resort’s Mexican restaurant. I made it to the restaurant, but while we were waiting on a table, I excused myself to the ladies room and proceeded to throw up. Twice. But, I felt better and then attributed it to drinking and sun. I cleaned myself up and headed to the (now ready) table where everyone was. But, as soon as I started munching on chips (without salsa…I was being careful), my stomach went into knots again. I excused myself again to the bathroom and proceeded to poop liquid while feeling very light-headed and blah in general. I felt like I might be sick again, but I couldn’t get myself to throw up. So, I went back to dinner…then my main course came, and as soon as the smell of food hit my nose, I felt like I was going to throw up. So, I apologized to everyone at the table and said I wasn’t feeling well, that anyone was welcome to my dinner, but that I was headed back to the room. I told DH to stay and finish his meal and not to worry…I’d be fine. At this point, I was still pretty convinced that I’d just gotten too much sun and drinking in my system. Several hours later, around 3am, after having to go to the bathroom at least once an hour to vomit and/or poop liquid (sometimes simultaneously…I made use of the bathroom’s trashcan for one task while the toilet managed the other), DH and I figured I’d either caught something nasty or gotten food poisoning. I was worried that I was getting dehydrated or would have a hypoglycemic session, though, given that I couldn’t even keep a cracker or some (non-diet) soda down. At any rate, we called the resort’s doctor. It was awesome. She came to the room, listened to my symptoms, did some quick checks of my blood pressure and such, and then gave me a shot of something in my rear end to stop the vomiting. She told me to rest for an hour and then try to eat something…and then sleep if I felt like it and come see her at her office at 10am the next day. (Crackers did not stay down, but otherwise, the rest of the night was without major incidents in that direction…I was still having the waterpoop, though.) By the next morning, I was feeling a little better, but I couldn’t convince myself to eat. I basically just stayed in bed until time to go to the doctor’s office. While there, I threw up again, though it was just water that I’d drank that morning. So, I got another shot in the rear end as well as 2 packs of pills to take orally. The doctor gave me a list of things to try eating (rice, plain bread) and some electrolyte juice (apple flavored) to drink. She said I had to drink as much water as I could manage and to mix the electrolytes with water, too. By noon on Thursday, I was able to eat some rice that DH brought me and keep it down. I followed that with 2 rolls. By 2pm, I’d finished off the electrolyte juice. At 6pm, I saw the doctor again and was pretty much in good shape. I was still a little washed out, but I felt miles better than I had that morning. She told me to keep taking the drugs and that I could slowly start eating other foods. She also had me fill out a report for the resort on everything I’d eaten in the 36 hours before I got sick, every restaurant, etc., so they could do an investigation. I’m pretty sure it was from this one bite of calamari I had at lunch that day. It didn’t taste right (hence me only taking one bite), and I started feeling ill within an hour of having lunch. At any rate, I had six bites of meat at dinner (mostly chicken) and a whole mini-loaf of bread, as well as a big serving of mashed potatoes. Everything tasted like the best food ever. By the next morning, I had a waffle with nutella for breakfast along with some fruit. And while we were at the airport on Friday, I ate a Wendy’s grilled chicken sandwich. So…gradually, I got back to eating normally. If you check my twitter feed, you can see when I finally had a solid poop again. It was a glorious moment.
The last part of my trip kind of sucked because of being ill, but our new friends were very supportive (they called to check in on me and offered to bring me things), and DH was *awesome* about bringing me things and staying with me. Also, I watched lots of speed skating and biathlon. I also have to say that, of all days for me to be sick, that was the best timing it could have had. Any earlier in the week, and I would have been sick when I needed to do and turn in schoolwork. Any later in the week, and I would have been sick while flying home. Also, the weather kind of sucked on the day I was sick. It was cloudy and very windy. (There was a big rainstorm overnight on the night before we left.)
Coming home was fairly unremarkable. DH stayed at the casino to play poker, and I drove home to visit with Pancake. Pancake had clearly missed us. For the whole weekend, he was never more than five feet away from us if he could help it. We had a *ton* of TV to catch up on, including Survivor and the TAR premiere (I’m rooting for the cowboys, I think…or the lesbians.). And there was other fun during the weekend that I may get around to blogging about later.
The GOP has posted rather hilarious Valentine’s eCards making fun of Democrats. However, much like Chicagoist, I think that they’re actually probably as funny if not funnier for us liberal folks. Still, I desperately wish I had the time to do up a mock counter site. Scott and I are flush with ideas:
With a picture of Sarah Palin: I wrote this Valentine on my hand, so I wouldn’t forget.
With a picture of George W.: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED …oh wait, I haven’t sent it yet.
With a picture of Mitch McConnell: Don’t expect any Republican support for this Valentine.
With a picture of Scott Brown: I wrote this Valentine from my truck.
With a picture of Mark Sanford: Let’s hike down the Appalachian Trail for this Valentine’s!
With a.p.o. Jeff Sessions: I will give you this Valentine as soon as you give me funding.
With a.p.o. Lieberman: Do you mind if I’m their Valentine, too?
With a.p.o. Sarah Palin: How’s this Valentine-y lovey stuff workin’ for ya?
With a.p.o. Tom Tancreto: I’d like to be your Valentine, but only if you can pronounce or spell it in English.
With a.p.o. Dick Cheney: This Valentine deserves no constitutional rights.
With a.p.o. Larry Craig: Tap three times if you’ll be my Valentine.
Thankfully, I have a snowblower. So, 30 minutes later, the driveway and walkway were clear. I thought I’d taken a picture of that, too, but I guess it didn’t take. Unfortunately, the streets haven’t been plowed, and I couldn’t easily clear the path to the mailbox without having to do the plow’s job. So, I sunk up to my hips in snow to get the mail. I’m hoping the plows will come before morning, and I’ll be able to clear that area, too.
The snow is light and fluffy. I wish I didn’t have to work. This is perfect ski snow!
My Awesome brother-in-law and adorable nephew #2 spent a few days with us this past week. AwesomeBIL was installing a surround sound system for us in the basement, to go with our casino-won HDTV. He also built us a custom unit for everything to sit on, and it looks really good. The sound system is amazing for L4D2. I can hear exactly what direction the hunters and spitters are coming from. In fact, last night, I finished The Parish for the first time.
So, pictures!
Here’s what it looked like before, with the old TV:
And now here’s what it looks like:
We’ve got a 7.1 surround system and plenty of storage space for components and controllers. And, right now, DH is running in the basement while I’m upstairs, and I can hear the TV as clearly as if it were here. Hmmm…
As regular readers know, I’m taking Innovation & Risk this term. The final project for that class is a group project where we needed to come up with a disruptive innovation idea and apply the various models we learned in class to realize the innovation. My group’s innovation is BIOSCREEN, a biofilm layer that literally eats infectious virii and bacteria on contact and can be easily applied to hard surfaces in any building with modern air circulation.
One of the fun parts of this presentation is coming up with a way to demo your innovation. I thought of the idea of using disappearing ink that we would label and describe as H1N1 virus that we’ve dyed blue and suspended in a liquid for safety that we could spray onto a surface that had been theoretically treated with BIOSCREEN. The disappearing ink would disappear, and we could say that the virii had been eaten, tada!
This, however, presented a challenge. Before you continue, ask yourself where you would buy disappearing ink. Toys R Us? Yeah, they don’t carry it. Spencer’s? No go…and by the way, they have basically become a soft-core sex shop, so be forewarned. Smaller toy shops? No luck at the ones in my immediate vicinity. One toy shop woman looked at me like I must be crazy to even ask for it and suggested I try OfficeMax (which resulted in serious Why The Face from me). Buying online means buying either in bulk or paying $8+ for express shipping of a $1 bottle of disappearing ink. Creating it yourself is do-able, but it requires chemicals that are even harder to find. Remember those magic shops that they used to have in malls? They’re all gone now, at least around here.
So, on Sunday night, I was frantically Googling to try to find disappearing ink in my area. “Magic shop” led to only a few hits, mostly in downtown Chicago, and I didn’t want to drive there on an evening just to buy disappearing ink. However, “Joke shop” turned up a local gem: JJ Blinkers (warning: site is noisy!), a joke and costume shop in Antioch, just a few miles from home. They were already closed when I was Googling, so I made a note to call them the next day. I also found a store in Waukesha, WI…which is out of the way for my dear husband from his work in Milwaukee, but he was willing to head out there for me if JJ Blinkers turned up dry.
I got out of our morning staff meeting at work at around 10:20am on Monday and proceeded to call JJ Blinkers to check on the ink status:
Female voice: JJ Blinkers! How can I help you?
Me: I need disappearing ink. Do you have any in stock?
Female voice: [chuckling] Sure! Liquid or powdered?
Me: Hmm…well, I–
And my cellphone got cut off. So, I called back.
Male voice: Hello?
Me: Hello? (wondering if I somehow redialed wrong, because that sounds like DH, but I checked my display and sure enough, I was connected to JJ’s)
Male voice: This is JC, right?
Me: (even more confused, but then I realize they probably have me on Caller ID) Oh yeah, I just thought I had called the wrong number for a sec. I need disappearing ink.
Male voice: Yep, in powder or liquid form?
Me: Liquid form, just a couple of small bottles.
Male voice: Great! I’ll bring it home with me tonight!
Me: ::boggles::
Speaking of why the face…I was totally confused. It had sounded like DH, but I’d clearly called JJ’s, and whoever I talked to both seemed to know who I was and why I was calling JJ’s but then told me they’d bring it home.
So, I called DH’s phone and got his voicemail. I left him a message describing my confusion and proceeded to be absolutely perplexed. I wondered if my phone had somehow connected me to Scott and not the joke shop without telling me…or if someone working at the joke shop actually knows me from somewhere. Or, if caller ID had gotten much more sophisticated and they knew my address? Or, if the owner had simply meant that he had it at home and would bring it to the store tonight such that I could pick up tomorrow.
Hours later, DH calls me back and lets me know that, completely appropriately, the joke shop helped him confuse me. It turns out that DH had tried to call me at 10am, but realized I was still in the staff meeting. So, he decided to just head over to JJ’s on his way up to Milwaukee to save me from having to call. He was there right when I was calling, overheard the saleswoman and realized it was me. So, when I called back, they conspired to have him pick up the phone and handle my call. It was awesome on two counts: the hilarity of my confusion and the fact that DH had been a sweetheart and had handled this for me.
Very funny, JJ Blinkers… And thank you, dear husband…you are awesome.
For those who don’t follow the twitter feed, DH finished the half marathon in 2 hours and six minutes, averaging a 9:38 pace per mile. It was sleeting and raining for the first part of his run. There was even snow on the ground at the start point. Fortunately, he wore layers.
His parents and I tried to follow him on the course, but we ended up being just behind him for all but the first checkpoint. He was too fast for us!
His parents and I braved the cold. We huddled under an overpass while waiting on him to run by.
Here is DH zooming past the Ticket and Transportation Center!
We tried to catch him at the Magic Kingdom, but we were too slow. But, the castle was really pretty, and the crowd was energetic and cheerful for the racers.
DH is all done! Next, we raced to the car to get warm.
He’ll be more burned out than me here pretty soon with all of his casino-won/comped trips coming up. 
