Vacation, all I ever wanted
Vacation, had to get away
The Go-Go’s — "Vacation"

I know that blogging has been sparse of late — oh who are we kidding, it's been non-existent — but with good reason. It's been far too long since I've had a vacation. I mean, I've had vacation days where I took time off from work and did little or nothing. And every year I use some time to volunteer my services for a large international equestrian three-day event but that hardly ends up being relaxing. No, I'm talking about just kicking back and blocking out the world of home and not thinking about work at all. No, it's been a good ten years since I've taken a real vacation. Thankfully, that has now changed.

This has been a very stressful year at work. The university converted to a new ERP system and, well, let's just say it has been "challenging" to say the least. In my primary piece of it, I have been asked to support things which I have neither the ability to fix when they're not working nor sometimes even the abillity to see the brokenness in order to speak intelligently about it. As the responsible party, that is extremely frustrating and to say that my morale at work has been poor is a major understatement. There have been days where I was seriously tempted to hang it up, go elsewhere, and let them figure it out on their own. That's why I was determined to take vacation with Thing 2 — albeit a short one — this fall.

The fact that we went to the beach was an easy choice. Sitting in the sun with the sound of the waves crashing on the shore is one of the most relaxing things I know.

The fact that Len happens to live very near a beach is strictly a coincidence.

The fact that the particular beach I chose is very near her house is not so much a coincidence. Yeah, I'm shameless. Sue me.

The fact that I'm not going to tell you anything about the time that I was able to spend with her is because it's none of your business. No, not like that. Maybe I'll write about it someday but today is not that day.

All in all it was a good trip. I deleted my work email from my phone and never thought about my job even once. Well, only once. Because at one point I posted the image at the top of this post to Twitter with the text, "Where do I work again? Never mind. I don’t want to know." Honestly, at that point the whole campus could have burned to the ground and I wouldn't have cared. Much. Sure, I would have felt bad for a bit but then I would have said, "Hey, I wonder if the Lowe's around here is hiring..." I could handle living there quite nicely.

Anyway. So I'm now back home (sigh) and thinking through a couple of new things that I want to write about. I'll try to get back on some sort of schedule soon. Or did I really even have a schedule? I don't know. Whatever. All things considered, I'd rather be back at the beach.