The Vacation Begins

Since this is a story about a vacation, it seems to make sense that I start where the vacation begins. The trouble with that, however, is that I’m not sure when the vacation will begin; this despite the fact that significant traveling has taken place. But as of yet, no vacation. Although, as I write from the lanai four stories up overlooking white sand beach with the vast ocean beyod, swimming pools stylized like sparkling tropical waterfalls and fountains, and an open bar at 9AM, the vacation part of this vacation is slowly beginning to take shape.

None of this solves the problem of where to begin. I suppose the beginning will have to be some completely arbitrary point in time, designated as the last time I woke up from a fill night’s sleep. This was Friday morning. Rich had left Thursday late morning for Winthrop, and I’d suffered through the previous night all alone with my cat and dog. At least I thought of it as suffering, but as I already knew, the cat and dog make for wonderful company, and I actually managed to sleep through the night, a feat that hadn’t occurred but once over the past few weeks.

I woke up on Friday, feeling oddly refreshed, and ready for nearly a full day’s work – I’d hoped for the half day, but the boss had called the evening before and assigned a few extra tasks so that I anticipated being able to leave work around three or so. I was more than pleased, then, when I found myself wrapping up around noon. I excitedly packed away all my files for the week, changed my voicemail and set up the email autoresponder, sent a final work IM to Rich, and trotted out of the office. It was finally time to start thinking about vacation.

I made a few quick stops on the way home – exchange a Christmas gift for a different size here, have the glasses store adjust my sunglasses there – and finally I was home to pack. The packing didn’t happen as quickly as I’d hoped, as I spent my first few hours at home just trying to figure out where all of my money went. Oh well, I’d have far less spending money on vacation that I’d thought, but with the parents paying the major expenses of transportation and lodging, I wasn’t too concerned.