Vacation Over

Dear Avid Reader,

You may be wondering where I've been. You may have been wondering where the new posts are. Well I was on vacation. And It was pretty cool.

And They're Off!

It started with the packing. This is a major fight starter in my household. My wife likes to consider the packing and plan for it before she packs. This means that the packing happens much closer to our departure time. I on the other hand prefer action to contemplation when it comes to packing and my packing happens way ahead of schedule.

Now the wife does a better job of the actual packing. The clothes are all nicely folded and all available space is utilized. But as I mentioned before, the packing happens close to departure time. This creates the possibility of missing the departure time and removes the possibility of "making good time".

As most of you know, the point of a vacation is not to relax, visit with family, or to "see the sites". The point of any vacation is to make good time. So while my wife is trying to maximize the other three "goals", I am trying to complete the main objective, i.e. make good time.

These two opposing furies battle each time we go on vacation, or head home from vacation. And the sparks fly. But the sparks always die out and we head out on our vacation. The first stop, the in-laws.

Hardcore Relaxin'

We arrived in Needville (southwest of Houston) at an unmentionable hour. It is unmentionable not because of the earliness of it, but because when I looked at a clock to see what time it was, all of the numbers began to run together and spell out the words "doomed underwater fashion". So I decided to stop looking at clocks when we were just outside of Houston.

After we got up, we were greeted with breakfast. Normally, I skip breakfast, so when I eat it, I know I'm on vacation. We had breakfast all the time while at the in-laws. And let me tell you, breakfast rocks.

There was church to attend, presents to open, and fun was had by all. We participated in all of the classic Christmas fare. The non-traditional but still rock-awesome parts of the trip were playing Acquire, seeing The Chronicles of Narnia, playing Lazer-Tag, watching Jeremiah Johnson, and making an experimental art film with my father-in-law. After all of that I had a fight about how to pack luggage with my wife and we were off to my family's place.

Round Two

We got into Fort Worth at about eight and a half in the nighttime. All of me younger siblings were there. Because we arrived after Christmas, there wasn't much classic holiday action. But here's the rock-awesome list for the back nine of the vacation:

Beating Red Dead Revolver on the X-box, playing Crash Bandicoot with the childrens, catching one of my sister's basketball games, watching my sister post up some mad "D", watching my sister come down hard on her foot, being concerned about her foot, the concern about her foot giving way to nick-naming her "Crutches", watching the Cowboys' playoff hopes vanish, smoking a turkey with my brother, and a Western themed New Year's Eve celebration in ficticious "Dryland, TX". After all of that, all we had left was one more fight about packing and we were on our way.

We ate some awesome stuff on our trip besides just breakfast. On the homemade front, we had some killer burgers, sausages, & chicken off the grill. We had enchiladas, gigantor tubs of snacks, several helpings of my rock-awesome chili, German chocolate cake, and one smoked turkey. One the dine-out menu, we supped at the Barbecue Inn, Flying Saucer Pies, Whataburger, Jack-In-The-Box, Bennigan's, and Ruby Tuesday. I think as you get older, what you eat is important to include in a vacation's description.

So that's my vacation. Read it an' weep.

Oh, I also invented a new slang term: Rock-Awesome! And don't go trying to tell me you've heard it before, because I invented it! Comprende?

The Next Post Promises To Be Better,

James