Monday, January 02, 2006

five things I learned on Winter Vacation

This was a nice vacation. Spent lots of time with various parts of my family and Amanda's family. There were a lot of things learned as well, so I thought I'd list them here.

1. Much like the weather, Family is extremely unpredictable. Whether it's who they choose to date or what they think you "need" as a Christmas gift, there's just about no way to predict the full reactions and life paths of your family. There was no snow so there was no White Christmas; but on the bright side other hand, there was a $100 gift card for coffee to someone who doesn't drink coffee and an insulting Christmas ornament that referenced a very painful period in someone's life. Whee.

2. There's nothing in Alabama that you need to see before you die. For Christmas, my mom gave Amanda a book called 1000 Places To See Before You Die. Nothing in Alabama made the list, apparently. Though, surprisingly, Amanda and I have already been to a number of the places that did make the grade.

3. Peter Jackson should have either made King Kong or Jurassic Park IV: Dinosaurs Hate Monkeys, but not both. I second the sentiment I heard from someone (second-hand) at ILM when they said, "King Kong is the best 2 hour movie I've seen in a long time. The problem is, it's 3 hours long." Question: how do you manage to remake an hour and a half movie so that it's twice a long as the original? Answer: insert an hour long Dinosaur Parade and any other idea you have knocking around in your head into it. A warning to you, Peter Jackson: my bladder will punch you in the face on sight.

4. The cost of real estate in the San Francisco Bay area is criminal. It's something I've known for a while; but it was further drive home by a trip to Virginia over break. Oddly, nice houses there are also about $350,000 just as they are in Pennsylvania. In San Francisco, $350,000 either buys you a small house an hour and a half outside of any of the Bay Area zip codes or it buys you a crappy 1-bedroom apartment that your landlord will creatively rename a "condo" just to make sure you don't totally feel like you just took it up the pooper.

5. I don't pack enough clothes when I go on vacation. I thought as I was packing, just like I always do, "Eh ... whatever. I'm a guy. I don't need to pack much. Just pack half as much clothing as you need to wear and then recycle stuff. Genius." Here's the flaw with that plan: I only packed half of the clothes I needed. And it wasn't like I set out all of the clothes I would wear and then divided everything evenly in half. Nope. I packed plenty of undies and socks; but when it came to shirts and pants, that seems to be where I made most of my selective wardrobe editing. If anyone sees pictures of me from this vacation, they might think it took place over two days because I'm wearing one of either two outfits in every picture.

Anyway, that's my five things I learned. I'm really looking forward to 2006. Hope it's going to be a good year with lots of new opportunities and successes. Time to run; its time to go eat some yummy New Year tacos.

5 comments:

EmoRiot said...

So things I'd like to know. Where was the $100 gift card from? Because if it's Starbucks, you've got $100 card for very yummy hot chocolate, cakes, teas, chai lattes, etc.

And what was the ornament?

Bug said...

It was your Get Jiggy With It/Painful Reminder Of Fleas ornament and yes, it was a Starbucks gift card.

EmoRiot said...

Oh, okay. I didn't know if you had another painful reminder ornament. Yeah that was awesome. And send me the Starbucks card! I'll gladly coffee it up right!

rooni said...

This is one of your most entertaining posts ever. That's a subjective statement, of course -- I'm entertained to no end that you've finally discovered that you don't pack enough. Surprise!

And I want it to be known that, while we have seen a number of the places on the 1000 places list, we haven't seen them all together. And furthermore, I'm not ready to die.. so we need to see a LOT more.

Bug said...

Couple of things:

Ry - I took it upon myself to steal and throw away the offensive ornament. So, it's not around anymore.

Rooni - I'm not entirely convinced that I don't pack enough. All I know is that I don't pack wisely enough. I still think I can do it by economizing smarter. We'll see. ; ) I might be fighting a losing battle here.