Today begins a week-long vacation from work, my first break since GooCon last October. Well, not quite begins, since I still have more work to do tomorrow. But then I'm free! Many thanks to my coworkers for sending me off with birthday decorations all around my cubicle and birthday sweets piled high. I invited people to my desk all day to take some and I still had two bags of brownies and cookies and cake and donuts to bring home. My team rules.

Anyway, here's looking forward to the week ahead. Kelly and I are broke, so we didn't plan to go anywhere, until my mom gave me the terrific birthday present of funding a night's stay in Orlando and some tickets. We'll probably skip the theme parks and go to smaller attractions like Blue Man Group, Pirates Adventure Dinner Show, Medieval Times, DisneyQuest, and so on. There are a lot of things that we've always talked about trying there. We also want to spend a day in Tampa seeing things and visiting friends, and there are still a few attractions we haven't even seen in Sarasota despite living here for five years now.

On the home front, Kelly is spending a lot of time building her new web site, which I think means that I'll spend a lot of time working on my web site. I'll probably catch up on some books and games that I haven't had time for lately. Mostly what I want is a break from work; the last four months have been very stressful and very demanding of my time and energy. After a back sprain last week and finally getting some bills paid off this week, I'm ready to have some fun and relax, or chillax as we have said since visiting Kelly's parents. Her brother will tell Mom to chillax, and she'll ask what it means, and he'll explain it, and she'll ask what it means again, and Dad will tell him to stop using that word because it confuses her. They all need to chillax.


Two Replies to Operation Chillax

Aaron Shurtleff | May 23, 2009
Have a great time, Scott! You certainly deserve it!

Ryan Dunn | May 23, 2009
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Logical Operator

The creator of Funeratic, Scott Hardie, blogs about running this site, losing weight, and other passions including his wife Kelly, his friends, movies, gaming, and Florida. Read more »

Sarasota

Aaron Weiss likes taking pictures with his spiffy new camera – go figure – and yesterday he captured this beautiful panoramic shot of part of downtown Sarasota. This is why I live here. [I compressed his version for filesize, which caused the pixelization in the sky.] Go »

Trial of the Century

I served on my first jury last week, for the gripping case of the Walmart Protein Bar Bandit, accused of a $1.46 theft. Voir dire was oddly focused on whether grazing (eating groceries before you pay for them) was acceptable, whether eating protein right after a workout is important, and whether any of us had strong feelings about the Walmart corporation. Go »

OK Glass

Last weekend, Kelly and I drove up to St. Petersburg with friends to see Ira Glass present a one-man stage show explaining how he makes This American Life on the radio. I had no prior familiarity with his work, having not heard the radio show unlike the fans that I went with, but I think it's long past time that I started listening to the celebrated series online. Go »

Dodgy

"Is that a Dodge Dakota pickup truck? I heard that Native American tribe is really upset at the commercialization of their name." "Yeah. Go »

White Christmas

We're enjoying our winter vacation in central Illinois so far. Tue 12/22 - When you're hitting the road for your vacation right after work is over, every extra minute feels like an hour, which means I did 45 hours of overtime. The drive was easier than we thought, probably because we had days to prepare this time. Go »

R.I.P. Russ

Twelve years after losing her mother, Kelly has now lost her father too. This loss was a quieter and tidier affair, partially due to Russ not wanting a funeral or wake, and partially due to his very strained relationship with Kelly in recent years. We waited a few days to work out the trip schedule, flew up there, had a nice little graveside gathering with immediate family and then lunch out, spent time seeing the old hometown and Russ's new adopted small town (oh how I don't miss driving for hours through corn fields to get literally anywhere in Illinois), and returned with lots of tasks for Kelly to do to resolve the estate. Go »