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 »

69.120.111.23

By now, we've all read the news of how the bodies of wrestler Chris Benoit and his family were found on the afternoon of June 25th. But who read the news early? Check out this Wikipedia edit which mentioned his wife's death 14 hours before the bodies were discovered. Go »

Fur and Feathers

Yesterday was a good day: To celebrate my mother's 75th birthday, we took her out for a day around Sarasota doing things that appealed to her love of animals. After starting with a big breakfast, we went to a local attraction that we've all been meaning to see for years, the Big Cat Habitat that takes care of exotic animals that were born in captivity but abandoned by their owners. The lions and tigers and liger were the prime attraction, but they also had bears, monkeys, a chimpanzee, parrots, emu, turkeys, goats, koi, and even stranger animals like a kangaroo, kinkajou, and coati. 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 »

Heart Burn

The recurring pericarditis that I mentioned elsewhere is now believed by my primary-care doctor to be heartburn or possibly an ulcer. The latter explanation is possible I suppose, but I'm skeptical about the former since it feels less like an acidic burning than like a sharp localized lower-chest pain such as a knife wound or bullet wound. Either way, it still keeps occurring every few weeks, it still hurts like a son of a bitch and keeps me awake all night, and I'm way beyond sick of it happening. Go »

Abortion Aborted

Earlier this week, The Onion published another eyebrow-raiser: Actress' Abortion Written Into TV Show, with a photo of Leah Remini. Later that day, it changed without explanation into the much tamer Apple Unveils New Product-Unveiling Product. (link) Normally they never back down from a legal challenge or controversy, and good taste obviously isn't a factor, so I wonder why they changed the article. Go »

PIMP

Many thanks to Miah Poisson and Ines Sarante for throwing a great 30th birthday party for Miah this weekend. I don't play much Guitar Hero, but apparently I play enough to win a tournament against Miah's GH-obsessed coworkers, or maybe it's just because the game is ridiculously handicapped against experts. I'm just happy because I won a pimp stein: We ate lots of great food, had fun with karaoke, and talked until the hour was late. Go »