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
[hidden by author request]


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 »

WGW: If It's Good Enough for Dan Marino, It's Good Enough for Me

This is more like Weight-Gain Wednesday after a week and a half with Kelly, bouncing around Sarasota restaurants and Disney World. No matter how many thousands of calories I burned walking around that theme park for three days, I'm sure I consumed twice as many, and that was just in fudge from the Main Street Confectionery. Now that I'm back and I've done some very scientific research – asking a friend whether she hated one – I have chosen NutriSystem over Medifast as the exclusive supplier of my every meal. Go »

Even When I Was a Child, I Was Hated by Skeletons

We watched The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra again last night. If you haven't seen it, and you have a place in your heart for a pretty good spoof of campy D-grade sci-fi movies from the 1950s, rent it. A few people have been turned off by its slow pace, but I have yet to watch it with someone who hasn't at least found a few things to chuckle at. Go »

Downtown Disney

My mom's birthday present to me was a mini-vacation in Orlando, since we're too broke to take a real vacation. We weighed the options for a few days, theme parks vs small local attractions, and settled on something we had wanted to do for years, DisneyQuest and some of the Downtown Disney complex around it. I knew DisneyQuest had a lot of motion-simulator and interactive video games, but I didn't realize that the entire 5-story building is just one giant video arcade. Go »

When Erik Met Matthew

The spark for the idea came during the pandemic, when we here on Funeratic decided to try some Zoom conversations and games. Two people who I admire for (among other things) their ability to converse quickly and freely with strangers and to get along instantly with seemingly anyone, Erik Bates and Matthew Preston, talked to each other for the first time and of course they hit it off immediately. I knew I wasn't imagining it, because other people on the call remarked on it. Go »

This Blog Post Definitely Doesn't Conform to NPOV Standards

I once coined a rule that you couldn't read more than three complete articles on Wikipedia without running into a reference to some obscure joke from The Simpsons, Monty Python, or most commonly, Family Guy. Seriously: I just now clicked two links and landed at Anarcho-syndicalism of all things, and sure enough, there's Holy Grail in the "trivia" section. Should it be plural like that, since no one is ever going to enter another item of trivia? Go »

Milwaukee's Best

Today I learned a valuable lesson: Don't quote that line from Wayne's World about "mill-you-wock-AY" to a native of that city. It's like asking them to bring you a cheese wheel when they visit: You deserve a kick in the balls for it. I learned this while planning my visit to the city this weekend for beer, brats, Packers, and oh yeah, Matthew Preston. Go »