On Vacation

Me, on vacation? No, not really. Rachel had to recertify in food safety. Since they were holding the recertification at the Cuyahoga Falls Target and since she had to be there for a few days, we decided to find a local hotel. We’re staying at the Country Inn & Suites. Our room is very nice. We’ve got a bedroom, bathroom, living room and a kitchen area. Heck, it’s probably bigger than some studio apartments. In the living room, there’s a TV, a couch, a few chairs and a table. What’s especially nice is the high-speed internet connection (150 kbps up, 1 mbps down). Okay. I guess that any place were I can plug in a laptop doesn’t quite qualify as a vacation. But, at least I’m out of the house.

Last night, Rachel and I went swimming. The hotel has a whirlpool and a heated pool (both indoors). It was very refreshing. It’s probably been a couple of years since the last time I went swimming. We eventually want to put a pool in at our house. But, we’ll obviously have to wait until we can actually afford it.

I was going to say, it was nice sleeping in this morning, but Rachel had to be at the training at 8:00 AM. So, I’m trying to get some schoolwork done. Unfortunately, I don’t have all of the tools I need (like Word and Access) to do my work. I’ll need to find something to occupy my time. I’ll probably spend some time reading (we got a free newspaper and I brought some Dilbert books). I was thinking about going back to sleep, but after my third cup of coffee, I don’t think I can. Even though our room has a small (4-cup) coffee maker, I know why I only have a single-cup coffee maker at home.

My Tivo has spoiled Rachel and I. When we were watching TV last night, she kept telling me to “fast forward” past the commercials. It was even worse when I had to find something on “live” TV. Usually we have several programs ready to watch. Since I don’t like most morning TV programs, I’m glad I found the World Poker Tour playing. That should (hopefully) last me a few hours. My only problem now is that I have to time my bathroom and food breaks during commercials (instead of “pausing” TV).

Rachel and I are planning to see the next Harry Potter movie tonight. We saw Shrek 2 last week. Shrek 2 is at least as good as the first one. If you plan to see it, stay through the credits otherwise you’re going to miss a scene. It was nice to go to the movies. We don’t normally go out, so it was a good change of pace.

The only downside to vacationing is that we weren’t able to take our dogs with us. Emily might have been able to stay with our parents-in-law (they were on vacation at the time), but Kara and Kelly are quite a handful. So, we reluctantly boarded them with our vet. Hopefully they won’t miss us too much. Rachel and I are planning to take another quick vacation soon, so it would be nice to have a place where our dogs don’t mind going.

Tagline for today: A foolproof method for sculpting an elephant: first, get a huge block of marble, then you chip away everything that doesn’t look like an elephant.