very simple

A whole week without blogging, even though I had access to a computer? Crazy.

I got back to New York on Tuesday night, after spending a few days in Vail with my brother. My attempt at skiing was futile, as a swollen ankle from falling down some stairs in Spokane (I know, nice move, and at a client’s house too!), combined with swollen feet from flying generally, made the rental boots feel like tourniquets on my feet and after half a run I was seconds away from taking them off and walking down the mountain in my socks. So I went window shopping instead (hey, it’s almost like a sport!).

Wednesday night, I went to a Jayhawks concert with some folks from work, and the rest of the time I’ve been dealing with apartment-buying stuff – meeting with mortgage brokers and lawyers and stuff. Hopefully I’ll be a condo owner within the next two months (I don’t want to talk about it too much, because I might jinx it). Back to work on monday, after catching up on the news and stuff…

Anyway, just wanted to check in an let y’all know I hadn’t disappeared permanently. Work should calm down a tiny bit after I get back (February is always the craziest month around there) and I’ll be a bit more human…

I’m out west visiting some clients (arrived last night). My meetings for today are done, and now I’m just lounging in the hotel, which is kind of nice, after all of the craziness of work over the past few weeks. After my meetings tomorrow, I’m officially on vacation – going to stop off for a few days in Vail to visit my brother (hi Jeff! I know you read this), and then back home for some home city sightseeing (I always say I’m going to take time off and just hang out in the city, but I never do it). I may tackle the rest of the new MoMA now that I have my membership card and can get in for free.

Between the travelling and the general busy-ness, combined with a hotel television that just confuses me (the channel guide doesn’t match what the actual channels are, so I spend half my time trying to figure out what I’m actually watching), I have no idea what’s going on in the world. At least they have free wi-fi – I’m off to catch up on news feeds for the next hour or so (the count is at 429 new articles, so if I don’t start reading, I’m going to never catch up…).

So I started thinking about where I wanted to go on vacation this year, and I finally decided that this was the year that I was going to take the trip to the Galapagos that I had been thinking about for some time. I tend to not plan far enough in advance, so stuff like this is always booked by the time I get around to making plans. So I started pricing things out, like airfare and figuring out which dates would work best, and then I decided something.

This is the year that I’m going to buy an apartment (or at least the year that I try really hard to find something). As such, that tax refund that normally gets converted into the "really nice vacation" fund is getting dumped straight into the "saving for a down payment" fund instead. I’ll still take some trips, because I’m entitled to the time if nothing else, but I think they’re going to be more along the lines of the parents weekend house, or if I want to go diving, going to a place like the Keys instead of, say, Fiji.

I’m really not complaining – I recognize that this isn’t exactly high on the list of difficult choices that most people have to make. It’s just an adjustment. It’s probably more about adjusting to the idea of spending a lot of money on a very small piece of property, and transferring that anxiety onto not getting to see giant turtles this year.

Now I have to go obsess about the newest listings on Corcoran…

I manage to get myself sick. Nothing like a little bit of the flu to make the Turkey taste that much better. Anyway, I’m off to the country house to recuperate (and infect the rest of my family).

Project for the weekend? dragging my dad and stepmom into the 21st century by setting up the wireless network in the weekend house. The last time I tried to talk them through it on the phone, I spent 20 minutes asking questions, only to ask, "ok, now what color is light light on the Airport?" and get the response "oh, you mean that thing has to be plugged in?".

Yeah. They’re not allowed to touch things.

In other news, we did go to see Twelve Angry Men, last night, and it was great. I’ve read it several times, and it’s like an entire evidence class rolled into one 90-minute theatrical exercise. One downer – Philip Bosco was out sick. His understudy was great, but Juror Number Three is the heart of the show, and I just kept imagining Bosco’s utterly distinctive voice saying the same lines. The best part about going to see shows like this on Broadway? realizing that every single one of these actors has credits from Law & Order in their Who’s Who. Ahh, the incredibly tiny New York-based acting community. It was like a room full of male Tovah Feldshuhs.

I’m slowly working my way back through pop culture this weekend, in between running errands and going to work for a few more hours today. One thing that will help me catch up more quickly? My cable went out some time over the middle weekend that I was gone – so TiVO recorded dead air for my second week of vacation. Sure it sucks, but it also means one less week of shows to try and catch up on.

First, I totally forgot one of my other favorite pictures – oooh, barracuda! Earlier in the week, we actually saw one that was enormous – 4 or 5 feet long, but it was too far away to get a good shot (ah, photography, the new venue for "one that got away" stories).

I finished a few books on the trip, including Smartest Guys in the Room, the Know-It-All, and The Family (Kitty Kelley’s book – I know, it should be beneath me, but first, I always like reading fairly mindless stuff when I fly, and second, it was a loaner – I wouldn’t actually pay for the thing). I may be compelled to write something longer about them later, but I’m lazy right now.

I actually tried to avoid much news while I was away, giving my brain a vacation as well. Once in a while politics would come up on the boat, but I tried to avoid taking part. Actually, it was largely because this one woman, who was actually a lefty, was driving me absolutely up a friggin’ wall with the never shutting up and the passing judgment on everyone else. I have strongly held political beliefs, but part of the reason that I keep this blog is that it enables me to vent – to be as shrill as I want without driving even the friends of mine who agree with me absolutely nuts (I can’t even count the number of times I’ve been in conversations with both friends and family where we would get so heated about a topic that, even when we all agreed, it would turn into something resembling an argument). Call me crazy, but I generally think it’s a good idea to not completely alienate the NRA member from North Carolina who may be my only lifeline if something happens to my O2 supply 70 feet below the surface. I’m smart enough to know that I’m not going to change his mind with my brilliant rhetoric, and at that point we’d both clearly rather talk about the giant puffer fish that seemed to know exactly how to avoid being photographed.

Actually, crazy lady was just annoying and loud and nosy about everything. I have a LiveStrong bracelet, and after asking me what it was (which was fine), by grabbing my wrist (which was not), I explained (along with the other folks on the boat who knew what it was) that it was part of a charity. Her next statement? "And clearly you wear it so that people will ask you about it" (in a tone that was pretty much "and clearly you just want attention"). Well no, given that not only are they the trendiest thing in NY right now and four other people on the boat helped explain exactly what it was (not to mention the fact that the nike advertising juggernaut helps to market it, they’ve sold millions of the things, and even her favored Presidential candidate has been wearing one for months) I’m pretty comfortable with the fact that most people who I don’t know won’t grab my wrist in an accusing fashion to ask me about my "jewelry". Ugh. She was just annoying. And then she sat behind me on the plane ride home (She was that person who kept laughing uproariously at the in-flight movie – the only one. y’all have been on a plane with that person, right? The one that everyone else keeps shooting dirty looks at because she doesn’t understand that headphones don’t muffle her voice?).

See? venting.

The only "news" channel we got down there was a bad feed of CNN Headline News, which frankly, makes Sesame Street look like trenchant political analysis. They didn’t show the debate, and the mindless airheads that they have speaking the headlines kept annoying me with their incessant grammatical mistakes (Hint: Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania? the "e" in Barre isn’t silent – I’m sure one of the thousands of locals who showed up to this Philadelphia suburb to see a presidential candidate speak could have clued y’all in. Instead of actually listening to the news the only thing I could think was "thank god Kerry’s not in Bala Cynwyd"). I basically checked in for a few minutes a day to make sure there wasn’t any earth-shattering election news.

Anyway, I’m currently suffering from a nasty head cold, as is everyone else in my office – of course, since I caught mine several thousand miles away, we all spent yesterday trying to have conversations from 15 feet apart and using tissues to hand things to each so that we don’t cross-contaminate. I imagine this will last for about three more hours before we all resign ourselves to just being incessantly sick for the next month.

Two week vacations are definitely the way to go. I had a great time, did lots of diving, and met some really nice people. Oh, and took a ridiculous number of pictures underwater. Pictures are organized by day, but only for the days that I took pictures. If you don’t feel like looking at 200 pictures of coral and fish and just want my favorites, here they are:

My sometimes dive buddy Ron playing with a really big turtle;
A few pictures of another really big turtle;
Mmmm…lobster;
Squid;

And it’s kind of hard to make out, but the yellow object in the middle here was a tiny little seahorse that our divemaster managed to find.

All in all a blast. Now I’m off to work.

[Update 2015] In an effort to reduce the number of holdover pages on the blog, I am slowly (very slowly) integrating photo albums into the appropriate historical posts on the blog itself. As a result, the full Curacao album is now below.

day 1:

day 2:

day 3:

day 4:

day 5:

day 6:

day 7:

So I just booked my fall vacation, and I’m going to spend two weeks in October scuba diving in Curacao. I’m hoping that I miss the hurricane season (and Curacao claims to be "below" the hurricane zone). Since I was taking two weeks off, I did look in some more *exotic* places, like the south pacific, but given a choice between spending more on accomodations vs. airfare, I’m going to pick accomodations every time. I’m going here.

My ultimate island dream vacation is the Maldives, but even taking two weeks off, I’m just not prepared to spend that much time on a plane right now. Maybe next year.

Just read about this in Newsweek, and had to check it out. So cool.

You can search for flights here, and it consolidates results from airline web pages, wholesalers, and other resources, so that you can find who actually has the best offer without scrambling all over the web hoping you didn’t miss something.

So my law school reunion turned out to be pretty fun. I was actually surprised at how happy I was to see people that I really hadn’t thought about in a while. Everyone who showed up appeared to be doing pretty well, with several folks married, some new babies (and some more on the way), and the usual complaints about working too many hours.

I will admit to bailing (along with several others) once the pub crawling started in earnest – some things I will happily admit to actually being too old for these days.

Going to Philadelphia this weekend, for my five-year law school reunion. I really can’t believe that I’ve been out of school for that long. I’m getting old…