Vacation Brain

Today will be my first day at work since last Thursday.  I'm not looking forward to it, but then again it *is* already Wednesday, so it's a short week, and I'm sure I'll live.  ;-)

We had a wonderful trip home and a great holiday, I hope you did too.  I do need to apologize in advance because I have inadvertently deleted your comments that were sent to my e-mail regarding my last few posts, so those whose e-mail addresses that I have, and who usually hear from me, will not.  (I'm too lazy to go through to the posts and respond.  Really.)  I was paying bills yesterday, and when I went through to delete the electronic bill messages, I accidentally hit Permanent Delete on them all, and WHOOSH!  But I do appreciate hearing from all of you, and hopefully you understand.

Anyway.

Our actual drives back and forth were completely uneventful, traffic-wise, which is always a good thing.  We managed on both days to get an early start, which I believe in my heart makes a difference.  We had good weather - sunny, not too hot, nice breezes - and any rainstorms were either in the evenings, or were brief showers that came and went.

You're probably hoping to see photos.  Yeah, me too.  If anyone sends me any.  I failed to take a single shot, except for a couple that I posted on Instagram, and will try to pull out.  But also, plenty of others were taking lots of photos, so I'm hoping to snag some of theirs.  What can I say, I was too busy having a good time.

Hamlet had THE TIME of his life!  He actually didn't want to leave, he was enjoying himself so much.  Thankfully, everyone was leaving right about when we were, so that made it a little bit easier.  But between the attention, the endless supply of ice cubes (his favorite treat), and all the opportunities to play Blue Ball (TM) and sit on my sister's porch, it was a hard sell to get back in the car and come home.  He had close encounters with robins, deer, rabbits, and chipmunks, all of which were very exciting, but fortunately not a bad experience for anyone.

One really nice surprise is that one of my nieces and her family who we don't see too often ended up coming for a quick visit, so we had a chance to catch up with them a bit.  There was a lot of laughing, drinking, catching up, and of course, eating.  My niece Amanda and her husband Patrick always put themselves in charge of the food, and those two go nuts!  Besides every side dish known to man (and some that were new), they grilled the usual hot dogs and hamburgers, but also shrimp, crabs, lobster tails, and corn on the cob.  Everyone who came contributed a dessert, and those were equally ridiculous.  There was a peanut butter cake with peanut butter frosting and Reese's cups chopped up on top that should be illegal.  Needless to say, the picnic was on Saturday, and we didn't need to actually cook anything the rest of the weekend.

The funniest thing that happened is that two different waitresses thought that The Tim was Steve Martin!  Now this always amuses me to start with, but two in one weekend???  A few years back, my brother-in-law and a couple of nieces decided that he looked just like Steve Martin.  I don't see it, but I guess the white hair is at least something they have in common.  Every once in a great while, someone will say, "Oh I can see that," when you mention it, but otherwise, no one has ever gotten excited thinking he's a celeb.  Anyway, Friday night after we arrived, we went out to dinner, and when the waitress was taking orders, she got to him, and said, "OH MY GOD STEVE MARTIN IS IN WHEELING???"  And she was serious.  And he was not in Wheeling, nope it was The Tim.  Well, as you can imagine, this lead to great hilarity for the rest of the evening.  Then on Monday morning before everyone headed home, we all went out to breakfast, and again, when the waitress got to him for his order, she did a double take, and then said, "Oh sir, I didn't mean to stare, but at first I thought you were Steve Martin."  Go figure.

Do you ever do this?  You are going along, and you think "Gosh I hope I don't drop this," and then you immediately drop it, or some similar kind of cause-and-effect activity?  Well, as we were leaving on Monday morning, The Tim wanted to stop at Kroger and put gas in the car.  So I went in to the store because I wanted to buy some mints and get a soda.  The checkout lanes were packed already, so I went to self-checkout.  And as I was standing there, I thought "I wonder if any idiots ever put their change into the dollar slot when paying by mistake."  And then guess what this idiot did?  I would have been more embarrassed if I hadn't been so amused.  Vacation brain, indeed.

OK, this has been pretty rambly, so I'll wrap up.  I can tell you all about the knitting I did over the holiday weekend next time - maybe even with photos! 

Have a good Wednesday, and here's to the rest of the work week just moving itself along.  :-)