Priceless

Back to work after vacation today, my protest is a two-tiered process:
1. Not shaving off my impressive vacation-beard.
2. Not actually doing any work.

I should put the word "vacation" in quotes though, since I use the term loosely. Sure, I did have an entire week off of work, returning to find 100 emails and everything screwed up beyond repair. So that counts. I did get to go to New York, see a few sights, so that counts as well. But, I just have this slight nagging feeling that something didn't seem right while on the trip. Just a little voice in the back of my head. I think maybe that this feeling was strongest when I took M to the Emergency Room at 4 in the morning on Wednesday, or maybe sometime during the next 36 hours that she was in the hospital with a kidney infection. The "flu" that had cut dramatically short our first four days of activity was actually something called "Pyelonephritis" which kept us occupied until the flight home. No worries, things are OK now, and we had stopped freaking out within a couple hours of the time we got to the hospital. But the quality of the trip suffered a bit from day one, we had to cancel basically all activity after 5 pm the first few days, she kept feeling weak and feverish (hence the 'flu' diagnosis) and went to bed at 9 pm (8 Chicago time) or earlier while I watched the playoffs, read, or walked the streets and bought a six-pack of beer. We did get to do a few things in between, like: taking endless walks through central park, seeing chinatown, little italy, coney island (the cyclone kicked our asses), times square, the staten island ferry (we were in 4 of 5 boroughs), midtown and 5th ave, the museum of tv and radio, and a couple of good restaurants. But I had lots more planned (first day in my head included seeing a band play at 2 am and THEN going to an afterparty at another bar, instead I picked up chinese and M was asleep at 9 o'clock). There was way too much time spent in the hotel room, and not in any sort of good way. We saw a mouse there on our last night. I was not allowed to stay the night in the hospital, so I took cabs back and forth and became an expert cab hailer. Subways were easy to navigate as well. I'll go back, someday.

This weekend was spent lying around the house. M went alone to Milwaukee to help her dad clean graffiti off of his house (the perfect father's day activity!) and I drank a bottle of wine and scratched myself. We went to dinner last night, I ate 3 people's entrees, including my own.

Sucky vacation, but I Will Be Avenged!!!!