My Recent Vacations

Due to a fantastic set of circumstances I was out of the state of Florida for three whole weeks, finally returning to Tallahassee on January 3. For the first week I was in Missouri and for the following two weeks I was in Connecticut. I also took an unintended vacation from the blogosphere, which I’ll address at the end.

Missouri

The story of my vacation actually starts a few days before I left to go to Missouri. My parents came to Florida to visit my grandmother who lives in Lakeland to celebrate her 92nd birthday. They came up to Tallahassee for a couple of days to see my new digs and spend a little time with me in my element. Work had become very slow by then, plus I had already finished up my commitments to school and to the Navigators for the semester, so I was able to make the most of their visit. All three of us left Florida the same day out of Jacksonville, allowing us to drive there together, only they were going home to Connecticut and I was flying to Missouri for a week before rejoining them.

I decided to take a trip to Missouri for a week to visit my grandmother, who I hadn’t seen in almost two years. I have to thank my Uncle Chuck and Aunt Martha, who live in St. Louis, for carting me in and out of the tiny town of Louisiana. I had a really good time while I was there. Technically I was teleworking the five weekdays I was in Missouri, which meant that I needed to check my work email a few times a day, have my cell phone on to receive calls from coworkers and check the work voice mail a couple times each day. But after I put in my hours each day I was put to work by my grandmother. She owns two houses that are right next to each other. She has recently moved out of the house that used to be the Missouri governor’s mansion (long, long ago). Now she lives in a smaller, more handicap accessible home. But she has a tremendous amount of sorting to do in her old home, so it was my job to carry things from the big house to her current house. It was by no means grueling. It’s fun to see some of the cool things she has in that old house!

I had a few other surprises while in Missouri, too. My first full day there my grandmother dragged me to a church walk. Each year a bunch of churches in town, which are all within a few blocks of each other, have a Christmas celebration together. But rather than have it at one location, they each put on part of it at their own church, then the participants walk over to the next church. I didn’t want to go at first, but I’m glad I did. Not only did I get to meet a lot of my grandmother’s friends (I’m starting to realize that showing off your grandchildren never becomes old to grandparents), but each church put on a pretty impressive Christmas music display. I was especially impressed by the local Episcopal church who had a talented bluegrass duo perform.

Later during the week I also got to spend time with a couple of my grandmother’s closest friends. One, a woman named Elizabeth, is always such an encouragement to me. I truly look forward to seeing her every time I come to town. Another, Katie, who I don’t believe I’d met before, has family working with Frontiers. We had a very interesting conversation about witnessing.

Another highlight was seeing my cousin Beka and her husband Jeremy. Technically this was the first time I’d ever met Jeremy, even though I attended their wedding. Our time together was limited to a single dinner, but I’m glad they made the trip from Nashville just to see me. (Okay, so they were probably there more because it was also my grandmother’s birthday dinner. Details, details.)

The morning I left it was four degrees outside with a windchill of minus seventeen. After arriving in Chicago my flight was delayed for a couple hours, but eventually I made it to Connecticut. Eventually really is the keyword. I started my travel day at around 2 PM on Sunday (central time) and arrived at my parents’ house at 4 am on Monday (eastern time)! And, yes, I had to telework on Monday.

Connecticut

I only had to telework for three days while in Connecticut. Starting Christmas day through the rest of my trip I was on vacation. That’s one of the great things about working at Florida State University. T.K. Wetherall, the university president, gives all faculty and staff from Christmas through New Years off as paid vacation each year. Back when I worked for the DOEA I was only given Christmas Day and New Years Day off, and since I wasn’t salaried I wasn’t paid on those days. So you might say I was excited about the change.

My priority for this trip was to spend quality time with my family since I hadn’t been home to see them since last Christmas. I was content to spend almost all my time at home and not hunt down old friends I’d lost contact with. My dad was given the same days off as me, and my sister was home from school, so the four of us were able to spend a lot of time together.

This didn’t mean I spent the whole time being lazy though. My sister wanted to wipe her laptop’s hard drive and install a 64-bit version of Vista, mostly so Photoshop would run better. I had never installed Vista before so, being the geek that I am, this was a fun experience for me. I did my best to trick out her computer with some bells and whistles that I’d read about on Lifehacker but had previously had no use for since I use a Mac. I think she’ll now be the envy the UT-Austin architecture school.

My favorite Christmas gift was from my parents. They gave me a Flip MinoHD, which is an HD video camera that’s about the size of my cell phone. I intend to use this to accomplish one of my blogging goals for the year, which is to post an original video once each month.

We watched a lot of football, which is still a little strange to me because my family never used to watch sports when I was growing up. But since my sister and I each went to schools that have good football teams my parents have started to follow the college football scene. But this year even my parents’ alma mater Vanderbilt made it to a bowl game for the first time since 1982, which was about a year and a half before I was born. They were huge underdogs to ACC runner-up Boston College but pulled off a shocking upset win, 16-14, their first bowl win since 1955. Actually, all four of the schools my immediate family has attended were in bowls this year (FSU, Texas, Vandy and FAU) and all four won.

I also watched the Miami Dolphins win the AFC East in one of the most dramatic turnarounds in NFL history. I took a lot of pleasure in knowing that the Dolphins were the only team from their division and the only team from Florida to make the postseason. Even though they eventually lost to the Ravens in the first round I’m still really proud of their accomplishment this year.

I did connect with one old friend, a college buddy of mine named Josh. He moved to Connecticut after college to work at ESPN. He has since gotten engaged to a super cool lady named Lauren. Their wedding is in April and they’ve asked me to be an usher, which is a major honor. (Now I just need to wrangle some time off from work.) Anyway, Josh and I are both sci-fi nerds, hitting the swamp of our mid-twenties and doing our best to be faithful Christ-followers, so we always have a lot to talk about when we get together.

Here’s something super cool. My dad has owned a 1984 Honda Prelude since it was brand new. He recently bought a new car to replace it but he still hasn’t gotten rid of it. Recently he decided to put “antique” license plates on it which signify it as an “Early American.” I think it’s a riot that a car from the 80′s qualifies as an antique and that a Japanese sports car gets the same plate as a Model-A. Here are a few pictures.

I made it home without a hitch. Both my flights were smooth and uneventful. I had a full day to rest up since I decided to come back on a Saturday. (My real motivation for flying on Saturday was to attempt to be bumped to Sunday and receive a travel voucher, but with the economy in the toilet both my flights had empty seats.)

My Surprise Vacation from the Blogosphere

Quote of the Day: “This is how good bloggers go bad. That and feeding them after midnight.” — Rob Hodges, in response to the following

Okay, now I’ll talk about my other vacation. The night before I left Connecticut to return to Florida I received an email from Bluehost, the company that hosts my website. They said that they were shutting down my site because it was causing performance problems. This is a big deal because I’m on a shared server (meaning there are other sites stored with mine on the same server), so my errors were causing issues for other people. I hadn’t even been looking at my error logs, but it turns out my site had been having trouble for almost a whole year! They forced me to weed out my WordPress MySQL database. After it was reviewed by the powers that be, my site finally came back to the Internet yesterday afternoon.

Back in the Saddle

I’m now back at work. Next week I will begin a new grad class on line-editing and begin leading a new freshmen Bible study on Philippians. I’m also going to begin attending a small group at my church which begins meeting tonight. With any luck I’ll also be coleading a seminar for graduating seniors in a couple of weeks. I’ve always liked the spring semester better than the fall. The tempo has always felt more relaxed to me, probably because there isn’t any football to deal with. I’m very hopeful right now. I’m excited to see what the next few months will bring.