Generally vacations are a wonderful thing. Laying back, enjoying the weather, relaxing, maybe having a beverage or two, not a care in the world. This is like almost all the vacations I have gone on have been. Cruises, California, Florida, Maine, Outer Banks all had these things in common. But every once in a great while I get a grain of regret, a sliver of doubt, about a vacation.
I am a creature of habit. I have worked in the same place for almost 30 years, lived in the same house for almost as much of the time. I get up generally around the same time every day, take my pills in one gulp and head off to my job at the same time. So, when these routines, these rhythms of my life are some how upset, it bothers me.
First off there is the bed. I like my bed and pillows. I do not like other beds or pillows, so only rarely do I sleep well on vacations. But the biggest issue I have, the thing that consistently bothers me while on vacation is being out of touch with the world news and sports.
Now some of you are wondering – why doesn’t he watch the news at night or follow ESPN for all the scores? I try to, I really do but this is where the routines and habits get in the way. I don’t like to watch local news in other places or read local newspapers (although Mrsfabp LOVES local newspapers…). I like to get my news and sports information through the daily blogs I read. I know I am on vacation when I can sit for a while reading The Atlantic magazine, or read The Bronx Bombers Blog through my RSS feeds. I also follow a number of blogs by people who have become friends – Maqz, JHop, Shane, Clarez, Peggy, to name a few. During vacations, their blogs always seem to fall between the cracks from “I’ll read them all later” to “OMG I can’t catch up with all of these posts”. On vacations, I miss my friends.
Unfortunately it is not always possible to keep up with these things and I end up feeling detached, out of touch, out of sorts. For example, on our trip to New Mexico, we had an iPad but no wireless internet in our room for the first week. This meant that both Mrsfabp and I were fighting over control of the iPad when ever we found a good wireless signal, whether at the McDonalds or the local coffee shop. This made it difficult to stay up with the things I do routinely. I normally get a total of about 75 updates a day to my Google reader. Not all are articles or blogs, lots of the updates come from sites called aggregators that collect interesting items for me – sports, politics, science, news. Many of these thing are short, simple and take a moment to look at, Upon our return to Massachusetts I had over a thousand unread items. It took me two weeks to catch up.
So in a nutshell this is why vacations sometimes can suck. But I will let you in on a little secret. They only suck a teeny tiny bit and everything else about them is fantastic. Despite being out of sorts, I am looking forward to our next trip to Las Cruces. Hopefully though, it will be our last and will be accompanied by a moving van.
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