Originally Marcus and I had planned on going to South Padre in early September, but Hurricane Ike had other plans in store for us.  Instead, we spent the entire week relaxing in Austin.  Honesty, I’m glad our trip ended up getting cancelled.  Between the insane stress levels from work, trying to find a live-in petsitter for Cola (we didn’t want to leave her alone so soon after Casey died), and my general propensity to get stressed out when I travel, staying at home was the perfect vacation.  To make matters easier, Southwest gave us a full refund for our plane tickets because of the hurricane, so it worked out quite nicely.

Wednesday was spent sleeping in, playing disc golf, and renting some video games and movies for the week (GTA4 and Season 1 of Weeds, both of which I recommend unless you are squeamish about things like drug dealing, violence, auto theft, illicit sex, and pretty much every other debauchery you can think of…).

Thursday we rented jet skis and went out on Lake Travis.  I had never driven a jet ski before – I’ve ridden on the back of one when I was in high school but never had control of the gas.  It was quite exhilirating   I was pretty conservative with the gas at first, but once I got the hang of it I was flying across the lake.  The guy at Just For Fun said we could probably get it up to 70MPH since pretty much no one was on the lake, but we were only able to get them up to 55MPH at max throttle.  We were out there for 2 hours, which ended up being just a little too long – I think an hour would have been perfect.  We were pretty pooped afterwards.  We had some drinks and appetizers at Carlos and Charlie’s and then headed home and played more video games.

Over the weekend we played more disc golf, did some shopping, watched a lot of football, and cleaned up around the house.  We even had a few people over to watch the Ohio State vs. USC game, which was the first time we’ve hosted any kind of party at our house other than the one time I hosted book club.  We grilled steaks and mostly ignored the game since it ended up being not much of a game at all, and hopefully now Marcus’s friends will hang out at our place more often so we don’t always have to go to their houses.

On Tuesday we drove to Dallas to pick up my Invisalign.  My teeth have shifted since I got my braces in middle school and my teeth were hitting each other in the front when I chewed.  So now I have a mouthful of clear plastic to help correct my bite.  It’s taken some time to adjust – my tongue has swelled up from hitting the sides of the cases and I have a funny lisp that I haven’t learned how to correct just yet, but luckily the entire process is only going to take 4 months total.  Not bad at all.

Wednesday was a lazy day doing nothing and dreading going to work the next day.  We had thought that 8 days off would be plenty of time, but I think we could have used another 4 days or so to really recuperate.  Luckily the way we planned it meant that we had a short work week both before and after our vacation, so there was time to ease back into the workplace. 

And now it’s Friday, and instead of doing work I am updating my blog   I think it’s good to spend a little time goofing off at work now and again!  Just don’t tell my boss… who by the way had her first baby this weekend!  For those who know Tara, you can check out the pictures at http://www.obscuresite.com/Serena.  She’ll be out for the next two months on maternity leave, which means I’m going to take advantage of the situation and try to work from home quite a bit while she’s out   It will probably be good for me and my sanity to not spend so much time at the office anyway.