recovered from vacation.

Home alone listening to NPR (dutifully noted on my Arbitron diary) and finishing up my online courses. I would of course rather be reading-I am in the middle of a mystery by Elizabeth Daly and it is sitting on the coffee table enticing me-but I have writing to finish first. I will indulge myself by reading over brunch soon. I am just enjoying the relative calm after the whirlwind of our vacation. Our vacations are not restful. We go-go-go...."we're here, we need to see/do/experience everything possible. We can sit around at home. " (typical comment of a non-housework doing family member.)

Our adventure was enhanced (exacerbated) by Junior, our newly acquired Garmin. Junior has a fondness for routes we avoid like poison-I95, for instance...but because we all ready knew how to get where we were going, we just practiced...sort of teaching Junior her place in the family pecking order. We would start off the way we wanted to go and she'd eventually catch up-although her "recalculating" did seem to grow more exasperated the more she had to say it. But we won, for now.
Of course, on that fateful day when we have no idea how to get where we want to go, then, I fear, Junior will take her revenge.

Family vacations, by definition, are all about together time. Not solitude. I dearly love my family-but after spending every waking and sleeping minute together for 4 days, we all need to love each other from different rooms. Our spats are quick and over, our laughs are many-but we all benefit from our solitude....well, three out of the four of us. One of us does not like to be alone ever, and hates silence. Fortunately, his work is all people-oriented. He is very good at it. I would bite people if I had to do his job.

Home late Thursday from our trip-fell into bed after driving over 5 hours (that would be me driving-it was my turn)...trucks need to learn to share the road nicely-I can imagine many of them pushing at the sandbox back in kindergarten. I don't want to hear that they need to pull out into moving traffic because it takes them so long to get rolling-I don't buy it. Nor do they need to climb into my trunk when I am in the right lane-so pass me all ready.

Friday-recover, laundry, try repeatedly to email a large powerpoint presentation to servers that won't accept large files...arrgghh. Both servers I use accept it-why can't yahoo? Stingy thing.
Then spent an hour splitting said presentation into 4 parts so it will email-now the recipient will have to put it all together again. If all the sounds and animations and hyperlinks survive it will be a miracle!

Today-cloudy and threatening. We are invited to join a group at an outdoor concert-we are not looking upon the idea with pleasure. Our weather choices appear to be swelter or drown, as thunderstorms are predicted, but until they get here, it is hot hot hot humid. Add eating outside with the company of bugs and it is an evening not to be anticipated with glee. We'll see.