Vacation Blog Prologue

 

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Please do not read my blog.

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Awesome blog reading discretion has been advised. Don't be mad, Boo.

Vacationing is always an iffy thing for me. People think I'm crazy when I get nervous about going on vacation, but nearly every vacation I've ever been on results in either serious personal issues or injury. Not kidding. Here is a short list of absolutely true events that occurred during my vacations:

1) September 1996: A naive 19 y/o Dan is commissioned to help a good friend and his Mother move from my hometown, Kingsville, Texas to their hometown, Baltimore, Maryland. We drove a U-Haul van all the way up and had a pretty fun time from my recollection, but what sucked was Hurricane Edouard was on its way up to that area and there was a cold front coming in from the west at the same time. All that change in weather caused a serious head cold, which I carried with me when I flew out, which played hell with my sinuses and destroyed one ear drum, causing mild permanent hearing loss and what looked like miscarried alien babies coming from my nostrils for a couple of weeks. Rotting on the inside while you aren't able to hear people tell you how horrible you look was never in the vacation plan.

 

 

2) October 2002: I took a trip up to Peoria, Illinois to see my girlfriend at the time, who was completing an internship at a hospital in the area. I stayed in the male dorms the first night I was there to help keep the cost of vacation down. I also bathed in the communal shower there (which made me feel like I was in prison) with a polite young Indian man who apparently had FUCKING CHICKEN POX......which I never had as a child, growing up mostly over seas where people don't get sick very often (one of the few advantages of living in the tropics). I spent the next four days alternating between laying in a bath tub full of aveno and oozing pus all over my nice hotel bed. I had fucking chicken pox lesions in my ears and on my nutsack, for fuck sake. What fun.

 

 

 

 

3) November 2006: My good friend Laura was graduating dive school and I went down to Houston to watch her graduation and see my Dad and second family. At the time my marriage wasn't doing so well and in August of that year I had made the incredibly ignorant decision to reply to a post on Craigslist of a woman who seemed interesting to me, because my lapses in judgement may be few and far between, but they're pretty fucking legendary. Needless to say it was a totally dumb and I regretted it immediately, but moved on. The night Laura graduated I got a call from my wife telling me she'd found that email in my outbox (there was no reply by the woman) and so pretty much nailed the coffin shut on our already failing marriage. Certainly not a shining moment in the history of vacation or fidelity.

 

 

 

 

4) September 2009: After my Dad and his wife Irma were up to visit the beautiful (and at the time dry) Pacific Northwest, I was helping my then girlfriend move into my apartment. As I was coming down the stairs with my billionth load of stuff, I tripped and fell down about four steps, spraining both ankles and tearing ligaments in both feet (interesting how you can actually hear a popping sound when that happens). I landed on my elbows and knees and cried like a little girl, mostly cause I knew I was fucked with both of my ankles sprained. I was out of work for an extra five days and layed around feeling sorry for myself and wondering what the fuck it was about vacation that bad shit always seemed to happen. Aside from the 2006 vacation, none of it was really my fault. I'm just as careful and aware as any other time during the year, so I don't really get it. Maybe my negative karma comes due only during vacation, or something more sinister is working behind the scenes to ensure I never actually have fun during a time when fun is the only thing on the agenda. Whatever it is, I'm very leery about taking vacation and now you see why.

 

 

 

 

In 2010 into early 2011 my Dad, Larry, was having serious health problems which I won't elaborate on because he's going to read this some day and call me up to tell me "all those people don't need to know my business". Anyway, I think these problems finally gave him a sense of mortality, because he finally agreed to stop his "busy life" and come with me on vacation.  Washington D.C. was where he wanted to go and that's where we went........

 

 

 

 

Hilarity fucking ensues. I guess I never learn.......