Post Vacation No-No

I'm not a huge vacationer. I'm usually pretty content just to be at home, hope for several days with nothing on my plate, and simply have coffee, a book or two, my laptop, and broadband.

This last trip that we took, however, was much needed. Granted... I still had coffee, some books, laptop, and broadband. The need, however... was for a change of scenery. And weather.

After 2 1/2 weeks of being gone, I came home. And that evening, I changed the background image on my desktop. To this...



Friends... that is a post-vacation no-no. After most vacations, I come home energized and ready to tackle everything that's ahead of me. But this time... as our plane touched down - and we saw the snow on the ground, and knew that all the restaurants and stores around us were closed for the Chinese New Year holiday - I was pretty de-motivated. And every time I was on my computer to get some stuff done... I would see this shot of a beautiful and mostly empty beach that Bethany and I kayaked to one afternoon... I remained pretty de-motivated.

This past week has gotten better though. The weather is warming up. Even this afternoon, we got up into the high-50's. I went out in lined warm-ups and a sweatshirt. It's not exactly beach weather, I'll give you that. But it is definitely more pleasant than what we were feeling a month ago.

Vacation Highlights: Rock Climbing

Bethany has done a good job of posting blog entries lately, talking about our recent trip to Thailand, and about other things going on lately. I've been a bit awol... my apologies.

Some people have asked for more pictures and descriptions of different things that we did while we were traveling...

We tried outdoor rock climbing one day. While both of us have done a little bit of indoor rock climbing for fun, this is the first time we have tried it outside. The skill requirements seem to be close to the same, and the tiredness and exhaustion you feel afterwards is the same... but there is something much more satisfying about climbing outdoors.

Here is a shot of Bethany gearing up:


And then another shot of her making it to the top!


When climbing outside, the rocks are definitely more jagged so you can maybe scrape yourself up more easily if you're not careful. But since we were on a beginner trail, there seemed to be quite a bit to use for footholds and handholds. The view from the top, once you've made it... was spectacular - island, beach, ocean - but I was too scared to try to climb with my camera... so no picture of that.