vacation

So far, I've hit 31 of 50 states.  A nice, pictorial demonstration of where life has taken me:

['Where i've been' on flickr]

Now let's step back ten months, to a very memorable conversation in Vancouver:

"Amy, we have not seen you in about five years."
(Pause.)

"We live IN HAWAII."
(Longer pause.)

"WE HAVE A GUEST ROOM."
(A pause with a very direct stare.)

"Do you understand me?"
(Followed by a very impish grin.)

Shortly after coming home, I said to Jeff, "I think we should go to Hawaii for our birthdays this year."

Consider this portion of yesterday’s twitter traffic:

We’ve relaxed since getting here, having put down our daily lives on the floor next to our bags and picking up something simpler. We’ve flitted from restaurant to restaurant, snagging wings here, Chinese there.This afternoon, we went gifting, bringing Patrick along for the plan of getting him a birthday shirt. A simple plan, a dress shirt; help Patrick finally find a dress shirt he liked that actually fit, buy it for him and wish him a happy birthday.

You cannot take the measure of a place without experiencing it with your own senses. I do not know this place, not yet; I know bits and pieces of roads and intersections, and the interior of a gym rather well, and the photos on the walls of this house best of all. It’s been a long time since I’ve done this sort of thing, traipsing cross-country to a place that I’ve never seen before in order to drop out of my life for a week or so at a time.

I’ve been disoriented.
It’s improving.

I’ve had Talking Heads in, well, my head for most of the week. I started the trip with “Once In A Lifetime” and sang along until I had most of it.

“And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go?”
— Talking Heads

South and east, I think, past the sprawl and congestion of Atlanta to the sprawl and congestion of yet another place, but one that has something I haven’t seen in quite some time. Ocean.

Into the blue again, indeed.

I had my seat belt unbuckled before we even came to a stop, safety be damned. I grabbed my books, yawned, and all but tumbled off the plane. I was halfway through the jetway when the altitude caught up with me. Denver air will do that, sapping your muscles of energy while your brain still thinks there should be more in the tank.My tank was empty. It had been for twelve days. All I had to do was fall forward onto the motorized walkways, keep falling forward into the inter-concourse trains and hope that I ended up ass somewhere near teakettle on the escalators to baggage claim.