My Summer Vacation, by Mike S.

Today was my first day off since the 13th of October, and I promised myself I would do two things. One was work out, the other was write a blog post. And once I hit "publish post", it looks like I will have managed to do both. (For the record, I also slept in, played some Madden, and drank a lot of coffee.)

Work has been ridiculous lately and a scheduling disaster happened which put me on the wards for two weeks straight. The team I was rounding on was large (rarely less than 15 patients in 14 days) and was constantly turning over, meaning that I was constantly turning over the paperwork, and staying long hours on a daily basis. It reminded me of my residency days in many ways, and not the fun parts.

As Gwen and I work toward separating from the US Army here in the next eight months I'm constantly wondering when I can flick the "mentally checked out" switch. Clearly, it's not yet, but I sort of wish it was.


Summer came and went, and based on some of the emails and messages I received it seems people are tired of loading this page up to see once again the Joker's long purple coat and little else. My apologies for that. I would say there are two reasons for the discrete lack of blogging of late. One reason was the immense traveling we did at the end of summer. The other reason was, and is, quite frankly - the football season.

Readers may or may not be comforted by the fact that though this particular blog has been dormant, the blog I run for my "main" fantasy football league (I have four leagues, hence the "main" distinction) has been quite active on a week to week basis. Most readers, however, will also lament that it's a blog about a fantasy football league, and little else, and there really would be no reason at all to read it unless you were a part of that league. Hence, I will not link it here. The point of mentioning it is that the other blog takes up the time I'd normally focus here. (Actually, come to think of it, it's staggering to think just how much the football season affects me in terms of time, mood, sleep, and overall health. But that's for another post.)

So I've been wanting to fire up the old Discostup blog again but between work, travel, and football season I haven't really had the time or energy to sit down and really crank out anything worth reading.

Also, in the past, I've made the mistake of trying to "come back" with a monster post, intending to make up for all the lost time by blasting readers with a mega-post. I won't be doing that this time, though given how easy the words are coming off the keyboard at the moment, I might just ramble on a bit further than I intended.

When I last posted I had just seen the Batman movie (see last post!). About two weeks after that Gwen and I headed up to Stockholm, Sweden for an extended weekend. After Stockholm we had about a day to collect ourselves before gearing up and spending two weeks in San Diego where we are both currently looking for jobs. Back in August (and into early September), I should add that it was really only Gwen actively looking at that time. (I hope all who know us are sitting, because I'm sure what I'm about to tell you may shock you. Yes, it's true, Gwen beat me to the punch in terms of job hunting. I'll just give you a minute.) My interests at the time were more in line with hitting the beach, taking a load off, and of course participating in the 2008 version of Best Day Ever, which centers annually around, what else, a fantasy football draft.

Upon our return from San Diego, Gwen and I went through the usual post-vacation depression and dove back into work. We unfortunately haven't been able to travel all that much since, because of frequent call and all the time we spent Stateside, with one large exception. Earlier in October I alone (Gwen was working) was able to meet up with my parents and some family friends (Ceil and Ken) in Venice, Italy over another long weekend.

And so, before moving on to other topics great and small, in other posts, I will briefly recap the recent travels.

First up was Stockholm, a clean and expensive city with good seafood and the best phrase for saying 'Hello' we've ever encountered. The way to say hello in Swedish is to simply say "Hey". When you don't know that, however, it can make for interesting encounters, like the time you enter a store and an employee looks at you and says, "Hey". Interpretations could vary in meaning and tone, from "Hey!" (what the hell do you think you're doing?!) to "Hey" (with a quick head flip, as if you're my best friend and I've known you for years). Either way, the response in the beginning is always a guarded return "Hey" and then quickly moving about your business. As the weekend went on, however, it was kind of fun to play with, and saying "Hey" became kind of an amusing game. Often I'd have to prevent myself from responding "Heyyyyyyy" with varying tone inflections or the like. Regardless, "Hey" is the best "Hello" there is, at least in any country I've been to.

Another amusing part of the Sweden trip that I almost forgot was that the Olympics were on while we were there. I sort of got into Team USA hoops (and I've always loved Track and Field), so a few times Gwen and I went around looking for a TV to watch things (usually me dragging Gwen to watch hoops). Sweden does not have what I would call a strong Summer Olympics team, but this olympics they did have one key figure who dominated all their coverage - it was a table tennis player. Amidst all the Asians who dominate the sport, he seemed to be like an out-of-place Viking in a samurai movie. His picture was everywhere in Stockholm, like a Swedish Michael Jordan. For some reason I just found this hilarious.




This guy can have any woman in Sweden



And with that, let's move on to some pics:

Stockholm-Aug 08

Next up was our trip to San Diego. Two weeks of fun in the sun and of course, Best Day Ever 2008. Gwen did a lot of job interviews, and I tried to relive a small portion of "Summer of the Bum" (the real event occurred back in 1997) by hanging out with friends, hitting the beach, and basically just kicking back. I'm not going to rehash the entire two weeks but it was a lot of fun and the trip sort of sealed the deal for me that I need to go back to San Diego when I'm done with the Army.

Best Day Ever 2008 was actually stretched into a Best Weekend Ever 2008, and of course culminated in the annual Mick's League O' Micks draft party which was held at the Papa Roston's Pleasure Palace. Unfortunately there aren't many pics of the occasion on my camera (and the few pics I do have are of Eryn in his "thong" on draft day. Yes, he lost a best involving last year's fantasy team and had to draft for a few rounds in nothing but a thong this year. Most people losing this bet would have sheepishly complied, but let's just say that Eryn is not the shy type, and several of us learned that day that there are some things, once seen, that cannot be unseen.) Let's just move on.

The last recent trip I took was to Venice, where as I mentioned above I met my parents and some old family friends. The weather was nice (so nice that I got eaten alive by mosquitos) and we had a great time catching up. Going in I thought Venice would be a little too touristy and quaint for my taste, but I must say that though it is a very touristy city it still has something really unique and cool about it. It's definitely worth a trip, especially considering that there is Italian Food and Gelatto everywhere. The centerpiece of Venice is Saint Mark's square which more or less defines the classic "European Square". Saint Mark's Basilica, which is the centerpiece of the square, is really eye catching and even a person such as myself who's nearly burnt out on European churches at this point can be really impressed.

As always it was great to see my parents, even if my dad did develop a crack-like addiction to "Spaghetti Bolognese" (the guy ordered it EVERY meal. That's not an exaggeration.)

I leave you with Pics:

Venice Oct 08