Some months ago, my mother changed her mind about having a family reunion in Sweden when she found that my aunt, who is Vietnamese and married to my mom’s brother, couldn’t get a visa to go over there with her kids. Instead, she booked five cabins at Douthat State Park in central Virginia, a place I’d never heard of but which has been rated (apparently) in the top ten of all state parks in the country.

Unfortunately, due to the nature of my work at the moment, I was only able to make it down there by midday on Friday - and the reservation was up Saturday at 10am. So I hightailed it down to northern Virginia Thursday night, woke up bright and early to a phone call from our CEO (thankfully my alarm was set to go off five minutes later - all part of the job, anyway), and grabbed my cousin for the 200-mile drive down to Millboro.

I spent all the rest of the day swimming, canoeing, and acquiring a rather painful sunburn on my back. We completed the evening with a campfire and s’mores, and you know what? It was perfect. Especially because absolutely no one there got cell reception.

I love stuff like this. It reminds me of my youth, when, every year for ten years, we would spend at least a month of the summer at our family house in Sweden. Even without indoor plumbing, it was an unbelievable experience with swimming, fishing, boating, eating crayfish, and playing guitar and singing late into the night - after all, it’s Sweden in the summertime. It doesn’t get dark, and that’s just cool.

Have you ever been on a flight and thought to yourself, “Man, I’d be much more comfortable if I were naked”?

Well, brace yourself, because if you happen to be near the German town of Erfurt on July 5, you may just have the opportunity.  A travel agent there is currently planning a nudist day trip to a Baltic Sea destination, during which travelers can actually disrobe on the plane should they so desire (and it’s a nudist day trip - no time for modesty if you’re traveling at 30,000 feet).

All I can say is, I hope they turn the temperature up.  Planes tend to be a bit on the cold side, and that would be unfortunate for many of the male passengers.

Those crazy Germans.

I haven’t taken a vacation since I started the job that I currently hold; yes, I’ve taken a day off here and there, and the end of one week when Meg’s brother graduated from Marine boot camp, but it’s never been like a real vacation. I ended up having to cancel on our plans to go to Cyprus with some university friends back in September due to the fact that just flying over there would have cost me over $1200 - a bit obscene, really - and things were busy at work and basically all the odds were against it.

In any case, I finally made it to London two days after Christmas. Meg came with me, as well as our friends Anita and Karen, and we stayed at my friend S’s house; she, coincidentally, just came out a few months ago after much speculation, and I was eager to check out the London gay scene with her (not that we ended up doing much of that, but never mind). It was a fabulous ten days, rowdy, crazy … though in hindsight, if I were to go back in time and take the trip again, I would probably change a few things, not sleep many of the days away, visit more sights, that sort of thing.

We decided, upon much deliberation, to go to a club called Wish for New Year’s. If only they had a place like that in the NYC-area! It was a wicked club - two levels, the basement bit playing thumpy electronic/techno music, and the upstairs bit playing alternative, sing-a-long kind of stuff (think The Killers, The Fratellis, all of those fun groups). We went with a group of S’s friends from around the UK, all of them uber-trendy lesbians with killer haircuts (which I want to imitate, but I’m a pussy when it comes to new hairstyles, so we’ll see how far that goes), but sadly we never really got a chance to interact too much. I did meet Miss Gay Manchester, who was off her face but hilarious and very nice, and it’s kind of cool to say that I’ve met a minor celebrity, anyway. S ended up going to a house party later in the evening, and Anita and Karen went home as Karen wasn’t feeling well, so I spent most of the night dancing with my girlfriend and our friend James, who’s simply fabulous - straight, but fabulous. A good night, in general, and a relatively cheap one with good music. Can’t go wrong with that.

The rest of the time in London was spent meeting up with friends from school. It was the first time I’d seen most of them in over a year, and it was great to catch up. I miss that group and all of their eccentricities. On the upside, a number of them are planning visits to the States in the first half of this year: three definitely, another two or three maybe.

Anyway, now I’m well into the daily grind once again. I think my aversion to taking vacations from work stems from the fact that, even when I take a day off, things change, methods change, goals change. In a start-up, especially in the software industry, things just seem to happen so fast. In any case, now I’m back to work and it’s crazy-busy, but everything we’re doing is so interesting that the only problem I have is that there are only so many hours in a day!

… at least, it feels that way outside. If we have another cold spell, I think I may actually hurt somebody. This past week was crazy with the Nor’easter that came through; though my street wasn’t largely affected by it, numerous roads were shut due to overflowing rivers and drains, and I heard that downtown Rahway was full of people in boats. Basically, it was just very wet, very gray, and quite cold and miserable. This probably explains why everyone at The Office seems to be sick. Bloody winter. Go away!

Last week we had a sales and marketing kickoff meeting in Atlantic City, three days with eight hours each of presentations, team-building exercises, and so forth. It was pretty interesting, actually, and caused some heated debates … but of course that’s not the bit that made me happy. No, it was my discovery that I absolutely adore playing blackjack for money. By the end of the third night, Meg (who had come to visit that night because she didn’t have to work the next day) was keeping all of my chips in her pocket for me so that I wouldn’t spend anymore, and when I cashed out I had about $1100. Not bad for a poor sod like me! Plus, given that the hotel and all meals were paid for by my company, I made a fair bit. Nothing wrong with that.

On a random note, Chris bought Guitar Hero II the other day for XBox 360 (did I mention I bought that? Well, I did, and it’s fabulous!) and brought it over last night so that I could finally try it out. Let’s just say, I don’t think I should ever buy it for myself. I wouldn’t play anything else. I already have problems enough with The Godfather.

And finally, thank goodness Sanjaya and his bloody hair are finally gone from American Idol. If LaKisha had gone before him, I may have actually stopped watching (that’s a blatant lie, of course, but I would have been more than a little bit peeved). But what will America be talking about now? Honestly, as much as I disliked the guy, he was the most interesting part of the show this year. Even Paula seems to have lightened up on the drugs; she’s lost her infamous ‘colour’ from previous seasons.

It is positively freezing outside, and tomorrow is supposed to be ugly, dark, gray, windy, and even colder. Blah. As much as I enjoy winter sports (which I haven’t been able to do this winter, as snow seems to be eluding the state of New Jersey though it has piled up everywhere else in the country), I’m done with winter this year. It can scamper back to its little cave and rouse the springtime now.

I may just be bitter because I’ve come under attack by a cold bug that is, really, exhausting my body and my mind. This is yet another one of those times I wish I were back in school. I would have no problems skipping out on a class because I feel crappy. But here in the real world, taking sick days constitutes losing vacation days, which I refuse to allow. I’m deliberately saving my days off so that I can have a proper few weeks to enjoy Midsommar in Sweden. That’s my plan, and I’m sticking to it. I haven’t been back there in, wow, five years next month (wtf?), and it’s high time I made it back, especially since my relatives over there are getting on in years and I’d like to see them. They’re nuts, but in a fun way. Let’s face it: if I had the option, I’d be living there now. Maybe if I go for my MBA at the Stockholm School of Economics, about which I’ve been thinking for awhile … but I should probably figure out my company’s policy on buggering off to go back to school first.