Lessons Learned

I'm back from vacation. I had a really good time, but learned a couple of things about myself and the whole traveling experience.

First, I'm grown up. Really. I'm an adult now. When I went on vacation last time
(2007) it was different from this time. I was able to rent a car this time. Yay! Really that is the only perk of being 25.

But I learned quickly that I don't like being told what to do so much anymore. If I don’t want to eat something, I don't want to eat it. End of discussion. I'm done with that phase in my life of being forced to "try" foods that I've tried and disliked 100 times.

I never realized how much I appreciate living on my own until I stayed in someone else’s house with their own rules for a while. Needless to say by the end there I was eager to get back to the place where I can run my own show.

Second, driving in Boston is no picnic. I DO NOT recommend it. It's pandemonium in that city. One way streets, people everywhere no parking anywhere. Ugh. What a mess. We only got lost a few times and didn't hit anyone or anything so that is good.

Third, the east coast is bad for my hair, but great for my allergies. I did not sneeze, have a stuffed nose or runny eyes the entire time. Sure enough the day I got back to CA my nose started acting up again.

Fourth, planes are not so fun. For some reason in my mind I always think I like plane rides. Than I get on one and realize that I have no room to move anywhere. It’s a claustrophobic nightmare on those things. The whole way there Jimmy and I had 2 kids kicking the back of our seats non stop. On the way home we had to listen to the same episodes of Dora the Explorer and Wonder Pets at an alarmingly high volume coming from a laptop in the seat in front of us over and over again. I guess it was either listen to that or crying, so maybe Dora wasn't so bad after all.

Fifth, geniuses look just like the rest of us. I'm not sure why but I thought they would look different. I guess I thought they would all be wearing Dockers and sweater vests (Legally Blond isn't so accurate with that aspect). We walked around Harvard for a while. It was crazy seeing all these kids everywhere knowing that they were all really smart and probably really rich. We drove by MIT too, same thing there. But they looked like the same kids I used to see at CSUN. So we did our best to blend in with the students. I guess it worked because someone asked us for directions. Maybe we look like geniuses after all. If they only knew...

I've got tons and tons of pictures (like 200 of them) so I'll have to dedicate a night to posting some of them using my dinosaur computer at home. It will probably take a full evening considering how slow my computer is!