Vacation Reflection

Ok, so I learned a few things after the few days at the beach. One is that it is really hard to get work done. I did not write a single word on anything, let alone work on my manuscript. I knew this already as I elaborated in my previous post, but it was reinforced this weekend. It turns out that even as we left on Saturday, I was sick. I spent all of Saturday, Sunday, and most of Monday near a toilette, and finally I recovered enough to enjoy myself a bit by Monday night.

The second this is that there is not much to do at the beach. Pretty much the beach is it. Since I do not like the beach all that much (it's the sand) I have little to do there. My children are also a bit young to spend much time on the beach all at once so we went down in the morning and then in the afternoon. It is nice, but I am not much of a beach fan. I prefer mountains and hiking and such.

Thirdly, I want to retract my previous statement about people reading on vacation. I picked up a book while I was there (one that people leave for others to enjoy) and read through it in a couple of days. It was very relaxing. I suspect that people read while they are on vacation because we often do not get a lot of time during their busy lives to just sit and read all day. It was great. I read a 500 page book in two days! How often does that happen? Not very. So I now advocate for reading while on vacation because it is very relaxing, and I might add, a bit more stimulating than watching cable.

This is the final thing I learned: there is nothing worthwhile on TV. We do not have cable at home, because it is costly, and we are not TV advocates, but in the house we were staying in there was cable. So like a couple of starved castaways, we ate it up the moment we got there. The kids watched cartoons, my wife watched the home and garden channel, and I watched ESPN. It was great. For a couple of days. Then it was boring. And it was so hard to find something interesting to watch. I think that there are so many channels now that they cannot possibly all have something interesting on, so they have their one or two shows that are good to get people watching and the rest of the time they hope that what they have on will be interesting enough to get people who do not want to do anything but sit on the couch something to stare at while they waste their time. I was not impressed, and will not be getting cable any time soon. With that I will say that if nothing else the trip was restful even though I was sick for most of it, and I am glad to be back in Fresno where it is hot and miserable, yet still home.