Despite living in California for three years, I’ve never really ventured outside of the Bay Area. When jparks and I plan vacations, we tend to want to travel to places that require passports and plane rides or we head back to NOLA to visit family. We’ve both been itching for a vacation and since I had to make the drive down to Los Angeles to pick up my limping husband, I figured we should make a short vacation out of it. After consulting with someone that actually knows about Southern Cal, I booked us three nights in the Laguna Beach/Dana Point area. Holy crap, that Whoorl will not steer you wrong on vacation advice because the whole area was gorgeous.

Jparks’ knee was really swollen and walking on uneven ground was not really an option, so we never made it to the beach, but that didn’t stop us from lounging about while doing nothing. Our hotel room had two patios and one was large enough for two lounge chairs and a table, so we spent one afternoon on it, soaking up the sun. Or in my case, soaking up the shade while wearing SPF 50 and still getting sunburned. The only thing missing was a bottle of champagne.

We also carved out time to see a movie (The Hangover, which was pretty funny although totally ridiculous) and jparks was treated to a pedicure. When I picked him up from the ride he leaned in and whispered to me “I’m really looking forward to the pedicure” so I knew that even though I hadn’t made us pedicure appointments, I would have to find a place to fit us in. And what do you know, I found a place:

The woman giving jparks his pedicure offered to give him a clear coat of polish but he was not on board for that. I didn’t understand why not, I mean if you’re getting a pedicure you might as well go all out. And it’s clear polish, not red like I got.

All in all the four days away was wonderful and I am now hopelessly in love with that area. I expected extremely hot weather but was treated to temps lower than here in the perpetually cool Bay Area. Also the whole area was green and lush and I kept telling jparks that I want to live in Southern Cal where they take water for granted and have plenty of plants and trees. Not that we don’t have green around here, but it’s not nearly as wide spread. Damn us and our water conserving ways.

I can’t wait to go back and hopefully next time jparks won’t be a gimp so we can visit the beach, although I was told the water is too cold to go into without a wetsuit. Also, I can’t wait to go back so we can go to Harbor House Cafe and have another monster banana split.

This weekend jparks and I were in Austin for his best friend’s Valentine’s Day wedding. At first I wasn’t really excited about a Valentine’s Wedding (not that we do anything special for VDay) but then I realized that we would have a night of dinner and dancing and we wouldn’t have to plan for it at all. That’s a winning situation for two people that usually stay home to avoid the crowds on the 14th. In the future I plan on crashing other VDay weddings.

While the wedding was lovely, I do have one major complaint about this trip. In an effort to save money jparks and I booked the hotel room through hotwire. You know, hotwire where you don’t learn your hotel room until you complete the booking process. Hotwire, where the star ratings are wrong. Hotwire, who wants you to die in your hotel room, so you can’t complain about the crappy hotel they stuck you with.

Hotwire booked us at the La Quinta Inn off MoPac. Please keep in mind that I am a bit of a hotel snob, but I wasn’t always. I can lower my standards in certain situations and this was one time when I was really trying to be open minded about the La Quinta Inn, mostly because no refunds were given for cancellations.

Thursday night was our first night at the La Quinta and I had to check in alone because jparks was off getting shitfaced at the bachelor party. I checked into my room and was happily settling in to watch 30 Rock, when I noticed that one of the two doors leading out looked like it had been kicked in. This particular door supposedly faced a courtyard, but since I was in the last room in the wing the door actually faced the parking lot. The top lock, which was one of these, was totally broken. The part that attaches to the door frame was missing, as well as a chunk of the frame. How in the hell much brute force does it take to break one of those locks? Seeing as I was alone until jparks drunkenly stumbled in, I figured it was not the best idea to push my luck and find out.

I asked the front desk to move me, and they happily did. I was settling into my new room when I walked into the bathroom to find a tub that looked scarier than most gym showers. The bottom of it was gray and gross and I could feel my toes rotting off just from looking at it. At this point what were my options? Go complain again? Move to another freaking room only to find out that the toilet was home to ass biting piranhas? Or that the sink only dispensed flesh melting acid? I decided to suck it up and deal with the tub. But not before letting slynnro and whitney know that should they never hear from me again please come claim my body at the lovely La Quinta Inn.

Did I mention that the room only had two double beds and that jparks was forced to not sleep with me? Because seriously, you can’t go from sharing a king sized bed with a person to sharing a double bed. Life does not work like that. Or that out of boredom I started looking up reviews of the hotel and found some gems that included “Hotel was nice until police started knocking on doors in the middle of the night. Never found out what was going on.” Or “Four cars were vandalized in the parking lot. Hotel took no responsibility for this.”

When all was said and done I did survive the weekend (obviously). We put a towel down on the floor of the tub every day and stood on that when we showered. I’m sure housekeeping loved us, but whatever. And to make up for the crappy room, I got jparks to upgrade us to first class for the flight home. Which was the best and the worst idea ever. First class is seriously awesome. So awesome I will never be able to fly coach again without a lot of whining about how I should be in first class. Where they hand out real silverware and hot towels. And your drinks come in real glasses. And the stewardess even knows your name and calls you Ms. Parks. Holy crap, first class is the land of milk and honey.

Holy crap, we are back in California, but not back in our house, because our house has no power. NO FREAKING POWER. Apparently our energy bill hasn’t been paid in two months and I never noticed. I am so smart, S-M-R-T. It seems the power was shut off on Thursday or maybe Friday and we found out about this on Saturday, while we were in San Francisco for a wedding. After taking a few deep breathes to help me calm the fuck down, I realized that having no power is not the end of the world and that it means extending our vacation by one more day when while we stayed with friends. Plus, knowing that I would shortly be in a bar with a mighty strong drink in my hand, helped too.

I bet you’re wondering what my final verdict is about our Adventure by Disney. (Shut up and play along, of course you’ve been waiting for this!) I’m going to give the trip a thumbs up and would even go so far as to recommend it to other folks. We made some great friends on the trip (click through and behold the Duke of Dill aka: the King of Pickles and Kevin, the only guy that can make jparks look like a saint), saw some amazing sites, stayed in magnificent hotels, drank good Guinness and whiskey, and came home with tons of stories to tell. If all of that isn’t the mark of a great vacation then I don’t know what is.

Since returning home, we’ve been smacked hard in the face my real life and it has not been pretty. But anytime I look at my Ireland pictures I smile and laugh about jparks being a dumbass and suddenly am ready to call Disney to book my next Adventure. Dorky? Yes, but it simply was an awesome vacation. Like for reals. And in Ireland I had electricity in all my hotel rooms. Well, except for the one room where I tried to use my hair dryer. Who knew that a power converter doesn’t actually convert all appliances?

And if I’m not doing that then I’m eating chocolate whiskey ice cream.

I love Ireland.

you might have already read most of this post. When I opened my blog this morning something was up with it. This post had disappeared and when I finally found it, the last half was missing. I blame the weird Irish internet.

I’m sorry to report that my plan failed. Big Fail Whale, in fact. (I saw a guy wearing a Fail Whale shirt today and wanted to introduce myself to him. An Irish Fail Whale! So exciting!) I did sleep on the plane, but jparks did not. When we got to the hotel at 9:30am, we immediately went to the room and jparks decided to nap. I stayed up for awhile reading, but then finally caved in. I set an alarm to go off an hour later, but it didn’t work. We slept for 8 hours. So yeah, that first day here, not much happened. We did wake up in time to get dinner and drinks from a real Irish Pub. I had cider and ended up a bit tipsy, but since tipsy was my only goal for this trip, it’s safe to say I had a good time.

Today jparks and I woke up at 3am (fucking jet lag) and after trying to go back to sleep unsuccessfully, we watched tv until 5. After a quick run (running on vacation, I am so awesome) we headed out for the day. First we hit St. Stephens Green where I found the Oscar Wilde memorial and took a dorky picture:

After that we went to the Dublin Google office and I gorged on European chocolate bars. All I’m going to say is that the Dublin mini-kitchens kick the Mountain View mini-kitchens asses. And that we are dorks for visiting Google while on vacation:

After that we did some other stuff (that I can’t currently think of because I’m tired. And have been drinking) and then met the rest of our tour group for a dinner. I was a bit nervous about this because really, what kind of people go on Disney tours (I mean besides jparks and I), but the people at our table were nice. Older than us by about 20 years, but still nice. One of the guys owns a pickle company in New York and I was so excited by this that I proclaimed “I love pickles!” I’m hoping to have a pickle hook up by the end of this trip.

And that’s all I’ve got for now because I’m tried. And maybe my buzz is dying. And the jet lag is still kicking my ass a tiny bit.

If you care, there’s more pictures over here (although not many because uploading takes forever on our wifi here) and more being uploaded shortly.

It’s almost 2am and I am still awake! My plan is going according to, eh, plan! (Sorry folks, words are apparently not my strong suit this late at night)

See, our flight leaves tomorrow, er, TODAY at 2:35pm. And since it’s an overnight flight my plan is make myself so damn tired that I have no choice but to sleep on during the bulk of it. I think this is a brilliant idea. Jparks does not agree. He thinks I’ll be tired and cranky and not able to fall asleep. He has not met my new best friend forever, Mr. Benadryl. My new friend is really good at knocking me out. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll have jparks read to me from one of his new Dungeons and Dragons books. The ten hour flight will fly by. (fly, flight. dude, at 2am I am cracking myself up)

I am mostly packed right now, with only toiletries and power cords for various electronic gadgets to toss into a bag in the morning. I have my airplane books picked out (in case I really can’t sleep): The Audacity Of Hope and In The Woods. I have dvd’s queued up for when I just can’t read another word (good, fluffy dvds too. The first and second season of Beverly Hills, 90210. I’m kicking it old skool). Ireland, here I come. Lock up your whiskey and beer. And potatoes. mmm, potatoes.

I am ready for this damn vacation to start.

(On a side note, did you guys know today, er, yesterday was Monday. I did not. Seriously. I took today off to finish packing and totally forgot that other people had to work. I didn’t realize that it was an actual work day until just a few minutes ago, even though I talked to some friends while they were at work. Am so smart.)

((Also, I went to see these shoes in person and the store was sold out of them in my size. Bitches. I could order them online, but they were on sale in the store and I now feel kinda dumb paying full price. le sigh))

Today I noticed that one of our neighbors just put their Christmas tree out for garbage pick up. Why have I not met these neighbors yet?!? People that keep their Christmas tree up until MARCH are my kind of people.

Also, today I registered to register for the Nike Women’s Marathon. Because I am dumb. And hate myself. Part of me really hopes I get picked to register. And part of me really likes watching tv on the couch while eating peanut butter and honey on crackers. I guess destiny will l decide what road I’m running down. (Get it, running down? I am so funny)

Last week jparks and I booked a trip to Ireland for September. We booked with a tour group because we are 90 years old. No, really we booked with a tour group because I hate vacation planning and jparks is too busy with work to properly research an international trip. And the tour group we booked with is um, well, god we are dorks, the trip is booked through Adventures by Disney. Like I said, we don’t want to plan a vacation so tour group it was. And tour groups can be hit or miss but Disney’s Disney, they’ve got to keep up their reputation, so their trip has to be good. Right? RIGHT? And the dates that we picked are adults only, so hopefully it’ll be full of other couples around our age and not groups of grandparents. And look at all the places we’ll get to go. Yay for vacation!

If you guys don’t stop laughing at us for booking through Disney I’ll go make new friends. New friends with Christmas trees still up.

Tomorrow morning jparks and I will be boarding a plane for a vacation at the Happiest Place on Earth. I’m pretty excited:

The last time we were there I started this towards the end of the trip. This time I’m going in with my camera at the ready so I don’t miss any of the trashy outfits. The weather channel says it will be cool while we are there, but I have faith that the sluts won’t let me down!

Holy crap, I’ve never been so excited to be home. Of course, my luggage wasn’t ready to come home just yet, and has decided to take a vacation in Chicago. Dear luggage, I hope you are enjoying your stay! Please come home soon! Maybe bring some deep dish pizza with you!

And while I am so excited to be home, where all my lovely shoes are, I’m definitely going to miss being around family. Especially the goofy 5 year old family member in the video below teaching me and my sister in law how to crack up like a pig (please turn your head to the side as I am dumb and forgot that the digital camera doesn’t auto rotate video):

Also, if anyone wants to buy or give me a real video camera, I would totally be cool with that.

oh my god, this vacation WILL NOT END. I can has flight home, plz?