For Christmas, Santa brought me three long naps, a new digital camera and at least two six-hour-streaks of not thinking about work, even a little, not at all.
On Friday, I'm going to try to one-up him. Well, not on the napping part. Let's not kid ourselves, that much uninterrupted daytime sleeping may never happen again in my lifetime. But on the consecutive-hours-spent-not-thinking-about-work front, I think I might have a chance. I hope? I PRAY.
You see, on Friday morning at (once again) a time so ungodly early that I am prohibited to discuss it here by Federal Communications Commission regulations, I will get on a plane bound for southern California. And while this trip will be about 40 percent pleasure and 60 percent business, that precious 40 percent is happening on the front end, and I could not be happier for it.
I'll be meeting Emily at LAX on Friday afternoon -- you remember Emily, of the late-October-frenaissance -- and we'll head from there straight for San Diego, to meet up with my brother and (OF COURSE) hit The Hash House the next morning to send off 2011 like true Americans: painfully full and in a borderline diabetic coma.
We've got New Year's Eve plans to see some bands at a club recommended by a friend we made at CMJ, and then I think our tentative plans for the first few days of 2012 involve eating brunches, sitting on beaches, drinking in the middle of the day and reading (and discussing the contents of/falling asleep over) trashy magazines.
Emily leaves me mid-afternoon on January 3, and that's when the vacation will be over for me, as well. I've got a gaggle of meetings scheduled for the next four days -- people to meet, brains to pick. And of course, I'll be reconnecting with some old friends who live in the area, as well.
So I guess I'll see y'all on the flipside -- quite literally, in 2012 -- with plenty of stories and adventures and various and assorted shenanigans from my travels.
And at some point I'm probably going to have to write one of those year-end wrap-up posts I always threaten to write. Because something tells me that in so many, many ways, this year has been the first year of the rest of my life. I need to send it off in style.
cheers,
elizabeth