This year my M.O. for vacation time has consisted of scheduling it out piecemeal into various four-day “staycation” weekends that give me a chance to get away from the office and recharge my batteries — in the company of my favorite person and my two favorite cats, of course! Since home is my favorite place to be, I’m perfectly happy to spend my vacations this way, and the fact that it’s both cheaper and lazier is a nice bonus!
This weekend held particular significance, though: Thursday represented the four-year mark since Jenn and I met at Worldcon in Anaheim. It’s been an exciting and wonderful four years so far, full of change and adventure for both of us.We rang in the occasion with a spectacular dinner at our favorite restaurant here in the Valley, Café Carolina. Jenn’s post describes the meal perfectly, so I won’t try to elaborate, except to show you the dessert:
We filled our Friday and Saturday with food and fun as well. One highlight was an outing to Dark Delicacies in Burbank, a horror bookshop where Amelia Beamer was signing her new novel. There we met up with friends and made some new ones, then stopped over at Porto’s for a pile of pastries.
It wouldn’t be a four-day weekend without TV, movies, and games, of course. I’m catching up on season five of Rescue Me (about halfway through so far); I always seem to forget how good this show is when I’m not watching it. I find elements of it problematic, but there’s something refreshing about how unapologetic and gutsy it is, and the ensemble cast is consistently amazing. (I think Steven Pasquale in particular is a brilliant comic actor, and his story arc this year has been filled with entertaining surprises.) We also instant-streamed the weird Belgian animated film A Town Called Panic, a wonderfully strange, frantic movie I found a little too stream of conscious for a full review — suffice it to say, it’s the best weird Belgian stop-motion animation you’ve ever seen. And on Saturday night we enjoyed some World of Warcraft instancing with friends, where I got to heal my first heroics with my neglected resto druid. (If you don’t know what that means, don’t worry about it.)
The weekend wrapped up with Jenn’s birthday, and I made my first solo batch of chocolate chip cookies — a personal baking milestone. Not only that, but they look and taste like cookies. Holy shit!
It was nice to shut down and relax for a while, but it’s Monday again and time to resume some responsibility. Back to work, to editing, to blogging and bill-paying…and soon, to writing, as I’ve decided September will ring in draft two of Subnetworks (or, more likely, draft 1.5, the last pre-critique version).
For now I’ll leave you with our anniversary photo — I do believe we are as happy as we look in this picture, so it’s a great way to remember a great weekend!
