Home
I am a true believer that there's no place like home, although I'm thrown a bit being home from this last trip. Almost every vacation the Smelmooo and I have taken has landed us back in NJ in the middle of the afternoon, so we have time to unwind, go through the mail, do some laundry and make the transition from vacation to reality before heading back to work the next day.
This time, we didn't walk through our front door until well after 1am, the Smelmooo is at work today and there's still no mail because of the holiday, so I'm feeling all kinds of off. Plus it's never fun to come from 80-degree weather to snow and ice and ick. But I'm getting into the swing: I've already dropped off my library books, thrown in some laundry, picked up our puppy and given him a bath (which made him kind of hate me, so I've spent the rest of the morning trying to buy his love with treats and tummy rubs). I'm hoping to catch up on bad TV before opening up my work email this afternoon.
Our trip was wonderful. The weather was perfect, perfect, perfect until right before we left, when the skies opened up and there was thunder and lightning; this in part contributed to our late departure and protracted flight path that made us so late in getting home. The more dramatic thing that delayed us less was that two huge police officers boarded the plane upon our arrival at Newark, and went to fetch two passengers in the back who'd apparently been smoking in the restroom and disabling the smoke detectors, which is a no-no, the flight crew kept reminding us. The weirdest thing about the whole situation, to me, is that the pilot told us, while we were taxiing, that it was possible that the authorities would be coming on the plane to get these people before the rest of us law-abiding passengers be allowed to get off the plane. I just kept thinking, "Holy crap; please don't have a gun or a knife or something." Which I guess was crazy, because security was fairly solid in the San Juan airport, but it seemed that at least some element of surprise would be helpful.
Anyway, the trip. We had a room with a nice balcony and an absolutely gorgeous view of the water. If I looked outside from the bed nearer the window (we had two absolutely tiny "full" beds in our room), I kept thinking we could be on a boat, the water was so close. There was a little water taxi that shuttled us from the hotel to a little island (also part of the resort) with a nice beach and tons of activities. We didn't get to go kayaking, but yesterday we went horseback riding on the beach, which was at first scary (I hadn't been on a horse for about 15 years, and I'd never ridden Western) and then just breathtakingly beautiful and pretty fun.
The Smelmooo and I got massages that were heavenly; we sat by the pool and read (although I'm still only about a quarter of the way through my New Yorkers...); we went to the rainforest and hiked down to this huge, gorgeous waterfall where tons of kids were splashing around in the freezing cold water, having the time of their lives. The Smelmooo spent some time in the casino and I ate a ton of ice cream, and life was good.
There was some work stuff -- the Smelmooo had a meeting one morning, and we had lots of working dinners at night, most of them actually pretty fun -- but for the most part it was just relaxing. There were tons of minor irritants at the hotel -- they didn't have our reservation for the rain forest tour; there were problems with the spa gift certificates I got for our massages; we had to ask six people and wait 45 minutes before we got our horseback riding trip scheduled -- but for the most part those rolled off our well-massaged backs.
And now it's back to the grind, back to reality, back to work tomorrow for me, back to the airport for separate, less fun work trips for both of us at the end of the week.
But still, for this brief little window, it's good to be home.
This time, we didn't walk through our front door until well after 1am, the Smelmooo is at work today and there's still no mail because of the holiday, so I'm feeling all kinds of off. Plus it's never fun to come from 80-degree weather to snow and ice and ick. But I'm getting into the swing: I've already dropped off my library books, thrown in some laundry, picked up our puppy and given him a bath (which made him kind of hate me, so I've spent the rest of the morning trying to buy his love with treats and tummy rubs). I'm hoping to catch up on bad TV before opening up my work email this afternoon.
Our trip was wonderful. The weather was perfect, perfect, perfect until right before we left, when the skies opened up and there was thunder and lightning; this in part contributed to our late departure and protracted flight path that made us so late in getting home. The more dramatic thing that delayed us less was that two huge police officers boarded the plane upon our arrival at Newark, and went to fetch two passengers in the back who'd apparently been smoking in the restroom and disabling the smoke detectors, which is a no-no, the flight crew kept reminding us. The weirdest thing about the whole situation, to me, is that the pilot told us, while we were taxiing, that it was possible that the authorities would be coming on the plane to get these people before the rest of us law-abiding passengers be allowed to get off the plane. I just kept thinking, "Holy crap; please don't have a gun or a knife or something." Which I guess was crazy, because security was fairly solid in the San Juan airport, but it seemed that at least some element of surprise would be helpful.
Anyway, the trip. We had a room with a nice balcony and an absolutely gorgeous view of the water. If I looked outside from the bed nearer the window (we had two absolutely tiny "full" beds in our room), I kept thinking we could be on a boat, the water was so close. There was a little water taxi that shuttled us from the hotel to a little island (also part of the resort) with a nice beach and tons of activities. We didn't get to go kayaking, but yesterday we went horseback riding on the beach, which was at first scary (I hadn't been on a horse for about 15 years, and I'd never ridden Western) and then just breathtakingly beautiful and pretty fun.
The Smelmooo and I got massages that were heavenly; we sat by the pool and read (although I'm still only about a quarter of the way through my New Yorkers...); we went to the rainforest and hiked down to this huge, gorgeous waterfall where tons of kids were splashing around in the freezing cold water, having the time of their lives. The Smelmooo spent some time in the casino and I ate a ton of ice cream, and life was good.
There was some work stuff -- the Smelmooo had a meeting one morning, and we had lots of working dinners at night, most of them actually pretty fun -- but for the most part it was just relaxing. There were tons of minor irritants at the hotel -- they didn't have our reservation for the rain forest tour; there were problems with the spa gift certificates I got for our massages; we had to ask six people and wait 45 minutes before we got our horseback riding trip scheduled -- but for the most part those rolled off our well-massaged backs.
And now it's back to the grind, back to reality, back to work tomorrow for me, back to the airport for separate, less fun work trips for both of us at the end of the week.
But still, for this brief little window, it's good to be home.
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