"Vacation (vay KAY shun) noun: 1. An infinitesimally short period of time one waits all year for only to stress about accommodations, activities, and budget. 2. The most stressful time of a year. 3. A break from work so fraught with peril as to make work preferable. 4. The time when your immune system decides to embrace a 'good-will' policy toward all infections, bacteria, and virii allowing them to run rampant." (New Pessimist Dictionary of Seth)

The pressure has been slowly building over the last couple of months; our one week off in July was growing ever close and we'd need something to do with it (or so conventional wisdom says). It's a simple fact: vacations cost money. Money seems hard to come buy these days, and thus vacations seem hard to take. Sure, you might get time off from work, but can you afford to do anything other than lounge around your house all day playing video games, reading books, and winking suggestively? As much fun as that may sound were I to try that tactic I'd only have a pair of cats to wink at, and that's just no good. Time for plan B.

Plan B involves a monkey, a fresh coconut, a rare tropical flower, a Molotov cocktail, and 2 cubic yards of dried elephant dung. Who's going to find that motley crew of a shopping list at this late hour? Plan B is out too. Probably just as well. Do you know how hard it is to keep a monkey entertained? Me neither. Time to switch to a little plan I'd like to call "B Prime" but instead I'll just call it "my vacation of 2006 during the hot summer month of July in honor and commemoration of my wedding oh so many years ago".

B Prime consists of a long nine hour trek south along the rugged and always-under-construction I-5 and the windy don't-go-so-fast-or-I'm-going-to-be-sick Highway 101. I say it will be a long nine hours because it might be closer to 10. My iPod is packed and ready to go with more than 48 hours of quality audio entertainment (books and stories) so the duration isn't the challenge so much as the inevitable cramping of tired muscles. I swear I can feel atrophy set in on these long drives. This is Saturday; we'll end up somewhere in the middle of a working cattle ranch surrounded by family clapping us on the backs and commenting on our drive and the strange way we are walking.

Sunday, the proverbial day of rest, will find me attempting to contract skin cancer while simultaneously expanding my already broad horizon by consuming nearly-frozen moo-juice at a local ritual called an "Ice Cream Social". If the gluttony doesn't kill me the heat stroke might. Should we survive this ordeal we'll spend the next day driving further south whereupon we shall find refuge in a quiet country house. At this point I plan to pass out for three days for when Thursday comes around it'll be time to once again encase myself in glass and plastic, surround myself with luggage, and make good my escape from the dreaded Land of Fruits and Nuts.

At this point you'd think it t'were all over, but no good story these days ends on such a happy note as this; no sir. If I'm still alive by Thursday night I'll be happily curling up in my own bed, watching my own TV, and chasing my own cats around my house. Friday, the actually Day of Anniversary, is to be celebrated by a drive out to the coast (to a city named after a president of ours) where we will spend a night (hopefully) in luxury.

Saturday: THE END. Happily ever after? Stay tuned and I'll let you know.