Tomorrow we are heading to Spain. This is our big family vacation we do each year, so all 19 of us will converge in Barcelona for 5 nights. Daniel and I are going one night early so we can beat jetlag and be prepared to help everyone else on arrival day. Stephen went early with his family to London and Paris and will end in Barcelona. My parents will be in and out, and everyone else disperses at the end of the trip. Daniel and I head south to Seville, Grenada, Andalusia area, then up to Madrid then home.

I'm pretty excited. I've been trying to kick this stupid cough for like 4 weeks now. Originally I had a sore throat, cough, stuffy nose after traveling to California for Megan's graduation. And that went on so long that I finally went to a doctor who said I probably had the flu, but now it was like a pneumonia bacterial infection, so I did a round of antibiotics. I'm still not 100% better so I went back to the doctor and she said it was just post-infectious lingering cough. She gave me steroids to help kick it faster, so now I'm roid raging. Better than coughing on an airplane for 10 hours. I have cough drops, a cough suppressant pill, and a mask if that should become a problem, but I'm feeling better today finally.

I try not to make my blogs just a recounting of every medical malady I encounter. But that's pretty much the narrative now. While we are away I will be turning 45 years old. I am not bringing my book of secrets with me because it would be a little heavy, so I'll have to read my 1, 5, and 10 year predictions when we get home. The 10 year predictions have been pretty wildly inaccurate. I couldn't begin to predict what will be going on 10 years from now so I stopped trying. I filled the book and that will be the only volume in existence. It was a fun activity for a decade or so.

Okay, who knows, I might even take a picture when I'm in Spain and post it here. I try to take at least one picture per day when I'm traveling, that's my goal. I also said I was going to try to take a picture of as many obscure locations as possible for maximum views on Google Maps so maybe I'll remember to do that. Wish me luck and I'll czech you all on the flip side!

I wasn't going to blog today since I already posted a picture of our new faucet locks. But then I realized what today is. Today is the 22nd anniversary of when I started working at my job. It's an odd anniversary to take special note of but this one seems poignant because I was 22 years old when I started working there. Okay, technically I was like 22 years and 11 months old, but still, this marks the year when I have worked there just as long as I haven't. That's wild.

What could I go back and tell that kid after his first day? I'll never forget getting there in my recently purchased Sears suit, and sitting in a conference room all day learning the most pointless orientation facts. They let us go early, but suggested we all go sit at our desks, set up our new laptops, and fill out some HR paperwork. I had neither a laptop nor a desk to sit at, so I said, "Should I just sit in the bathroom until 5?" Then I laughed and walked out the door and went home.

When my mom got home I was doing the backstroke in the pool and she screamed, "Did you get fired on your first day?!" And I said no, I just ... left. Ha. Although, I just went back to 2004 to read my first blog after starting my job and I said that my parents were out of town and would be until Friday, which kept me from having to answer a million questions when I get home. So either my parents left on a Tuesday or my memory of that day is entirely fabricated. Oh well, I'm certain that exchange took place at some point. But alas, I never did get fired and 22 years later I'm still going strong.

I guess I wouldn't really have any solid advice for me at age 22. I pretty much did it my way and it worked out. That's half charm, half privilege. And it got me where I wanted to be, so I guess I would just give the same advice I always say I'd give if I could time travel, "It all turns out okay."

I keep telling myself I need to be more narrative on my refreshed blog. I used to document the most meaningless things but they are more fun to read years later than anything monumental that I might otherwise remember. So here we go.

Two weekends ago, we drove my parents up to Oklahoma City for our niece Ann Marie's college graduation. She got her undergrad in 3 years with a 4.0 average. That apple fell nowhere near my tree! She is immediately going back to get her masters. So impressed. We stopped at Winstar on the way home and all pooled our money into a high stakes slot machine. I think it was like $30 per pull. After a few pulls, we hit a mildly good reward, doubled our money, and cashed out. I was happy to stop there but after lunch my mom wanted to gamble just a little bit more, so Daniel and I each put a hundy into a nearby machine and promptly frittered away not only our winnings but as much in losses. C'est la view.

Then last weekend, we hung out with the Allistralian. We had a great time getting to know her daughter who is gregarious to say the least. Her husband is addicted to AI, on a level far beyond what I've described. And he only uses it with the microphone like a conversation. And he always adds a ton of extra info. "I am sitting here with my wife and she is giving me a dirty look because she thinks I use AI too much, anyway, how do I heat up a chicken breast?" So funny.

Now we're sitting here wasting time until we can head to DFW for a flight to Sacramento. Now Michael's daughter Megan is graduating high school. We did have a super early flight but then AA moved it several hours later, so we won't have a huge buffer to get there and get situated, but should still have plenty of time without rushing -- IFFF our flight takes off on time. The last time we did this a couple years ago we just sat and sat and sat in the airport until we missed Kelsey's graduation and arrived at like 10pm. So we'll see.

Oh, in other news, we THINK we saw Muffin with a baby. At least we for sure saw her touching noses and letting a baby squirrel climb all over her. If it wasn't her baby then I don't think she would be doing that. We whistled at her to come get a treat, and the baby noped the fuck out of here, and Muffin sauntered over and enjoyed lunch. I wish she was training her babies to come to us so we could get some generational squirrel insurance.

I decided to stay home tonight for a couple different reasons. First, I just had such a riotous time on Wednesday that I wasn't exactly itching to go out on Friday. Secondly, I'm broke as a joke. I had to take money out of the untouchable savings this pay period to last me until the next. Don't worry though, I've already scheduled to have it automatically repay the amount that I borrowed. So I sat home and watched TV and nestled down with a big bottle of wine... the worst wine I have ever tasted. I am now on my third glass and it is still nearly unbearable.

The show of the night was Will & Grace. It was the episode where they've lost their ho-mojo and can no longer dominate game night with their friends. It reminded me so much of when Ryan and Todd and I would host Pictionary nights at the Green Monster and how much I fucking rule at Pictionary and I felt obliged to share this with you all.

I have one prime example for you all that I will never forget. It was when Fucking Frank was my partner and we were a good half of the board ahead of everyone else. We were unstoppable ... why, I may never understand. We had a sixth, or maybe even a seventh, sense about the clues. This particular round was an All-Play. That means that every team was drawing the same clue trying to win control of the board. I wasn't too concerned since we were the champions of All-Play, but this was really stumping everybody else. They were drawing things like I've demonstrated thus far. People were guessing frantically -- everything from "jailbird" to "Nike." Frank took his time, and I sat silently waiting for him to finish his drawing. (If this story seems drawn out its mostly because I have to put enough words in between the pictures to space them out.) Anyway, it wasn't long before he drew this:

And I immediately guessed, "The Fugitive!" after which we high fived and rolled the dice. It's ridiculous how good I am at Pictionary.

Today was the first day of the new summer session. I'm only taking one class: PoliSci 207, State and Local Government. My professor seems like a nice enough guy, he gives lots of A's. But he also believes in engaging the classroom in discussions, which I'm not really into, especially in a class of 300 people. He spends a lot of time just waiting for someone in the room to respond to his (what I consider) rhetorical questions. It shouldn't be too bad though, its only one class and its at 10:00 so I'm done early.

I tried to start working on my summer long project, finally. I've already pissed away half the summer. I went into the lab and downloaded all the files I need, but my computer ended up crashing 3 times and it pissed me off. They also keep it like 30 degrees in the lab, and since I was wearing shorts and a T-shirt I froze my ass off. I decided to just come home instead, like I knew I would anyway. I'm going to dress warmer tomorrow, which will be fun because I can sweat my ass off the rest of the day.

I inadvertently omitted Todd from San Antonio from the last blog. He's Kevin's roommate. He paid for mad drinks for us on our birthday and I am, of course, very much obliged. I like it when people buy me alchohol. I'm not sure what's on the slate for tonight. Allison usually goes to Ninfa's for the Ninfaritas and I'm supposed to accompany her sometime, but I think she said she doesn't want to go today. If that's the case I'll probably sit at home watching movies and drinking some beers. My life is too exciting.

I found out today that AOL finally figured out that I haven't given them a penny in like 7 years. I got an email from them saying that since I no longer work for them that I have until July 16 to either start paying or have my account canceled. That totally sucks. I have so much stuff coming to my email address regularly ... I mean I've had it for so long. I'm going to have to transfer it all over to somewhere else. My webpage comes with like 30 email addresses, but I can't figure out how to set them up. Once I do my email will be SideshoViD@sideshovid.com, which is cooler anyway. I'm still not happy about the whole arrangement.

I laid out in the sun yesterday for like an hour and a half. I got some good sun, but only on half of my body. Serves me right for going out there late in the day. I need to remember to turn my chair, I guess. My legs itch. I'm out.