And before that...

I'm back. miss me? totally.

It's like this. I don't know if I told you this or not, but I just went on the most expensive vacation imaginable, and I did it all for free. I seriously think that my portion of the vacation I just went on may have cost more than my car, or at least what I have left to pay off on my car. Here's what we did:

Andy Hong founded a company a long time ago, that he doesn't work with anymore but they went public last year and did pretty hot. Then late last year he turned 34 and got in a bad bicycle accident. I never knew this, but Andy thought for a long time that he would never live to see 30, so I think the bike accident was something of a "kick" in the "pants" and next thing you know, he's taking himself and 15 guests to the british motherfucking virgin bloody islands on two large catamarans, each equipped with 2 crew, one of whom was a gourmet cook. Let me spell this out for you: I just ate gourmet meals three meals a day for seven days. On a boat floating on pale blue everclear water with little flourescent fishies floating aroung in it. Sailing from island to island with wind in hair, all that. Snorkeling. Eating. Chilling in the sun.

The weather in the british virgin islands is clinically perfect. Dictionary definition perfect. So perfect in fact that after day three I was absolutely fully taking it for granted and not spending nearly enough time sitting there staring at the sky going "i can't believe how fucking beautiful it is out." I learned my lesson on that one the second I stepped into the airport Sunday and learned it had fucking SNOWED in arlington while I was gone. Anyway, the weather: just humid enough, 85ish, sunny... it rained once or twice but never for more than 5 minutes, and you could see so far in every direction that it was like "oh look, it's raining over there, prolly hit us in a few, better take the shit off the lines." The water is calm as glass most of the time, so seasickness wasn't an issue except a few queasy mornings when I was stuck on the boat in some choppiness while the big kids got to scuba dive. Oh yeah, i didn't end up doing any scuba (rhymes with cuba) cause the first day out snorkeling I swallowed a mouthfull of salt water and when i coughed it up, you guessed it, my lungs had disappeared. Not so much a big deal except for me not being used to treading water in fins and all that, plus no one saw me strugglin. It was a moment. I continued to snorkel all week but the instructor wouldn't let me do the training after i told him what happened, and i sure as hell don't blame him. He dropped some science about what might be going on with the lining in my esophagus that I'm going to have to bring up with my doctor.

Anyway: dude. I snorkeled the SHIT out of those reefs. I earned me some tight little hamburger buns, them fins make yr ass WORK. I night snorkeled one night in a really shallow reef trying to make some new octopus friends but no octopuses and then i got kinda scared ok shut up. Oh well. Least i tried.

Here's what I saw on my vacation:

1) fish.
2) little fish.
3) big fish.
4) coral.
5) dead coral.
6) living coral.
7) boats.
8) rich whitey (far as the eye can see)
9) orion's bow. i didn't even know orion had a bow, but he has a big ass bow with a lot of stars in it. It's quite beautiful.
10) rich whitey.
11) Man in leopard thongthathongthongthong
12)My own tan toes poking out the top of the hammock that I spent a good 12 hours in over the course of the week
13) About a dozen rainbows
14) People with more money than they deserved or knew what to do with.

Perhaps I sound obsessed with the socioeconomic aspects of all this but like... did you ever see Mr White, that Eddie Murphy skit? I felt like I was living in the "imaginary" white people world that Eddie painted in that skit. It was like, you were given free reign of pretty much everything, you could walk all over the place on the islands, up into what looked like hotel-owned property and no one so much as looked at you funny, even if you were just a ragtag buncha tattooed hoodlums like me and my friends cause I guess the prevailing attitude is "well, they're not black, so they're not 'the help'... they must have been simply rich enough to get to this island, in which case, One Of Us, One Of Us"

But god, I had such an amazing time. I ate such food, and I saw such things, and my bones just cheesified. I am bummin pretty feckin hard to be back at work today. I am so ignoring the shit that piled up while i was gone. I just don't have the heart to care anymore.

Oh oh wait! Things I heard on my vacation:

1) The captain of my boat honest to god said "Arrrrrrr B'gar" when he had engine trouble. I was on a pirate boat. Like pirates of the Carribbean, except literally and sans animatronics.

Oh yeah and the trampolines weren't for jumping, just lying around getting nutmeg grated into your drink. Hear me complainin'? I didn't think so.