You know what's better than working?

Vacation.

OK, so it wasn't much of a riddle...but it's true. Vacation is, in fact, better than working. At least for about five days.

Stacy and I spent the last five days driving all over Ohio looking at trees and cows and Rock-and-Roll-Hall-of-Fames. May I share my observations with you?
1a. If you ever find yourself in the middle of butt-nowhere Ohio because you can't seem to find the major interstate that you were on only fifteen minutes previously, by all means, have lunch at Miller's Eats in Findlay. They have a great open-faced roast-beef platter, the wallpaper makes you feel like you're in Pleasantville, and, just as you might expect, the apple pie tastes great and the waitress calls you "honey." Stand-aside, Johnny Rockets, this is the real thing.
1b. It just occured to me, that the "real thing" that we're looking for when we want to sit in an authentic country lunch counter is actually nothing at all like MY real life. That's what makes it so appealing. Nobody wants to have real life all the time, we want to experience somebody else's authentic life for a little while...that's what quaint is. Stacy could tell you the other side of the story of small-town Ohio, but that's a topic for another post.
2. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is worth seeing once. Just once. Give yourself about three-and-a-half hours...you won't need much more than that...and that's only if you REALLY like looking at Jimi Hendrix's guitars and sketchings on hotel napkins. Otherwise, make it three hours even. There was some cool stuff in there (Michael Jackson's "Billy Jean" costume was probably my favorite item), and Over the Rhine even got a mention, which was cool. The staff was kind of surly for some reason (I suppose hearing the first fifteen seconds of "Purple Haze" 590 times a day will do that to ya), but there was enough interesting stuff in there to keep you occupied for a couple of hours.
3. Sitting and reading next to your wife, who is also sitting and reading, really does constitute quality time in my book. We would annoy each other every couple of minutes by reading a clever line or a poetic phrase out of our respective books, but that made it all the more togethery. I read "Stiff" by Mary Roach (a brief look at the history of how humanity has treated our dead, coupled with a lot of very funny anecdotes about the 'curious lives of cadavers' now) and "The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon" by Stephen King (I always read Stephen King on vacation...it gives my brain a break). Stacy read "Running With Scissors," by Augusten Burroughs, a hilarious and yet deeply disturbing memoir about Burroughs' adolesence, spent with his neurotic narcisist of a mother and her bat-turd crazy psychologist. We shared our laughs together, and it was really very cool to learn more about her by what in the book she bothered to comment about. I like learning her this way, and I hope to do more of it soon...first, someone mail me a gift certificate to Borders, please.
4. Driving can be really very relaxing if you let it. Driving sucks when you have to get to the dentist by 1:00, or when you are trying to hit Starbucks before your morning meeting. But it's actually really fun when your only goal for the day is to get to Cleveland, and you've got nine hours to figure out how. Breathe in the cow-air, breathe out the your email inbox. Breathe in the air-conditioner vapor, breathe out the end-of-the-day-with-a-headache haze. Then, drive like you've got nowhere to be.
5. Hot-tubs, while microbiologically speaking can be a very busy place, make me feel like I'm very wealthy and have very little to do. I think I love them.

I look forward to writing more soon...for now, I'm running off to help a friend paint the garage...something I don't know how excited I would be to do, had I not experienced such rampant kindness when Stacy and I moved in to our house...all of a sudden "Pay It Forward" makes more sense. Though, unfortunately, that doesn't make it any better of a film.

Peace,
Justin