Vacation

I've only been on a real vacation maybe 5 times in my life. Once in kindergarten when my family took a road trip to Oklahoma to visit my uncle for Christmas when he was stationed there, Virginia with my mom and sister freshman year, and Hawai'i later that year. Or was Virginia during sophomore year? I can't remember, it wasn't that memorable. Anyways, needless to say, this past vacation has been a long time coming. It was only two days in the Palm Springs area, but still, I really needed it to break the monotony of life. I rarely ever travel, which is sad. My mom, brother, and sister went to the Philippines over winter break two years ago, then Australia last year. Honestly, wtf. My mom owes me big time for that still.

Anyways, we started off late as usual. I think the biggest reason I hate being late is beause my family is always late. My dad seriously has the worst sense of time ever. He always says he needs my help for 10 minutes or that a task will only take an hour, but 95% of the time he will be off by at least 50% of what he said. And in general my family is slow... They're slow to change, slow to make decisions, slow to understand, slow to basically everything. Except me, I like things fast and to the point. Looking from the outside, I really am the odd one out in my family, and that's pretty much how I like it. I don't want to be like them. Back to my vacation recap. Drove up to Palm Desert, nothing exciting about the trip. There was no traffic since it was Sunday afternoon and we were driving to the middle of nowhere. I would hate to live in one of those desert cities because there is absolutely nothing to do but bake yourself and pray your a/c doesn't die on you. It's perfect for a short vacation though.

After we checked in at our hotel in Palm Desert, we went to Palm Springs to ride the aerial tram. Supposedly it's the largest one of its kind in the world, blah blah blah. It was fun, not really exciting though. There were little "bumps" in the ride up and down when the track we were on would change it's steepness, and everybody freaked out at all of them. They were nothing to get excited about. The top of the mountain, Mt. San Jacinto, was pretty. It was about 30 degrees cooler than the desert below, so that was a relief. There were squirrels everywhere that fed off of the tourists eating at the restaurant. Our waiter was a dick, btw, so we gave him a small tip. After we came back down from the mountain, we decided to rest in the hotel because my mom and sister were sleepy. I just watched an episode of Heroes online via Netflix because the TV sucked in that room haha. Then it was time for dinner... We looked in the tour guide map thing for nearby restaurants and saw there was a Cheesecake Factory nearby. None of us had ever gone, so we decided to go there. That was quite possibly the best decision I've made in a long time haha. It was SO good. I shared an order of Bang-Bang chicken and shrimp with my mom. I half ordered it for the name hahaha. My brother got this burger made of a certain kind of beef we saw on tv once on the travel channel. It comes from Japan where they massage the cattle and give them beer to drink so they're really spoiled, and apparently it makes them very tender. And of course since it was the Cheesecake Factory, we all got cheesecake. I pretty much died and went to heaven. We all got something different and they decorated my mom's plate because it was her birthday. I was pretty much full to bursting by the end of the day but whatever, I haven't had a vacation in forever and it was about time I celebrated all of the weight I lost over the past several months. I usually don't look forward to my birthday because nothing special really happens since my family is lame and I don't want my friends to meet them so we never have parties. Even if I wanted a party, my family would cheap out and it would just be lame all the same, so whatever. But this year I'm actually excited... I want to go to the Cheesecake Factory again haha.

Buuut I have jury duty 3 days after my birthday. Lame. It was supposed to be on September 12th, that's when I got my summons for, but obviously that is not good timing because I move in at UCLA on the 19th. If I got assigned to a case or anything, all of my plans would be thrown into uncertainty, and that's not something I want. I'll do my civic duty, but will I sacrifice the first week of the most important years of my life? That's a big fuck no. So here's how I except things to happen... December 11th is my last final, and December 12th is the last day of finals, so there'll be two reasons to celebrate that night. I'll either leave for home on the 13th or 14th because I need to be back on the 15th in San Diego for my jury duty thing. Yeah, I hope that all works out.

Well now my vacation's over and it's time to jump back on th wagon and make up for all of the naughty food I ate on those two days. This was a boring post, but what can I say? I have a boring life. For now. 24 days and I'm out of here!