Vacation highlights, life updates and blogging confessions

I realized today, while my husband was giving me another HTML/CSS lesson that, in the midst of the insanity of the last week, I had neglected to post much. Some of these updates are short on purpose--I want to expound on them in other entries that I haven't had the time to write yet. I feel bad 'stealing' my husband's laptop while we're out of town, and I can feel his palpable desire to be playing a video game from the other room.

Swap:
I was reluctant to post about this immediately afterwards because I didn't want to come off as bitchy, but here goes. It did not, in any way, go as planned. In the past, I spend a week frantically attempting to clean my house,  begging for tables, and having everything prepared, then on the appointed morning, everyone shows up on time and swaps. At the end, people take all the leftover stuff to charity, leaving me exhausted but with a moderately clean house.  This time though, most people seemed to cancel, show up really late, or just showed up to hang out.

 I can't overstate the awesome of having few enough people in my house that I was able to sit down and have real conversations with people. However,  I have to admit that it was frustrating to spend so much time, energy and money, only to have the swap aspect of it...sort of flop.  I know my husband had an awesome time gathering geeky stuff for his side of the swap, but since none of his friends seemed to show up at the same time, he's going to basically warehouse all of the stuff people brought, and have another event in the future.   I also felt bad for the people that brought things to swap, and took home very little.  I feel like I need to apologize to them, even though so much of this was out of my control.  All ends well though, since the high schooler that scored all of our leftover clothing to give away to our local community, was super psyched. I would also like to give a huge thank you to our friends that came and hung out all day, and made it a really fun time. Also a thank you to my table providers, food cookers, people who moved stuff for me, and everyone that showed up.

Trainer:
Ummm...so I've been somewhat steadily losing weight over the last 15 months, and have realized that I really need to kick up the physical activity aspect of my weight loss, and work on getting muscle tone back and getting some endurance. I'm pretty pitiful in the endurance department right now.  Watching Biggest Loser has actually inspired me to get more active, and in that spirit, I took my friend up on her recommendation of a personal trainer.  This woman is beyond perky. Think...hyper without caffeine, now add in a gallon of coffee to the mix. I have to admit, when I met her at her gym for our first session, the fact that it was filled with skinny fit people...very intimidating.  Just for the record--I was rightfully scared of the hyper one, because my quads were so sore the next day, that I could barely walk.  She failed in the 'taking it easy' aspect of our first session.   This session is short because I'm going to write more about this later.

Vacation: 
Ha...ha...ha. Oh so many stories already.  Did you know this massive blizzard was supposed to hit the DC area last week? Actually supposed to hit the same time yours truly was supposed to fly out of a DC area airport to fly to sunny Florida?  Oh well, it was, but in true DC style, the storm was a dud.  We didn't know that though, so we ended up in Florida a day ahead of schedule, sans a hotel room or car. Here are some highlights so far though:

• It sucks, but you can pack for vacation in an hour. You'll forget your camera, an extra duffle bag, cash and a variety of other things, but it can be done.
• Getting a rental car that I've dubbed 'the dickmobile!
• Buying a vacation package and when we arrive finding out that it's a timeshare.  Kitchen and laundry for the win!
• Finding out that there are two outlet malls in Orlando and we're at the wrong one
• Rainforest Cafe -- definitely about the experience, and the experience is better if you're under 10
• Heated pools are manna from heaven
• 5 story arcades make 40th birthday's awesome
• So does getting a blue handprint on your head
• BUTTERBEER BUTTERBEER BUTTERBEER!!!!! Harry Potter Harry Potter Harry Potter!!!!
• I likey resorts...

Confessional: 
Overall, a hectic, crazy, but fun couple of weeks.  I think blog writing is sort of like exercising, the more you do it, the more you want to do it.  If you stop for awhile though, it's much much harder to get back into it. Consistency is key in so many aspects of life and has always been what I struggle with.  I however, love writing this blog, love getting the feedback, and love having random people I didn't know read my blog, quote it to me.  Yes, I'm a bit of an attention whore and it makes me feel special inside.

I have a confession to make though. I don't ever feel like I can be completely open here. I really struggle with not wanting to hurt peoples feelings, or having stuff that I write come back and bite me in the ass.  The two times I've written and posted opinions about people in here, I was immediately told how wrong my opinions were, or that my recounting of a story was incorrect.  Just for the record--I'm not changing a post simply because you don't like how I perceive a situation.  That would ruin the entire point of blogging for me.

My husband has even given me a strict directive to not make fun of him here, although I may tease, cajole, and regale you with tails of his funny antics, I have no intention of mocking him or hurting his feelings.  I never want to do that, but at the same time, I do want to be open, raw, and honest with my writing.  I have an unfortunate tendency to lean towards the negative in my speech and writing, and I make a conscious effort to keep my blog on the happier sunshiney side of things.  I also have this odd, pathological need to have some conclusion in what I do--in my writings you'll see that I always have to 'finish' a post, or in games (why I can't stand games that take too long to play) or books (I like finishing them in 2-3 sittings max).  This need for conclusion makes it really hard for me to open up about issues that I haven't figured out myself yet.

Conclusion?  We will see.  I'm learning a lot about blogging, myself, growing older...and it will be really interesting to see how this blog evolves with me.  My husband originally named my blog, when he set it up, but I never changed it because it resounded so well with me. We all start on square one, and then figure it out as we go. Here's to attempting to figure stuff out.