vacation denouement

I am currently in nowhere-land Texas.  No seriously there is NOTHING.  The most civilized thing I think we saw in our last hour before we got here was a ranch.  I'm not exaggerating.  And it stinks of cows outside.  Like worse than Harrisonburg before it rains.

But, even though things are a little dismal at the moment, our vacation week continued to be fabulous.  We went to Waterworld right outside of Denver on Tuesday.  If you haven't gone, go immediately.  Make plans to go on vacation to Denver simply to experience the awesomeness of the big water slides.  It's like being in Disneyland.  The one called Voyage to the Center of the Earth is over five minutes long and has animatronic dinosaurs (though they aren't as cool as the ones they had in the special exhibit at the maritime center in CT when I was a kid).  And there are parts of it that are WICKED fast!  Just get there.

Thursday I crossed paths in Denver with Lauren, a fabulous friend from school, who's been living out in L.A. for a year, is fostering a super cool cat, is SAG eligible and has an extremely nice and attractive boyfriend who is currently working in politics in Colorado.  It was so fantastic seeing her!  We had a great, long lunch, where we gabbed away and caught up on life, then explored the 16th Street Mall.  We did a little light shopping, and I got a fabulous new sun hat.  It's enormous and orange.  Doesn't get much better.

That evening we went off to our next destination: the apartment of another JMU alumni friend in a quirky little tourist town outside of Colorado Springs.  We had a terrific 4th of July weekend filled with motorcycle rides (that's where the burn came from- we were just going down the road to Starbucks! and I was an idiot), microbrews, elk burgers, a symphony, and one of the most awesome fireworks displays I have ever seen.  Chuck was an awesome host and made sure we saw the best of what the area had to offer, and in good JMU fashion got a taste of the awesome beers.  Colorado makes the best beers and wines in the States.  I'm convinced.  Plus we went to this one microbrewery that just had a great atmosphere and we just stayed there drinking all afternoon having meaningful conversation about everything from people we knew in college to the institution of marriage (okay, maybe those topics aren't that far apart).  And I got to meet Chuck's girlfriend who had lived in that area her whole life.  She's a super cool girl with a really cute little cottage apartment.  I hope I can make it to homecoming this year and that she'll come along with her boyfriend (he's trying very hard to convince her).

This morning we got coffee and breakfast at this awesome little coffee shop.  Then we packed up, stopped by the glorious glorious Dunkin' Donuts in town for some iced coffee (where the cute little lady working gave me free munchkins!) and hit the road.  And I drove for about five hours feeling incredibly JMU sick the whole time.  We had listened to some of The Madison Project's (one of JMU's a cappella groups- I am super good friends with the guys in it) latest CD in Chuck's car yesterday, so I wanted Sam to hear the rest of it on the drive to Texas today, and it made me really REALLY miss school.  It's weird for me to go from having this huge group of friends around all the time to traveling around with just one person.

I love Sam- she is seriously so awesome.  But I miss my guy friends.  I miss my girl friends too, but Sam is a good substitute, so I don't feel it as much.

Tomorrow we head the rest of the way to our next residency in Texas.  I am excited to get back to work and back into a routine.  Mostly I am excited to unpack my suitcase.  Everything is kind of tossed in there with no rhyme or reason to it right now...