
Rainy Boston


I have made it to my lunch break on this the last day before a few days off for a long weekend in Florida. Is my motivation draining as my vacation gets closer and closer? Yes, yes it is. Will I remain productive through the second half of the day despite the obstacles? Yes, yes I will.
Our bags are packed. Jen has a few items she uses for work that still need to go into a suitcase or a backpack, but other than that we’re all set. I took two cameras, my digital Nikon Z5 and my 35mm Nikon FG-20. I have four rolls of film besides the one that’s already in the camera. I am going to follow the same workflow as the last Disney trip back in January. Use the film camera when I get to a park until I finish a roll, then switch to digital. That worked pretty well last time.
I get out of work at 5:30. We are hoping to be at the airport by 6:30-6:45 or so. Traffic will be worse than usual as it’s raining (again) today. The heavy traffic will be going away from the city though, so we should be able to get in to Boston with time to spare.
Our flight is pretty late this evening so we won’t be getting to the hotel until the wee hours of the morning. I think we’re getting a meal on the flight though. I expect to use some protein bars to get myself to my 80 gram daily protein goal before I leave the house, and then just grab some sugar free snacks at the airport to eat on the plane. I don’t trust airline food to be gastric bypass friendly. I don’t want to have stomach issues on the plane. That would be annoying. My redesigned stomach and I need to be extra careful today.
What else… I have a meeting at 3:00. That’s the only thing left on my work schedule. I will sneak upstairs and put the bags into the car after Jen finishes her work day so that the minute I punch out we can leave. I made a checklist in Google Keep to track things we need to do today. The only things left for me are to finish the laundry, put the freshly washed sheets onto the bed so that when we come home we’ll have happy clean sheets, and then make sure the cats food and water bowls are topped off. Harry will be here soon to cat sit, but I want to make sure we’re in the best position possible before we leave. I put fresh litter into the litter boxes this morning. That plus full food and water bowls will mean the cats don’t have anything to complain about. We have to keep the ladies happy, you know?
Okay, lunch break is winding down. Time to get back to reality. I’ll try to post a cat pic or two before we leave. No promises, but I’ll see what I can do.
It’s just for the weekend. We are traveling light. No checked bags.




Are we sick of the Hipstamatic Shake to Shuffle Shit yet?
At this time tomorrow night, 24 hours from now, we will be in the air on our way South to Orlando, FL and a long weekend away at Disney World.
Our clothes are packed but we still need to pack our carry on stuff, like the laptop upon which I am currently typing this masterpiece of a blog post, and 15,000 different Apple product charging devices. My film camera is packed, along with a new roll of film I loaded into it and my spare film stash, but my digital camera and it’s charger are sitting on the desk still waiting to be put away.
My step son, Harry, is going to spend the weekend here watching over the cats. I cleaned the bathroom in anticipation of his arrival because it was getting pretty grody in there and I didn’t want him to see it. It’s all good to go now.
I have packed enough protein bars to feed an elephant for a week, no pun intended… wait a tick to let that one sink in… I’m not as physically fat and elephantine like I was a year and a half ago, but that fat elephant of a red head still lives in my brain so the fat joke is still relevant… mentally, at least. Boy did I go a long way for that one.
Lily the Cat is acting like a mentally insane feline person tonight. It’s like she knows we’re leaving tomorrow so she’s trying to impress us with as much crazy as she can while she still has us around. Freakin’ gremlin-cat.
What else… I wrote lyrics for a couple of songs tonight and also finished season 10 of the original Doctor Who. Now it’s 10:20pm and I am completely exhausted to the very core of my being and I need to go to sleep so that I can get through the work day tomorrow and get to the airport and get on the plane and get to Florida and get to the hotel sometime after midnight.
I am so ready. Florida, here we come… 24 hours from now.
Random pics with random hipstamatic settings from today’s road trip to Vermont.
Having dinner with my step kids at a pizza joint near Burlington, VT.
On the road, heading North toward my step kids!

I’ve been plowing through season nine of the original Doctor Who today. Just… so much Who at one time. I am going to be hearing cheesy synth music in my dreams for years now. I had to take a break.
Given that we are Disney Bound shortly, I checked on our favorite Disney Youtube channel, TheTimTracker to see if there are any videos I have missed during my epic Who View. There is a recent video covering Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party. We have tickets for that on our Magic Kingdom day! Cool, I can get the low down.
I knew they had trick or treating at these events but given my gastric bypass’ inability to handle sugar I figured I was going to have to miss out. Then the video showed a guy who had a tree nut allergy and they gave him a different colored trick or treat bag so that the cast members new to only give him specific allergy friendly food.
I wonder…. thought I…
Off to The Google I go. I searched for Disney not so scary sugar free and this was the first hit:
Do they have Sugar Free treats at the MNSSHP? Thank you
Well honk my hooter, boys and girls, it looks like your friend and humble narrator may get to play along after all! Is it possible I am even more excited about our upcoming Disney trip now? Is it possible I am not 52 years old but I am actually still six years old? Is that possible? I think so!
The furthest I’ve ever been from home is San Diego, CA. Completely on the other side of the continent. A place where the ocean is west instead of east. It feels weird.
We went on our honeymoon in 2009 and have returned a couple of times since then. We had plans to go back this year but they have been scrapped in favor of other ideas. We will get back there one of these days.
I can say in all honesty that if ever I had a reason or a need or a desire to move away from Greater Boston, San Diego would be my first choice for a new home. I had no idea on that first trip that I would love it as much as I do.
I stumbled across this article today while perusing Google News on my lunch break:
10 Most Scenic Road Trips To Take In Massachusetts
So many good ideas on this list. The drives on the Cape and the Islands, and probably the one in Plymouth which is almost on the Cape, are not really doable because the traffic getting to them would be nightmarish. Maybe in the mid-late fall, but certainly not now at the end of the summer. The central and western MA drives could be interesting, but the ones that stood out to me were the two on the North Shore near the water.
I could go for either of those. In fact, I think a couple of my early morning photo-trips have actually touched on one of them. We have Labor Day weekend coming up in a few days and the weather forecast looks kinda decent. I doubt Jen and I would have the time for something like this, but maybe as we move out of summer into the fall some of these might be worth a look. Mohawk Trail is the only one we’ve done, I think, but that was years ago.
We’ll see what happens. We’re pretty busy people, you know? Also, if we’re going to road trip we should road trip up to Vermont to visit the kids. They are the biggest draw, you know what I mean?