Speaking of vacations gone wrong...

With spring break coming up, I have to admit that I was craving an all-inclusive beach-bum sort of vacation again. You know, the kind where EVERYTHING is taken care of for you, and all you have to do is lie on the beach or go snorkeling.

Upon doing some research, I found this interesting site on traveling to Mexico.

Mexico Vacation Awareness

It's not your usual travel warnings...but the stories listed on this site are pretty horrifying in general and would make me think twice about traveling there, even to the resort town of Cancun (although I have been there before with no incident, but isn't that the case anywhere? Statistics don't matter when you're the victim). It's not so much about the fact that crime and accidents happen there. Those things happen everywhere in the world (muggings, rapes, robberies, accidents, drownings). It's just that in certain places, visitors are sometimes particularly targeted for crime OR when an accident or crime happens and/or you need medical help, the people you rely on to help you (police, EMTs, hospitals) are corrupt or incompetent. This can be especially true on resorts or places where tourism is heavily relied on because the authorities will want to push whatever happens under the rug as to not hurt their bottom line.


(Author's Note: Naturally, this is not a problem exclusive to Mexico. And I should point out that this is in no way a slam on average Mexican citizens, whom I have found to be lovely and warm. There are gems, turds, and everything in between in every culture, country, and place around the world.)

As for my spring break, it looks like I'm having a Staycation. I have some plans, such as possibly cooking around the world, doing a writing boot camp, catching up on some books and movies. The week will pass too fast, but you know what? Summer is coming. I am very lucky to have a very low-paying job where the one benefit is having 2 1/2 months off in the summer! My goal for this summer is to try not to get roped into much as far as professional development either. I'd rather just do that during the school year. Am I not going to a literacy conference this coming week? Why, yes I am! Professional development = CHECK.

Happy 2012!

As I scuttle around the house on the very last day of my vacation (which did not go wrong and in fact was very good on a lot of different levels), cooking for the week, doing laundry, etc., it occurs to me that I am at peace beginning this January and it's all because of an awesome blog that I discovered during the last few days:

The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

As often happens in these cases, I was desperate to find something to inspire me out of this funk I've been in for months on end, something to help me change my attitude, get off my butt and start living and creating again, and get organized. I don't even know how I found the site. I think it was an accident, but I have been devouring the archives for the last five days or so and I'm only in 2007 somewhere!

The blog started when the blogger, a writer (yay, writers! WE ARE COOL YES WE ARE), decided to do research and self-experimentation in pursuit of happiness. She approaches it from different angles, from current scientific knowledge to wisdom from the ages to popular culture. There is a lot of concrete advice, a lot of inspiration in just the way I tend to like it. Not overly sappy/sentimental while being concrete enough to try myself or mold it into something I could try myself. She has twelve personal commandments, the top of which is "Being Gretchen" (basically about loving and owning who she is and being authentic in that way). This is more complicated than you may think and I will talk about that another day.

So here, starting January 1, 2012, I embark on my personal Happiness Project. I know that a huge part of what makes me happy is when I think I am living up to my expectations and accomplishing personal goals (such as writing/running/etc.) and not brooding. I don't call these New Year's resolutions per se, because I hope it's not something that drizzles out in a few days, weeks, or even months. I hope it's something to hang onto when my natural tendency to be lazy and unmotivated kicks in.

And also? Not to be so stereotypical New Year's Day, but these extra holiday pounds (5 of them!!!) have to go. Farewell to the plethora of cookies, rich dips and chips, comfort food, wine, chocolate. Hello, vegetables and fruit and water and running. I've never really been on a diet that's lasted for more than two days (I get really bored by diets), so this will be interesting to see if I can last.

Anyway, I know I promised Pink Audrey a post about writing -- that will come some time this week.

Happy New Year, good friends and family! Good luck to us!

Early Morning Spiders

I wake up early, and when I say early, I’m not talking about 6:00 a.m. or even 7:00 a.m. (yes, I know that’s early for a lot of people). I mean, my alarm goes off at 4:35 a.m., and believe it or not, I usually don’t wake up to it. I’m usually already awake when it goes off. And this morning, I was wide awake. So wide awake that I was convinced that I had overslept and that it was actually 6:30. Somehow the sky looked lighter than it usually is at 4:15 a.m.

So anyway, I was up and having my coffee with my laptop on lap by 5 a.m.

What should scamper across the floor right in front of me like it owned the place, but a HUGE spider. Yep, big enough to really think it should own the place, I’m sure. I know. September is the season for spiders galore, but it doesn’t make me like it any better. Still, it was no match for my shoe. RIP giant invader spider. May you get to eat small children plenty of bugs in spider heaven. That was my morning procrastination.

Speaking of procrastination, there’s this program called Self Control that I found some time during this past year. It’s a great program, although (edited to add, thank you, healthamateur), it is for Mac Users only. Fear not, as I am SURE there are similar programs out there for non-Mac users! You download the program and then you list a bunch of sites that you’re “black listing.” You pick the period of time that you want to be banned from the internet. It blocks you from all those sites, the sites you are addicted to. You get other stuff done. It’s awesome. It’s sort of like running, though. You have to actually get out the door for it to happen and in this case, you have to actually open the program. I done good today, though. I stayed off the internet until now.

Okay, for your daily dose of Vacations Gone Dreadfully Wrong, I bring you this true story:

Croc Kills Woman Years After Her Sister's Death

So, if you don’t want to click on the link, this woman got eaten by a crocodile while on holiday in India (while her boyfriend filmed it apparently) only a few short years after her sister had died in another freak accident while on a DIFFERENT holiday (of the mountain climbing variety). Now, not to make light of this since this family has got to be in some major unimaginable pain, but what are the odds? Seriously. What are the odds of two separate vacations in the same family going so terribly wrong?