Vacations are a bitch.

Don't get me wrong; I love them. My problem is timing, rest, and money; none of which I have.
I'll explain.

Timing:

See, I teach. Some say I'm good at it; others have their doubts. Fuck them. The kids are on the fence. They seem to get smarter, but not due to their efforts. It's all me, baby. But I digress.
I teach, therefore my vacations are dictated by the state. Two weeks at Christmas, er, I mean winter break, and one week at Easter, aka spring break. Ten glorious weeks called summer vacation are usually spent in a classroom getting paid obscene amounts of money to teach the future of our country everything they should have learned in the previous 40 weeks, but were too fucking lazy to care about. Normally I'm left with 4 weeks to drink my brains out and cry until I have to report back to start the vicious cycle once again.

The problem with my timing is my kids. They go to a private school. Yes, I'm a public school teacher who sends his kids to a hoidy-toidy private school so they don't get lumped in with the rest of the losers for the rest of their life. Anyway, the private school's vacation schedule is usually a week off from mine, making it impossible to plan any sort of meaningful vacation to a decent destination that doesn't involve casinos. Tough life I've got. So, we end up spending 2 days at Whiskey Pete's hotel and casino in beeeeutyful Primm, NV. Being the middle of April, you expect the desert to be warming up. Nope. Cold as fuck. But, the kids went swimming because we forced them to and everyone had a great time. It is the way Easter was meant to be celebrated; with a buffet in a casino. Since the kids had to be back to school on Monday, we cut things short and high tailed it back home. Bummer. Timing is everything, and I ain't got it. . .in spades.

Rest:

See, when I go on vacation, I like to relax. Problem is, I don't know how. With 3 or 4 kids tagging along, rest isn't easy and relaxation is a myth. "What are we going to do?" Where are we going?" "What's for lunch?" "Dinner?" "Where's the arcade?" It's enough to make a father's ears bleed. And they do, profusely. The best time we ever had on vacation was when we went to Texas with our friends. There, everything was pretty much planned out. Get up; eat in the room because we had a kitchen; go to the waterpark because that's where we were staying; eat lunch back at the room; go back to said waterpark with cooler full of beer because said waterpark is fucking awesome (it was and is The Schlitterbahn in New Braunfels, Texas; it rules. See for yourself www.schlitterbahn.com); go back to room; shower, drink more, get dressed, order pizza for kids who are about to pass out (one hopes), and sneak off to Gruen, Texas for the best barbeque restaurant in the Western Hemisphere. We did that for 2 days, then headed to San Antonio to sweat before heading back to O.C. It was great. No room for error, just loads of fun. I got lots of sleep. The kids were happy. The wife was pregnant, so naturally she was all smiles. Life was good.

That was the exception.

Just last week, we decided to spend two days in the aforementioned Primm, NV. No schedule; no waterpark; no warm weather. Since we were basically in a casino, no sleep either. The wife likes to gamble as much as me. Probably moreso. We decided that playing blackjack until 3:00 in the morning would be "fun." It was. Waking up at 8:30 the next morning (actually the same morning) sucked. I think I was still drunk when I woke up, I'm not sure. I am sure of this; it took the better part of the next week to catch up on the lost sleep due to getting in late, then waking up superfucking early. Damn the sun; damn the booze; damn the addictive qualities of video poker. To make things even better, the wife and I decided that we needed to get away on our own to, you guessed it, another casino. This time we were the guests of the Penchanga band of mission Indians. Again, up until 3:00 drinking, gambling, and kanoodling (is it spelled that way?). Rest is for suckers, and I ain't a sucker. . .apparently.

Money:

We gamble. No need to go into detail on this one. Our rooms are usually free (Pechanga gave us a killer rate for a 4-diamond room, nice), we bring our own booze; eat on the cheap, leaving most of our money for gambling. If we had more money, we'd gamble that too. Although, then we'd be in better hotels. . .for free. If we had even more money, we'd go to places like Palm Springs, San Diego, Solvang (?), San Francisco, and our Holy Grail, Maui. But, we fritter money on little side trips too often. We go to Primm or Vegas about 4 to 5 times a year. We like it, but a change would be nice. This summer we're contemplating a trip to Tennessee to go to, you guessed it again, a waterpark. Of course, this also means going in and out of Atlanta, so it's not as bad as it seems. We could also visit my good friend Dave who now lives on a reservation in Minnesota, but that would entail, you are getting good at this guessing by now, a casino. At least he works at the PGA quality golf course, so I can go out and threaten the natives with my innate hacking abilities whilst reinforcing only the most negative stereotypes involving booze and Indians (my great grandmother was a full blood Choctaw, no shit). But, with gas prices zooming, the prospect of air travel seems out of our price range. It ain't cheap taking 3 to 4 kids on a jet and keeping them there for 4 to 6 hours. I have found it's why they have so many bars in airports. In short, more money equals better vacations. Looks like 2 days in Primm and maybe 3 or 4 days in Laughlin with friends who have a boat. Lake Mohave is really cheap and hotter than the hubs of hell. Good times, good times.

So, there you go friends. My vacation reflections in short (for me anyway). Tomorrow I go back to work frazzled, broke, and wondering where all the time went.

I need to go mix a drink before I cry again.

Time to update.

First, "Muhammad and Me" ended its run. It was funny, but limited and probably needed to go. After all, you don't want to piss off the entire Muslim world, although it is easy as fuck to do. Ask the Danes, if Denmark is still around. I haven't checked. Do they still brew Tuborg beer? It's the beer of kings, you know.

Next, I did not enter the writing contest. It's a thing they do in the OC Register. They publish an artsy-fartsy picture and have people write stories about the picture. Something I've done a million times with my students. It's good fun. This time, they had a picture of an old guy wearing a hard hat with goggles around the hat. He seems to be sitting in his garage and fiddling (I just used "fiddling" in my writing; I'm old now- it's official) with a tablet that has wires running from it. He's supposed to be an inventor of sorts. The guy's name is Wally and they say he's a part-time genius.

So, I had this great idea (seemed like it at the time) to write my story as if it was an e-mail from a brother to his sister telling her that the paper put a picture of "weird Uncle Wally" in the paper for some reason, and then go on to tell stories of spending the summer with Uncle Wally and Aunt Pearl. I was going to tell about how I was the unwitting guinea pig for most of his experiments and inventions including the "shocking Etch-a-Sketch" that delivered a minor jolt to the user once any shape was enclosed. I was also going to tell the story of how on every Halloween Uncle Wally, a 7th grade shop teacher at Louis Pasteur Jr. High in Pacoima, CA, would tell the class that they were going to build a real live female, then send some poor schmuck to find the janitor and ask for 50 ft. of Fallopian tubing so they could get the job done.

The story was going to be comic genius, if I do say so myself. Unfortunately, I lost interest, became too busy with work, got bored, and figured it would have been too much for the conservative likes of the OC Register. So, I said, "Fuck it."

I was recently outraged at the state of South Dakota for outlawing all abortions. Not that I'm a big pro-choice or pro-life kind of guy. I think both sides need to check the reality of the situation and get families to prevent their daughters from fucking the first boy who says, "I love you." Teach them some self respect and self discipline and you'd lower the pregnancy and abortion rate. Also, if you actually made adoption a workable solution for some, you may get somewhere. But, when you outlaw abortion altogether, you solve nothing. Calling it "murder" and not even exempting victims of rape and incest is plain pigheaded. Doing it and saying "God has plan for this child" is even more outrageous and stupid. Did God plan for a 12 year old girl to get molested by her pervert uncle? Good one God. I'd have never thought of that one! God wanted you to get gang raped on the way home from your pilates class so you could have this child. Nevermind that the mere thought of the child will bring back horrific images and memories, it's the way He wanted it and your having this baby. Yay, God!!

Step back for a minute and think. Doesn't God have a better way of getting things done? He is God isn't he? Isn't he all powerful? So why would he fuck with anyone's life like that? I'll tell you why, because he doesn't. You're stupid for thinking so and God agrees with me. He told me so this morning by having the Virgin Mary appear in my cheese omelet. I swear. So, South Dakota, you just keep right on doing "God's Will" for him and you can go on being exactly what you are; a little shithole of a state that no one cares about and Indians won't use for their worst casinos. Bitches.

OK. I've said enough for now. If any of you are visiting from Dan's page, Hi. If you're not, Hi.
If your Dan, I've got to get back up to SF and see the rest of the good bars.

Going to the gym. . .again.