My Spring Break

Hi everyone,

Well, I'll digress from my usual theme and talk on a personal note. I'd like to talk now about what I did over my spring break, and it was a memorable spring break. So I'll give you a brief breakdown of what I did here.

I got out a week before this past friday. I didn't do much that day. Just sat around, read, looked at the computer. The next day, saturday, went pretty much the same way, I did some shopping in the morning, but not much else.

On sunday, I went to church in the morning with my family. We don't go that often, since I remain ambivalent about religion, but this day was the 25th anniversary of the pastor's beginning, and we know him well, so we decided we'd show up this day. Funnily enough, I found myself connecting with the sermon this day. He was talking about how we had to choose to accept Jesus into our lives, to "open the door" as he put it. I don't remember the message exactly, just that I found myself connecting with it in a way that I had not before.

The next day, my brother and I set to work on getting the back deck painted. On monday, we moved the stuff, chairs, plants, so on, out of the way, and get the deck washed and clean before we could paint the next day. The whole job of painting took a long time, but I enjoyed it for some reason. Every once in a while, when I have to do something like this around the house, I find it satisfying to get it done.

On wednesday, my brother and I left and headed to a friend of my dad's in the Santa Cruz area. We decided to take the train up there, and have him meet us. Well, we got on a train, took it to San Luis Obispo, which is still 200 miles away from Santa Cruz. So after a series of buses, we reached the guy, whom my dad knows very well, and whom we have visited many times.

The next day, thursday, my brother and I traveled into the Bay Area itself. First, I recommended we go to Berkeley, just for the hell of it. My brother agreed, but this meant a little less time for things to do in San Francisco. We did do some exploring there, though. We stopped by this bookstore that catered mostly to left-leaning clientele. Moving on, we got back down into the main drag of San Francisco, strolling about and taking pictures like a couple of damn tourists. Later, we utilized the train again to get back to our friend at his job in San Jose.

On friday, we set out to go kayaking at a nearby slough (I think it's pronounced sloo), but since a heavy wind would be kicking up soon, it would pretty much ruin the whole thing. Instead, we took some more pictures of a nearby sea lion habitat, and then came back to his place for a bit. Then he introduced us to his newest hobby (as he's had quite a few hobbies). It's called geocaching. It involves using a handheld GPS device to find boxes of goodies hidden nearby. He went a little far with it, though, in my opinion. He took us on this one long trail walk looking for them, which I didn't mind as much, but at one point, he went looking for one in a local cemetary.

On Saturday, we went on a long walk with the guy and his dog in the morning, then had breakfast at a coffee place. When we couldn't figure out what to do with the rest of our day, we decided to play frisbee golf. The course was on the side of a high hill, so that added a lot of challenge to the game. Then as the afternoon bled into evening, we payed a brief visit to his mother. That night we had take out and beer for dinner.

Finally, on sunday, we went out for breakfast, came back, got packed up, and then came back to the train station to travel home. After a long, beautiful afternoon on the train, my brother and I arrived in LA at nightfall. Our parents were there to take us back home to resume our loads of tasks the next day, but we had gotten oodles of enjoyment from this spring break.

Well, I hope you enjoyed listening to this as much as I enjoyed talking about it. Every now and then, I get narcissistic, so I have to indulge in self-uh-telling, for lack of a better word. Maybe I'll do some more of these personal stories in the future. I don't blog very often, as you guys know, so most of my insight comes from a fairly mundane, day-to-day life. I'll keep you posted.

This is the Daily Reeder, Over&out.