Have you made your summer vacation plans yet?
6I usually plan a big vacation in late summer. Cruising with Board Game Geeks in the spring and Worldcon being in Helsinke this year has thrown me off my vacation planning game. Not sure if I want to try to put together a summer trip or not. There’s a game convention in CA that supposed to be good, could go do that and hit a Caribbean cruise. Got a few game and sci fi conventions in the fall in AZ, NM, and CO loosely planned, but nothing concrete for summer. What about you? Doing anything exciting? Going anywhere new? Or revisiting a favorite destination?
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I don’t go on vacations.
@PlacidPenguin How come?
@moondrake
I’ve been asking myself that for years.
@PlacidPenguin Got a bucket list destination? I’m really good at finding travel deals.
@moondrake
No. There’s nowhere that I want to go to badly.
@PlacidPenguin My “If I win the lottery” bucket list destination is The Maldives. Even my travel deal sorcery can’t tame the price tag on that.
The top of my activity bucket list is swimming with whale sharks, which I could afford, but I am too wary of the water to dive. I’ve been looking for a rwadonably affordable snorkeling opportunity as they come to the surface in the morning.
@moondrake
I mean, there are places (in the US) I’d like to see eventually, but I’m not focusing heavily on making the visits actually happen.
(To those who think it’s no big deal, keep in mind that aside from 2 places in Canada, I’ve NEVER left the Northeast section of the US. And even then, I’ve only been in a handful of states.)
@PlacidPenguin I haven’t taken a vacation in at least 20 years, so I don’t do vacations either.
@PlacidPenguin Come on down to Florida. There are a few of us here – we can hold a mini-meh-con and take you touristing. Just PLEEZ do not come in the summer months.
@magic_cave
Where in Florida?
@PlacidPenguin North east. Sometimes referred to as very-south Georgia. And you?
@magic_cave
I always thought that was a fictional place which was on the same level as a facility in Texas which had a room loaded with speaker docks.
@PlacidPenguin Not all that bad a description of either place. My dad was USNavy, and I was born here during his first tour. We were back 4-5 years later for another couple of years. My son and I moved back here (from the Cape Canaveral area) in early 1973, so I’ve sort of re-nativized myself. It’s odd to know that today we do our grocery shopping and see our doctors on the same base where my birth family was stationed then. One of the perks of being married to a retired USNavy guy – especially the health care.
I think I’ve figured out where the vast group of duplexes that constituted on-base family housing were originally located, although they’re long gone. Imagine my surprise when I realized in 1975 that the community-college classroom I was sitting in was one of those duplexes. The base was closing down most of the family housing not long after the CC opened, so a bunch of the duplexes were happily moved and recycled into classrooms.
Should you get down this way, give me a head’s up and we’ll buy you lunch or dinner. We can talk about all the other meh-folk.
I might be switching jobs in the next month or two, so I probably won’t get to take much vacation. Barring that fact:
Supposedly, a convention like the one I ran last year will be happening, this time in/around Cleveland, so I might take a long weekend out that way if/when that gets finalized. My partner’s best friend is getting married in August, but it’s just in Long Island on a Saturday so I doubt I’ll even take extra time off. I’d really like to go back to Florida as well, see old friends and get a bunch of my old stuff, but I’ve been putting that off for a while now; I want to move within NYC before doing that trip, and that just hasn’t happened yet.
I used to do big conventions (MegaCon, PAX East, Katsucon) but I don’t think I’d enjoy them unless I was spending time with people I know, and I haven’t been extended any invitations recently. (I’m also burnt from getting invited to PAX East and then being stood up, after putting in all the money/effort into going.) The only tiny convention I’m truly interested in is the one I ran last year.
In the fall a friend of mine in Boston hosts a party that I really enjoyed last year. It was right before the election, and I had both Election Day and Veteran’s Day off, so I just took the whole week. I spent half of it in Boston/Cambridge and the other half here in NYC just enjoying the city and generally recovering, and that was honestly exactly what I liked and needed. So maybe I’ll take time off just for the sake of enjoying NYC.
Does this count?
If so, I’m livestreaming it to the meh forums (at a really low framerate).
This is a helpful chart to explain the effects of geography on liver condition:
@djslack
How 'bout tequila?
PS. It totally counts.
@djslack It’s still spring. You have to go back after Memorial Day.
@f00l Haven’t found a whole lot of tequila in Jamaica, but the Appleton Estate flows like water here. I got up to walk to lunch and realized I was a little tipsy.
@sammydog01 darn! Well, rules are rules, I guess. Time to start planning.
@djslack
You could just stay thru Memorial Day.
Well, you could.
@djslack What unit is that for the rum?
@sammydog01 My good friend Samuel Adams and this beach disagree with you:
@jqubed Drinks, generally. Don’t know how much is in the ones they just bring me. The ones I make increase in volume as the day goes on. But considering I rarely ever drink at home, it still may not be that much.
The in-room bar (I wish that Tanqueray was Hendrick’s or Bombay Sapphire, but it will do.)
Nah, but the wife is hiding cash somewhere in the house for that purpose… I told her I hope there isn’t a fire.
@medz She’s not named Molly Brown is she?
@jqubed no
Yep- should be a nice week.
I remember worldcons. Worked a few, my daughter was conceived at one. Enjoyed them a lot. Worked a lot of game cons back in the day too.
Then I got old
And i get bored on vacations actually, it’s odd. I need to make them short and sweet.
@Cerridwyn I am widely reknowned as the vacation drill sergeant. I plan my trips very densely packed with activities, fellow travelers often bow out of a few to rest. My vacations are rarely boring, often exhausting.
@moondrake that was me 20 years ago
i grew older and my attention span went to hell
@moondrake I promised my teen I would tak him to Super Smash Con this summer. So looking forward to it.
/giphy eyeroll
@Cerridwyn That’s too funny. I went to a few WorldCons, and I was pregnant during Discon 2 (32nd World Science Fiction Convention), in D.C. I was so impressed by “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin that I nearly named my daughter ‘Ursula’.
@OldCatLady
LA and Phoenix and a NASFIC in San Diego, various westercons. Have never met Le Guin. Did get to meet a lot of awesome people, many who are not with us anymore - Ted Sturgeon, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Larry Niven and other others and media types such as Gene Roddenberry, other Start Trek ToS actors, and even a very young Mark Hamill
@Cerridwyn I only attended one WorldCon, and that was because I didn’t have to travel. It was Iguanacon in 1978 (in Phoenix). I was 16, still in high school, and I really didn’t appreciate it as I should have. What I DO remember is that, even though Star Wars came out the year before and was STILL going strong in theaters, none of the cast was there, Harlan Ellison was the guest of honor, and I watched the world premiere of the animated film Watership Down.
In July, we’re taking my 6yo granddaughter to the West Coast Disney Store with Rides That You Have To Pay A Fortune To Enter, also known as Disneyland.
@DocBJ I was there, it was the first ‘world con’ I ever attended.
and er, ah um, in fact, my daughter was born 9 months later
@DocBJ Worldcon is a lit (as in literature) con. The megastars at WC are authors and to a lesser extent artists. For film and tv personalities you want a media con, such as San Diego ComicCon or Dragoncon in Atlanta. Media cons are much more heavily attended ( something like 167,000 people at SDCC and 77,000 at DC, compared to 5-8,000 at WC). Media cons skew to a much younger demographic and are a constant buzz of frenetic activity in the main throughfares. Litcons are quieter, calmer, with activities are aimed at more thoughfulness than expression of fandom. I love both kinds of cons, the only cons I hate are the for-profit milk-the-fans dry things like most Star Trek “conventions”, quite a lot of comic “conventions”, etc. Despite being billed as a comic convention, SDCC is really the megalodon of media cons.
I go to an island somewhere in Zambales to do a camping with my friends and it’s a cool experience! no electricity so it’s just like you go back to stone age
@PaulAvila But…but… how do you click the meh button?
Does going to my yard every day to put in my landscaping count?
@luvche21 It only counts if you sip a pina colada while you dig.
@sammydog01 don’t dig drunk dude
@luvche21 Yes. Once you’re out of your house, you are permitted to call any time/place you wish “a vacation.”
@magic_cave if that’s true, I’m on vacation about 20 hours a week in my yard alone!
Not sure if you want to count Chicago as a vacation. But I’m planning a trip there for Riot fest in September. That’s my boy trip this year.
@riceatusc I went there around Fourth of July weekend for a wedding last year and it was honestly pretty nice! I should have stayed longer and explored solo, but lessons learned.
@riceatusc I’d like to get back if only to visit the Art Institute and Museum of Science and Industry. I lived in Chicago through part of 4th grade and went with my class. I still have fond memories.
@moondrake My mom grew up in Chicago, and much after that her parents moved to the northwestern tip of Indiana. My sister and I spent summers with them, and the annual trip to the Museum of Science and Industry was eagerly awaited. Colleen Moore’s Fairy Castle! The coal mine! And that gigantic diamond (which I think is rightfully called “that gigantic fake diamond”). My Then Spouse and my son, who had just turned 7, and I went back in summer of 1977 to see the King Tut exhibit, which was splendid. We had a lot of time for exploring prior to our allotted viewing time, so for we got to spend a fair amount of it wandering the Field Museum’s miles of cool, darkened corridors full of exhibits. I’d never seen a moose or an elk before, and to this day I can re-feel my total astonishment at how huge they are. I’ll have to go back there some day, while I’m still able to walk.
@magic_cave Rodin’s The Thinker was on loan to the Art Institute when we went, and I kept sneaking off from the group to go back and stare at it. It seemed my teacher was embarassed because it’s a nude, but that had nothing to do with my fascination. It was the solid mass of the thing, a giant, flesh rendered in metal. The little nuances of real human posture and expression. It had a humanity that I’d never felt from a painting. My love of sculpture was born that day and it’s still my favorite art form, for viewing and for doing.
@magic_cave
I remember the first time I saw Colleen Moore’s amazing dollhouse.
Do you remember the Foucault Pendulum there?
@f00l aaaargggghhh why does the video glitch when it knocks over the thing!!!
Already have a beach house booked on LBI. It’s the same one I stayed at last year. The week after Labor Day - no one is around, weather and water are still warm, stores are still open. The island is only about a quarter mile wide so there’s the Atlantic a block away and the bay a block away in the opposite direction.
@looseneck Nice! I hope you don’t see Jim Cantore on the beach.
@sammydog01 Better there than here. Perhaps we could send him somewhere deserving.
@looseneck
When are we invited to come?
@PlacidPenguin Sept 13th to 20th. You will find us either on the beach or second floor balcony drinking rum and cokes.
@looseneck
Not sure if you’re joking or not about the invitation, and even if you’re serious, not sure if you’re serious about the dates.
@PlacidPenguin Serious about both invitation and dates. I know you’re in the area. You are welcome to share sand and sun with us. There WILL be puppies!
Yes, I’m not taking one. This years vacation is for working on the house and cars.
@cranky1950 No wonder you’re cranky.
@moondrake exactly
@cranky1950
So you’ve been working on cars and houses since the middle of last century?
@PlacidPenguin cranky is a fluid state
@cranky1950 Us too, but since I paid for the rental last year, my friend is paying this year so it’s basically free since I already wrote that one off my books
No summer plans yet but I’m sure the wife will come up with a destination.
I took the first vacation I have had in 5 years last year. Was meeting a “boyfriend (serious I thought)” and spending the holiday with him. We had reservations, parties to attend, all the works. He called me 8 days before to say, “don’t come, I think I am in love with someone else”. I went anyway to see (and stay with) other friends in the area - and came to find out that he had changed all of OUR reservations, RSVPs for parties, etc. to her name, and told everyone that I had broken up with him. The friends I was staying with are serious homebodies, so we watched a lot of cable.
Can’t afford one this year, or probably next. But hey, with the memories of that - THE. WORST. VACATION. EVER. what more do I need, right?
Zahita
@zahita459 Wow!
@zahita459 So did you show up to the parties and make it good and awkward for him?
@jqubed Nope, all these were ticketed events, and he had given my tickets to her. I tried, believe me.
Grrrrr
@zahita459 Wow, what a tool!
I would love to go on a vacation, but with a 2 year old and a husband that doesn’t like leaving the house, it seems pretty hopeless for me.
@darkdragon If your husband doesn’t like leaving the house can’t he use his vacation time to watch the toddler so you can go to Vegas?
@sammydog01 He doesn’t have vacation time (or it’s all vacation time), he watches the kid all day while I work. He doesn’t like me to go to Vegas alone, that’s actually where all my friends live. As soon as the kid is old enough to tolerate a vacation, we WILL be going to a few places though. Like it or not!
@darkdragon Three is an easier age- next summer!
I’m heading to the Boston/NY area for the first time with my brother in June (he used to live there), and I’m a groomsman in an October Florida destination beach wedding that will be followed by a seven day western Caribbean cruise.
I’m more of a utility/stuff person than an experience person, so I usually just do long weekends to places where I can visit family and close friends (surfing in California, hunting in Texas, etc.). Never been outside North America, and that doesn’t bother me.