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My Summer Vacation (2022)

I haven’t taken a vacation in a while, so I decided “Oh why not. I have some vacation days to use.” So for the week of Independence Day, I took some time for myself to enjoy the simple things.

Last minute planning

As my vacation approached, I started planning on what exactly it is I would want to do. And by “approached”, I mean “was a week out.” My mind was elsewhere.

At first, I thought about actually going on a real vacation, out of town somewhere. I love Canada, so I thought maybe a trip up that away again. Or maybe back out to the west coast, which is just beautiful to chill out at. As you could imagine, waiting until the last minute to plan a trip isn’t exactly the best idea.

Waiting until the last minute to book a room on Amtrak isn’t the best of ideas. (The dates are different but the same idea.)

So then I thought about maybe driving somewhere instead. But where would I really go? Dallas? San Antonio? Nah… I’m good.

So a staycation it is! But I feel like I’ve got a few things done that I wouldn’t have otherwise if I was still working.

A walk around town

One of the things I’ve wanted to do was revisit some of the places I’ve been previously with my new camera. I’m definitely no expert in using this yet, but having an optical zoom (while only 3x) is still better than the digital zoom on my phone.

The Panasonic LUMIX DMC-LX10 is my camera of choice. Small, simple, and does what I need. (How is it so dusty already?)

While I did hit up places I’ve been before (such as Mueller and Lady Bird Lake), I made sure to check out spots I haven’t been around those areas. But I’ve also visited places I haven’t been before, including Central Park in Hyde Park, Hemphill Park (which I’ve usually pass by in the night), and Waterloo Park.

You can check out the gallery of photos in my previous posts where I took a summer morning walk around Mueller, Hyde Park, Hemphill Park, Waterloo Park, and the northwest corner of Lady Bird Lake.

Shopping spree

One thing I don’t really have time for during the week is checking out a variety of shops and stores around town. I wanted to check out stores in the nearby mall (Press Play, Pokemaniacs, the LEGO Store), visit places I haven’t been to in forever on the north side of town (Asahi Imports, Kinokuniya, and Game Over Videogames), and hop over to places I’ve never been to before (Anime Pop, Daiso, and Terra Toys).

I’ve had an itch to build a LEGO set again. I think the last time I’ve built anything was when I was a kid. While there were some really cool ones (like the Nintendo Entertainment System and International Space Station), I wasn’t ready to put down the $100-$220 for them. After walking around the store a couple of times, nothing was really hitting me… until I came across this guy.

It gave me major Voltron / Power Rangers vibes, plus it was only $10, so I had to grab it. It didn’t take long to put together (maybe about 20 minutes) but it just felt good to put some LEGO together again.

A sped up build of the LEGO Super Robot.

Asahi Imports is always nice to visit for a treat. Grabbed some fun to make noms from the north location and checked out the newer south location for the first time as well.

The snacks I picked up from both Asahi Imports stores. Take a guess which ones I couldn’t wait to try.

I grabbed a few things from the Goodwill Store (like an ottoman) and Half Price Books. I was hoping to come away with more books, especially from Kinokuniya and Half Price, but it just wasn’t meant to be.

I did find a couple more waggle games to play, so look forward to that on a stream in the future.

What’s cooking?

It’s common for me to not have the energy to cook. And I do love cooking! It’s just a very time consuming task and really heats up the apartment. (Which is not fun during the summer.) But now that I have plenty of time, let’s get in the kitchen and cook up some yums!

Target had a sell on ribs over the Independence Day weekend: 50% off! Add in my Target RedCard discount, it goes to 55% off. Unfortunately, my 20% off groceries coupon didn’t stack. Bleh!

With ribs in hand, I had to give this Memphis Style Ribs recipe from America’s Test Kitchen a go. I’ve never cooked ribs before but this one made it pretty easy, especially since most of the work is done in a slow cooker.

I’m a sucker for sweets. It’s probably one of the reasons why I can’t get rid of this belly that I carry around. If there’s one sweet I do enjoy making, it’s cookies.

It’s common for me to buy a big carton of oatmeal for lunches. It sits in my pantry for a long time because it takes me a while to get through it, even when eating oatmeal a couple times of weeks. Also common would be me taking those oats and making oatmeal cookies from them. And since I had a big jar of molasses leftover from the ribs, let’s put these to good use.

In my trip to Asahi Imports, I grabbed a couple of miniature candy meals. I’ve picked these up before for others but I’ve never done one myself. Since I already had a burger and fries earlier in the week, let’s cook up some ramen.

It … uh… didn’t go very well. I may have not read some of the instructions correctly.

It wasn’t exactly tasty either, even for candy. The soup tastes like root beer, but like a somehow sweeter version of fountain root beer. That’s too sweet, even for me! The noodles either didn’t have any flavor or were overpowered by soup. At least the pudding actually tastes like mango.

It still all ended up in the trash after a couple of bites.

Return to the norm

And with that, my vacation came to an end. There were days in there where I didn’t do anything as I needed to recharge the batteries every so often. And that’s okay. But I now must return to work. I haven’t taken this much time off in a while. Should I be worried about what awaits me?

I don’t have much of choice. So let’s pack up and head back in.

Always be sure to pack up all the important things before heading back from vacation.

Vacation over. Back to work!
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