Unfocused Girl and I are testing for our yellow belts in Tae Kwon Do this morning, so I may have to split this post in two to get something up before we head out. Seems reasonable, since I’m covering a two-week vacation.
Number of days of vacation, departure to return: 16
Number of those days spent traveling or preparing for travel (packing, closing up the house, etc.): 4. We drove to the beach this year, ignoring the conventional wisdom to leave early by leaving late and driving into the night. We weren’t comfortable trying to do the entire 813-mile route all in one day this year; next year, we will. The kids will be a little older and better able to handle it, and we’ll be more confident ourselves. We also used one of our own cars, Mrs. Unfocused’s Mercury Sable, instead of renting a minivan, which is what we did the last time we drove. It wasn’t as comfortable, but it was about $1000 cheaper just by saving the rental, not to mention the better gas mileage from the sedan.
Number of dishwashers at our family beach house: 2 — Mrs. Unfocused and me.
Number of days spent practicing Tae Kwon Do: almost all of them. We bought a couple of gym mats and hauled out our pads. Taking a two-week vacation right before our test could have really blown our chances of passing, but we worked pretty hard, especially Unfocused Girl. No guarantees, but I’m confident we’ll both do well.
Breaking News! It’s Joe Biden! GREAT choice for veep!
Okay, more about me. Where was I?
Number of words of Meet the Larssons written: 1898. It’s not quite what I had planned, but I had a lot of things I wanted to do, and the vacation was about spending time with my family, not hiding in a cave by myself to write. Also, the beach house doesn’t have a cave. I’ve written more since.
The running stats will have to wait for after the test.
The Unfocused Life 
Good luck on the test! Good idea on practicing on vacation.
813 miles? Have you ever heard the There Might Be Giants song “813 mile car trip?” I am not a long distance driver. Our vacation to the beach was about 140 miles. When I was a kid, we used to drive from VA to MI to visit friends. Nearly killed me.
Thanks, Mike.
Freshhell, I meant to link to the song when I put the post up, but had to run & forget. I’m linking to it right now. We didn’t do long driving trips like this when I was a kid except for one road trip to Florida (from NYC) — I remember very little of it except for getting horribly sunburned during a stop at a motel in South Carolina.