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Clouds and mist burned off early to give is a gorgeous Saturday.

Long weekend at the beach to close out September.

Somewhere near the Minnesota/Wisconsin border, probably overhead La Crosse if our flight path is at all accurate.

Or anywhere else in the world at 38,000 feet.

Seasonal beers FTW.

And David’s brew, the Czech Pilsner:

Maker’s Mark. At a coffee shop. At the mall.

I must not be in Utah anymore!

The crab and asparagus omelet at Skillet. Insanely delicious.

At Skillet in German Village.

If Samuel Adams’ Summer Ale is to be believed.

And I’m ready to believe.

Spent C$10, got 15 losers and 2 winners. Down C$8. Woo gambling?

Julie Anne won, 324 to 310.

283 to 195.

Back to work today for the first time since November 23. Since that day I’ve spent 8 days in the Caribbean (ah, sun/sand/water....) and took a day off for my 40th birthday yesterday.

And now SLAM back to the regular routine. Amazing how quickly the old patterns return:

1. Alarm at 05:30, didn’t even twitch.
2. Out the door by 06:00 to the park & ride.
3. On the bus, 30-minute ride to the office.
4. Yay badge still works!
5. Computer set up, time to start Outlook chewing on email updates.

All this and it’s only 07:15. I’ll spend most of today and possibly part of tomorrow filtering through vast volumes of email and other messages and catching up on what happened while I was out.

On the plus side, I’ve a short work week. So the crazy can only last four days.

How’s your Tuesday?

Canadian currency is a bit of a contradiction. Simultaneously high-tech and colourful, playful in its way, but such serious looks on the faces decorating the bills.

And great names for the CAD$1 and $2 coins, “loonie” and “toonie” respectively.

Snow-capped peaks south of Harrison Hot Springs.

Harrison Lake. Ahh, pretty.

“Feet wet” over the Pacific for the next five hours.

Quite a collection of bags (and their two people) making this trip to Maui and Moloka‘i.

Now where the hell is our airport shuttle driver???

Lovely and cool in Seattle this morning, a nice counterpoint to the sun and heat of the next two weeks in Hawai‘i.

Spent at least one night (or most of a day, for the day trips) in each of these cities in 2009.

Listed in roughly chronological order; links go to related posts or categories.

• Seattle, WA*
• Orlando, FL
• Sequim, WA* (day trips, first to hike Dungeness Spit and later for Easter)
• Yakima, WA
• Kapa‘a, HI
• Telma, WA (actually a cabin on Lake Wenatchee)
• Cannon Beach, OR
• Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
• San Francisco, CA

Previous lists: 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008.

I loves me a vacation, but I hates me the return to every-day life.

To wit:

I had 2,231 unread email messages in my work account. My “delete unnecessary mail” rules killed 825 of them, leaving 1,406 for me to review in some manner. The vast majority of these were threaded replies, so I knocked out a couple hundred more in short order by reading the newest messages first, but still. 1,406 unread messages over five workdays? Blargh.

I spent much of Sunday in a bleary-eyed fog of sorts. The flight back from Kaua‘i was a red-eye, Saturday at 22:30 HST to Sunday 07:10 PDT, and in my usual fashion I managed not to sleep a wink on the plane. But I didn’t want to muck up the days and nights by sleeping before Sunday night, so the day flashed by in this welter of confused imagery and sounds and unpacking and tripping over cats and trying very hard not to have to go to the grocery store because I was in no condition to drive.

Ended up sleeping about an hour midday, just enough to knock out the fuzzy feeling until it was time to retire for the night. But I was still on Kaua‘i time anyway—my brain wasn’t ready for bed at midnight because it was only 21:00 HST. Silly brain.

But now I’m back in the office, back to the usual daily bits of life, and it feels like the week I was in the tropics was maybe 17 minutes long. Except for the flights, which were each 3.5 years, give or take a month. Travelogue to come.

So how was your first week of August?

Blowhole of the Pacific on Kaua‘i’s south shore.

Po‘ipu Beach on Kaua‘i’s south shore.

Accent wallpaper pays amusing homage to the ubiquitous fowl at Kountry Kitchen in Kapa‘a.

The view from our 3rd-floor lanai on the east side of Kaua‘i.