Yay, vacation!

Sometimes when I leave work for a vacation and won't actually have any lazing around the house days longer than a regular weekend, it doesn't actually feel like vacation yet. This time, I could feel the vacation-love the moment I drove out the gate. I pretty much took yesterday as a sanity day: went off to a cafe to write over breakfast, pruned half a dozen of the rosebushes, did some home maintenance (replacing lightbulbs, etc.). Today has been about getting the house in order and packing. Also: trying to pretend I don't have a tickle at the back of my throat because it would really suck to start vacation with a cold. It would have been lovely to get some extra sleep in this weekend as well, but I've been finding it impossible to doze significantly after 5am. No idea why, but at least I'll be pre-shifted for Eastern Time.

I've officially given up on the BWI cafe ever mailing my notebook contents back to me. A week ago, after hemming and hawing over whether I was being thoughtful or passive-agressive, I mailed the cafe manager a thank-you card, noting that I really appreciated the efforts of his staff in trying to get the papers back to me but that, since they seemed to have been lost in the mail, I had no idea how much to reimburse him for postage costs so I was enclosing [an amount of cash that was enough more than any hypothetical postage costs to assure notice] and would he put any leftovers in the cafe's common tip jar. The note included my address, phone, and e-mail. I haven't gotten any response of any type. I don't know why I'm obsessing over it so much. It's just that if they didn't want to bother returning it, they should have just said so up front, but I was assured on several occasions that they would ship/had shipped it.