The house I'm staying in during this vacation has a private pool. Having a private pool was one of The Most Important Factors in choosing a place to stay. On previous trips, when I didn't make a private pool a priority, I was sad to discover that most pools are closed at the times I wish to swim. I, then, discovered that the pool was colder than I'd imagined and had to pay for the pool to be heated.

To justify these expenses I made it a point to go swimming in that eventually warm pool Every Night I stayed there. So between ten p.m. and five a.m., you could find me floating or swimming in that pool for at least half an hour.

One of my co-vacationing friends always drives to the nearest Krispy Kreme before entering the vacation home. We don't have Krispy Kremes in Massachusetts at the moment (due to a poorly thought out 7-11 deal in the early 2000s), so whenever he is within an hour or so of the sugary confections, he picks up a box or two for everyone to enjoy.

When you take a break from your everyday routines, do you develop a new ritual or rituals? Tell us about it/them.

I love water parks. I'm working on a prose piece about this, so I'll refrain from a wax poetica, but I am an enjoyer of water parks.


My favorite go-to-water-park for this vacation recently closed, and while it's scheduled to reopen while I'm down here, I'm not too keen on braving the long lines for a new attraction in a tourist town.


I mentioned this to a friend, and he suggested, rather than scope out the new park, he knew a way to sneak into a long-closed park and experience it as a sort of water park graveyard. 


It definitely smelled like death.

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I'll probably be sharing my experience about the waterpark graveyard soon. In the untilwhile, is there an activity or place that you love that might one day disappear? What will it be like when it's abandoned?

I'm on my way to a nice, relaxing vacation. It is my first vacation in several years, and I need it to be relaxing. Naturally, all signs points to this going horribly wrong. Paychecks not showing up, the house I booked turning out to be unavailable, weird credit card hiccups. You know, 21st century American clockblocking.

I'm sure it will all work out, because if it doesn't work out, that will be Awful, and part of my nice, relaxing vacation is to not have to deal with Awful. Power of positive thinking, right?

But remember that time you used the power of positive thinking, and everything fell to shit anyway? Tell me about it. Maybe we can exorcise the possible impending Awfulness by laughing or shaking our heads at Awfulness Past.

Cowardly lion jokes abound in the story of Moto, a lion at a New Delhi zoo who, for his tenth birthday was gifted by zookeepers blowing bubbles at him. His response is to leap up afraid, like a cat. The zookeepers then laugh and upload the video of the lion to Youtube, where millions of people laugh at this huge, fearsome animal scared of a tiny soap bubble. Like, LOL, right?

But who doesn't have an irrational reaction from time to time? Whether it's fear or unwarranted pride, or sexual arousal during that cartoon about fire safety, we all have responses that defy logic from time to time.

What mundane thing petrifies you? Or what tiny event brings you inexplicable joy?