We've booked a cruise from New York City to Florida and the Bahamas, March 1-8. Norwegian Cruise Lines again, on their newest (just out of the docks) ship the Gem. Gerald and I will have a mini-suite with balcony, Erin and the boys will have a cabin with a nice window. They are much nicer rooms than what we would have had on the Alaska cruise, because we booked that one so late.
I feel better now that we have a concrete plan for a replacement vacation--the self-pity kind of caught up with me this week, and the reality of being back home and trying to deal with office politics, cluttered bedrooms, looming course prep, and miserably muggy weather. And I suspect that a cruise to a warm climate in early March will be a welcome respite from the Rochester winter.
Now I need to turn my attention towards course prep, since it's two weeks 'til the start of classes. I'm teaching two sections of my favorite course (the freshman intro to multimedia and the internet), which means it won't be a huge hassle to prep, but there's still time and energy that has to go into that process. And it's harder because my MacBook Pro went in for minor repairs (including that pesky wifi problem) and a hard drive upgrade, so I'm using a Windows machine that doesn't have all my application settings (like ftp passwords).
I did manage to get my office cleaned up on Friday, so Monday I'll go in and try to make forward progress on my myriad projects--course prep, symposium planning, grant report, long-overdue posts for Terra Nova, etc etc.
Tonight and tomorrow, however, still count as vacation. So I'm going to bed.
I'm glad you've got a replacement vacation lined up! The good news is that now you will have this to look forward to all winter.
P.s. without you bringing it up several times, not in a million years would it have occurred to me to buy trip insurance. Thank you so much. When we plan a big trip, we'll do this.