I haven't been feeling well the last couple of days, and today Dan told me that he has been feeling sick to his stomach as well. That was a relief of sorts, as I had been thinking I was sick from stress of going back to work, before he had told me that.

The wildest thing happened as I was driving to work today. I was at an intersection waiting to make a left hand turn, and someone on the crossroad, also waiting to make a left hand turn, was driving a white Dodge Intrepid that looked an awful lot like my old car. Same rusting out spots, everything. When I made my turn, I saw the same dent on the left front fender and the same trailor hitch on the back. It was my old car! It had so many miles on it, and it was ten years old when I traded it in, and needed so many thousand of dollars in repairs, that I thought they would just junk it. I was great to see it still out on the road. I actually laughed for joy. It was like seeing an old friend!!!

One of my friends is off of work for three weeks starting tomorrow. He will be spending two of those weeks camping on a lovely beach on Lake Michigan. And another friend is off for more than two weeks starting on Friday. Last summer she followed my footsteps out to Albuquerque and the Grand Canyon. She'll be heading out there again. I have a few long weekends, but no vacation again for months. I am thinking of taking off the kids' spring break next April and going someplace warm and pretty, like Charleston, South Carolina or Savannah, Georgia, or New Orleans, Louisiana.

In the meantime I need to figure out what I'll be doing and going on my long weekends. A couple of them I took off to specifically go to Sunday concerts, like the one in September where I will take the kids to see Green Day at the Palace. But I have a four day in October where  I was thinking of going to Chicago to hear the opera Carmen and to hear the CSO play Mahler's Fifth Symphony. But I have decided that I do not wish to go to Chicago anytime soon, for personal reasons. I have a long weekend in November where I had been planning on going to Madison, Wisconsin to a book convention. Now Steven will be wrestling in a national championship that weekend (and needless to say, he is more important than a dumb convention), and I was thinking it might be good to get hotel reservations in that town so we can splash around in a swimming pool and stuff...so a lot of things to think about...