Cory Collier

My wife and I went on vacation last week to Washington DC . We got cheap plane tickets there, and we were staying with a friend of hers. I was a little hesitant to go, but I know how she loves vacations.

A friend of ours drove us to the airport, after our flight was delayed an hour. We checked our bags with no problem headed to security. After we got in line in security, we noticed an ominous sound coming from the roof above us; hail. We rode the monorail to our terminal, and were amazed to see hail coming inside of our train car.

Of course, our plane was delayed even more, so we went to the bar. By night’s end, we had gone to the bar twice, and arrived in DC 5 hours late. To add insult to injury, there was a technical malfunction at DC and we were stuck on the plane for an additional hour.

Our friend there (who was an amazing host, she’s very gracious) drove us back to her house. It was a long day, and we were ready to get some much needed sleep.

The next morning Melissa and I got up, and was stunned to see that our friend didn’t have a computer. The only computer there was her roomate’s, which she gave permission to use. So I installed Apache and PHP on the machine, and started testing some of the ideas I had brainstormed while waiting to get to DC the night before.

That’s the sort of thing you do when you’re married. You spend countess hours waiting for the woman to get ready, so you might as well keep your mind busy.

After Melissa was ready, we headed out on our first full day on vacation! We went to Smithsonian first. Specifically, we went to the Museum of Science & Natural History. I didn’t realize how much that would be like going to Disney World, so we didn’t stay very long. Aftewards, we went walking around that area. The weather was nice, so it was good to be outside.

We checked out the Capitol, the White House, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, and the WW2 Memorial. All of which are really awesome to see. There’s tons of history behind all of them, and it’s humbling to stand in front of the monument’s to our country’s greatest leaders and most somber times.

The next day, I was woken up by my phone. It was a company I consult for, and they were having issues with their Blackberry devices not being able to send. I tried to fix the issue with my phone, which I was able to do with a degree of success, but I needed a computer. My phone was almost out of battery life, so I really needed a phone charger too.

I looked all over for that computer I had used the day before, as well as the phone charger. I hesitantly peeked in the roomate’s room to see if it was in there, and sure enough, both the computer and the phone charger were in there. I grabbed both.

I started charging my phone, while I went to work on the Blackberry issue. I was almost done with the issue when the roomate came home, and began searching for her cell phone charger. I told her where it was, and she was apparently upset that I had entered her room.

My mistake. However, she was awfully rude about the issue.

I looked up hotels.com to see if I could get a good hotel room close by. I didn’t want to be uncomfortable on my vacation. Melissa had me wait to book anything, as not to make a rash decision. Ultimately, we didn’t get a hotel room, but the rest of the time in that house was awkward (at least it was for me). It’s funny how one person can ruin things for you. I should be bigger than that, but hey, I was pissed.

We did a bunch of hanging out after that. We did all the nightlife stuff . We drove up to Gettysburg. We met some really cool people. I don’t think there was anything left of DC that we still wanted to do. We even hit the International Spy Museum. I would have liked it more if I wasn’t so hungover when I was there.

The one thing that got to me though, was the amazing lack of manners by people there. I can’t count how many times I thought “The nerve!”. I guess that’s what happens to a city when it gets to be that big. All I can say is that I hope Orlando never gets that big.

To round out the trip, Southwest lost my luggage on the way back home. So I went to work the next day in an old pair of jeans and the sandals I had worn traveling home. After all of the nasty food and beer we had while on vacation, all I could think of was getting back to the gym. Too bad my gym shoes were with my luggage.

After we got home, I had to drive to Lakeland to get my dog. My buddy had generously watched her while I was on vacation. I can’t tell you how much it sucked to have to make a 2 hour drive after all of that.

Don’t get me wrong, it was good to get a vacation, but now I feel like I need a vacation from my vacation. Perhaps that’s why it’s good to be home.