It’s been a crazy couple of weeks. Two weeks ago, I took the first of two “mini-vacations,” and the second one last week. Taking time off two weeks in a row is something I am normally loathe to do because of the obvious difficulty in getting back into the swing of things when I return. However, I did it anyway, and had a great time on both trips.

My first mini-vacation was a trip with some friends to Indianapolis, IN. My wife didn’t come with me for that trip, and normally she takes the week off after I get back to drive up to where we used to live in Illinois. This time, I decided I would go with her. I hadn’t been there in over three years and thought it would be nice to see everyone from up there again. Last week was the annual “Old Settlers” (pronounced “set-lers,” not “set-a-lers”) festival, which is basically like Coal Festival but with a large parade on the last night.

The first thing my wife said when I told her I wanted to come was, “Don’t interfere with my vacation plans.”

Apparently she’d been scheduling shopping trips and time visiting with old friends and co-workers from up there. I promised her I would stay out of her way, and spend my time visiting people I wanted to see.

On Wednesday, we headed out. It’s about a four hour drive to the town where we used to live, located about an hour north of St. Louis, MO, so we headed out early in the morning in order to get there in time for the opening of the food booths. (She apparently had lunch plans with her former co-workers, something they have done together every year since we left.)

I dropped her off and drove around to some of my old “stomping grounds,” so to speak — places I tended to visit as part of my former job as news director at the local radio station up there.

Everyone was definitely surprised to see me, and I got to hear some very interesting stories about how things have changed up there. Some of the tales made me appreciate how good things are going down here by comparison. It was a nice change to have conversations with some of them without the sense that I was “sniffing for news.”

On Saturday, the first day my wife and I did anything together the whole time we were up there, we decided to head over to a scheduled day of drag boat races in a neighboring town, and we sat outside in the searing heat for almost the entire day. It was supposed to rain, it had been raining all week, even the night of the parade, but the sun came out and the temperature spiked into the high 80’s.

You can probably imagine what happened. We both came home with sunburns that were unbelievable. Hers was worse than mine, since I spent most of the time at the lake walking around getting food and drinks and souvenirs while she sat at the water’s edge and watched the races. As I’m writing this, my shins are still sore but I’m not in anywhere near the amount of pain she is.

All-in-all, it was a great time both weeks. Who knows, maybe in another three to five years I will risk being off two weeks in a row. I will just have to see how things go.