Weekend Assignment #323: What Vacation?

Sorry to take so long answering my own question for Weekend Assignment #323: Vacation Time. I've been extraordinarily busy:

• Last week I was hired by St. Matthew's Episcopal Church as a temporary contractor, helping their treasurer revamp their accounting system and bring it up to date. This is in addition to my regular part time job at St. Michael's, which is just finishing up a review by outside auditors. St. Matthew's has a different accounting system, and I'm researching how best to make it do what needs to be done.
• Yesterday was the birthday of my disabled friend, the one whose finances I manage. We ordered a computer for her, which we've been saving up for since last summer.
• Father Smith is getting married on Saturday, and I'm the official photographer! Eek! Any tips?
• Last Saturday was the first part of the Doctor Who season finale, featuring callbacks to earlier episodes and the cliffhanger to end all cliffhangers. I've been totally obsessed with rewatching it and trying to figure out how it will all be resolved. John is almost equally obsessed, to the point where we're watching the entire season to date in the lead up to the resolution this Saturday.

Now you know why I haven;t made the rounds yet on the Round Robin entries! I'll get there, but in the meantime let's answer the question at hand:

Weekend Assignment #323: Vacation Time

Look out - here comes summer! Kids are out of school, community pools and seasonal ice cream stands are open, and temperatures north of the Equator are on the rise. Summer is traditionally the time for families to go on vacation together. What are your summer vacation plans, if any? What time of year are you most likely to pack up the family and get out of town? Is there a particular place you go more often than anywhere else?

Extra Credit: When and where did your family usually go on vacation when you were a kid?

When I wrote this, John and I had tentative plans to get away this weekend, to a midcentury modern (1950s furniture etc.) expo in Southern California. That was before we realized it was the same day as the wedding and the Doctor Who finale! So no, we're not going to that, just as we didn't make it to a ComicCon in Phoenix last month. That one fell through because I was sick and John was working overtime, and I mean a lot of totally necessary overtime. So now the long hot summer stretches before us, with no prospect of getting away at all.

It wasn't always this way. We used to try to get out to Disneyland nearly every year. Before that, John was going to Los Angeles fairly frequently to browse Japanese bookstores and on one occasion to check out Single-A baseball venues. I used to go to Doctor Who and Quantum Leap conventions every year with friends, or to Universal to interview Quantum Leap stars, staff and crew. Now I struggle to get to the Gallifrey One convention in February, and don't always manage it. If I was fully employed, John and I would probably go to Disneyland and elsewhere, at least once a year. But ah, well.

When I was a kid, vacations were a simple affair, at least from my point of view. When I was little, we went to the Adirondacks, Lake Ontario or Cape Cod; but starting in the late 1960s we always rented one particular summer home on the beach at Lake Ontario near Henderson Harbor. We were there, watching on a poor-reception black and white tv, when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.

I miss that. If we ever have a good, stable income, continued health and reasonably low debt, I'm going to push John and myself out the door every year for a decent vacation. After all, we still want to visit Disneyland, but that's just the beginning. I want to visit the Harry Potter attractions in Florida, there are entire parks at Walt Disney World I've never seen in person, and there's a heck of a lot of the world still I've never set foot in. I'd like to start doing something about that!

Karen