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I'm back from Vermont and it was nice.

I felt a bit dopey coming back as a tourist but the bucket list was an amusing one throughout that entire trip and my legs are still sore because I did it with a ridiculous number of weights! I return, sore and amused and also stressed out because I was asked to help out with a project during the weekend when I was supposed to be on vacation what the hell.

Aside from work drama, we did a lot of walking and trying out things we always said we wanted to do but never could because it was out of our budget range. Some of it was overhyped, some of it was good!

For example, the Shelburne museum? Very cool. It's 25/entry but it's that much to pay for a ridiculous amount of exhibits. And it was 10 dollars less if we were residents which we never knew and if we did we would have gone sooner! Sigh. Still, it was three-four hours of walking through a number of preserved period pieces including the original steam ferry (with access to practically everywhere on it) and we couldn't see everything despite the time it took. I would recommend if you're into historical sites.

Overhyped? Stowe ski lift. 35 for a round trip to a view. There's hiking trails you can take down but they're limited and it's mostly there to get you to a restaurant that requires reservations. The people who work there are nice and you get reminded how much this town relies on tourism because it feels like everyone working there is handling an amusement park.

Almost no one masks in Vermont now and it's still weird to me. I also didn't even use that much cash which is stranger but I guess it's because we mostly did the touristy stuff.

I got a supply of ginger ale that I was looking everywhere for along with lots of honey as planned for Michelle's parents. Also some other things. Some of the things that we liked became more popular than ever but

I sweated so goddamn much I must have looked ridiculous. Checking my luggage now though, I didn't realize how I had close to 40 pounds on me at almost all times. I got a few more friction blisters as well. Sigh.

It reminds me that I also need to do arm exercises as it's been awhile and I haven't had the time since NIH has been keeping me too busy in general.

Oh, the other odd thing? Everyone seemed to acknowledge a WFMU shirt I was wearing. Like wth? No one here even bats an eye at the thing but the moment I leave NJ people are looking? Huh.

Anyway, next time I'm going to pack more clothes during the summer, it's too damn hot to keep minimal outfits when I sweat into them like crazy. I needed to change my pants twice from my own mess.

I took an extra day off on Tuesday to recover from the long vacation and I spent all of it pulling details from a messy archive of reports and I found none of the details they were looking for. I asked people for details and no one else has any idea and it's from a time period before I was onboarded so it's all a black box. On top of that, people are asking me for things that I already provided. It's ridiculous.

So anyway, yeah, no rest for the weary.

The trip back also included some shopping around because Michelle is now addicted to Squishmallows and finding them locally is hard because apparently they're easy to steal at Target so numbers are insanely skewed.

Not one to outdo being a spendthrift, I found some Transformers I was surprised to see and figured that if I see something nice I might as well get one for myself.

And then there are these D&D dice monsters which looked tacky but one of them is a mimic and a mimic die? YES THAT IS A GREAT CONCEPT so of course I bought one (apparently I'm not the only one that thought that because they're kind of hard to find online at retail price). Ugh.

We're probably delivering the honey to the in-laws since they guilted Michelle which is fine--I honestly assumed we were going to do it on Tuesday.

But first... work. And those arm exercises that are way overdue.