June 27, 2003
The Friday Five
1. How are you planning to spend the summer [winter]?
Behind my desk at work. I doubt that I will be taking any holidays this year.
2. What was your first summer job?
I had a paper route.
3. If you could go anywhere this summer [winter], where would you go?
I would really like to go to Hawaii. I've never been there, and I think it would be nice. I never mind going to Europe.
4. What was your worst vacation ever?
Let's see, that had to be every one that I took in the five years that my father was married to his second wife. For some strange reason, every trip that we took with my first stepmother ended so horribly either with the two of them fighting like cats and dogs or with the weather raining like cats and dogs. One summer, we went to our favorite spot in Door County, Wisconsin only to be shut in for the whole week due to torrential rain, thunderstorms, and fucking tornado warnings, not watches, mind you, warnings. They actually saw them touch ground. I remember that trip so vividly.
Oh, and then there was one time we went camping. It rained that time, too, but that wasn't the worst of it. I had just learned to drive, and my father insisted that I learn how to fill the car up with gas, too. So, I did, and I can't remember if the gas pump had the automatic shut off mechanism that gas pumps do nowadays, but I ended up overfilling the tank. The gas backed up the pipe and spilled all down the front of me. I was almost hysterical. I thought I would burst into flames just by sitting in the sun. So we got back to the campground, soaked my clothes in the lake, and then set them up by the campfire to dry. (That was brilliant, I must say.) Later that day, my sister and I were out around campsite, the father and stepmother were messing around inside the tent when he comes ripping out of the tent. "I have to take *bitch's name* to the hospital. She's in insulin shock." My sister, in a classic move, said, "Is she dead?" "No, she's passed out. Stay here, we'll be back later."
My stepmother was a diabetic, and she always had trouble regulating her blood sugar levels. And as such, she always found a way to fuck up our trips together. She never made any bones about hating my sister and me, either. It was her favorite thing to do. Hated it.
5. What was your best vacation ever?
The first time I went to London, in 2000. Awesome. A close second place was an impromptu road trip up the coast from San Francisco to Vancouver, BC in 1998.
