I'm not good at vacations

One fundamental difference between me and my husband, or at least one of the many, is that I'm not good at doing nothing. I have a hard time sitting still and relaxing; it goes against my very nature. Not so with B. He can sit and do nothing for hours other than watch the world go by. It's why he loves going to the beach each August - it's a week where he can't work, even if he wanted to.

I on the other hand, get jumpy without access to my computer and my e-mail. So these five days away have been an exercise in character building for me, but I'm not sure why I need to work on this particular bit of character. I've only been able to check e-mail once a day, maybe twice, since I have to hijack my host's laptop, which I don't feel I should do too often if I want to be allowed to stay.

There have been work e-mails flying back and forth among my project group, and while I don't need to do anything with those e-mails, it gives me hives to think that even if I needed to something, I couldn't. My two current big projects involve powerpoint presentations, and this laptop doesn't have powerpoint on it, which means I'm pretty much useless to my project group. I had warned them all that I'd be away and that I would have limited computer access, but still . . .

On the plus side, though, I bought myself a lovely ring. I called B to get his ok on spending a lump of money despite having taxes being due next week, and got his buy-in by telling him it got him off the hook for buying me a large rock at some point in the future. The ring is just beautiful. I didn't know it was the ring I wanted until I saw it in the shop. It's a cushion cut green topaz, the very palest of pale, surrounded by little tiny diamonds cut to sparkle lots. I put it on and knew I would regret not buying it. So I'm happily watching it sparkle as a I type.