Obvio, but...

I know that this post is a no brainer, but I feel that I really just need to express the thought that has been bouncing around my head for the past few days.

Vacation is among the greatest things in a working person's life.

I'd say who knew, but somewhere in the back of my mind I still remembered this fact from after the last vacation I took. Nine months ago.

After a brutally stressful fall, it felt amazingly good to get out of this city and just do nothing. No deadlines, no dates, and best of all, no alarms. It really took a week away from life to get my head back on track. Maybe the stress of the holidays wasn't the best balm to soothe my brain after orgo ended, but I figured that after a month, I should be able to let the stress slip away. Perhaps time doesn't heal all wounds. At least not as quickly as I would prefer.

Now that I have a brain again, it feels good to use it on activities like reading. (I am considering picking up Jared Diamond's new book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, but maybe I should read his trite Guns, Germs and Steel first?) And music. I have to give the Washington Social Club album Catching Looks a huge two thumbs up. I just picked up their album, and I have to say that they have a very DC sound which I love to reconnect with every once in a while.

Needless to say, I am very much looking forward to spending many chilly nights with a good book and some good tunes. If you have suggestions for either, you should know that I was at one point a European history major, and I am making the transition to being an indie rock bitch as I progress into my mid-twenties.