So! I've put it off long enough. It's time to write about my super spiffy vacation. For the occasion I have revived my long-dead Vacanigans category. I meant to do this with my vacation last year, but the abortive Vacanigans II never made it further than a few half-assed drafts. The problem with that was mostly ambition. I wanted to write posts that were a sequel to my original series in more than just name. But my posting style has changed quite a bit since then. By which I mean I'm too lazy for long-winded play-by-play accounts of mundane events I try to make funny.

Instead, I'm going bullet points. I'd have to be pretty pathetic to be too lazy for bullet points. Not that I couldn't be that lazy. I'm sure I have that potential.

• The first day of Vacation, Saturday, was a whole lot of nothing. I don't even remember what we did, so I now assume we did nothing. Literally. We probably say around like robots waiting for someone to activate us.

• Sunday morning we loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly. Hills, that is. Swimmin' pools, movie stars. Actually, we loaded up Bunny's mother's minivan for our trip to at family water park resort in Tourist Trap.

• Tourist Trap is the biggest tourist trap in the mid-west (hence the name). Everything there is priced accordingly.

• I'm still not completely certain what is a "trap." I think "traps" is an old Chippewa word meaning "empty your wallet, white man."

• We made pretty good time to the family water park resort, which ended up biting us in the ass a little bit. Had we been much slower, we would not have been stranded at the resort for several hours.

• At this resort, we were sharing a suite with Bunny's mother-in-law, Bunny's sister and her husband, their three kids and one friend. So that's 206 people for that one suite.

• I drove the minivan filled with luggage. My brother-in-law drove the minivan filled with people. I definitely got the better deal.

• We did not leave home at the same time, and so didn't arrive at even close to the same time. By the time we hit the resort, they'd arrived, tried unsuccessfully to check in (too early) and wandered off to go shopping. Sweet! Unable to much else, Bunny, The Chicken and I wandered around for two hours until everyone arrived for check in.

• It was during that "exploring every space twice" wandering that I found the gift shop with my magical penguin pals.

• At check in, we learned that for some reason or another, we'd been upgraded to a condominium for free. Nice! You'll get no complaints from us.

• As soon as we had keys, we dashed off to our condo where I immediately parked my suitcase on the king size bed in the nice bedroom. 'cuz if my suitcase is on it first, it's mine. That's a rule, right?

• After toting eight million suitcases up to our place, we were finally ready to hit the water park.

• The water park was firmly… eh. I guess that sort of thing just ain't my bag, baby. My favorite part, in fact the only part I really enjoyed at all, is the faux river, where you plop your ass in an inner tube and float in circles. I'm all about the lazy floating. That feels like vacation.

• This particular river had an Aztec theme. The Aztecs are still trying to punish European types like me. I know this because around the entire course of the river, everything that shoots water at passersby (floatersby?) hit me in the balls at least once. This surely must be Titicaca's Revenge.

• I don't what Titicaca is/was. However, I do know that Titicaca is the greatest name ever, despite the unpleasant Cleveland steamer associations.

• Another nice thing about the water park was the wide variety of soccer moms available. Every color, age, size and shape was represented. Even if your tastes trend toward the more exotic, like say, southeast Asian Muslim women, you'd still have something to oogle.

• That last one? I can't confirm that. Somebody else told me that. I wouldn't know because I was too busy looking at Bunny only.

• Ok, I did look at one other woman: the chick that looked just like Deputy Trudy Wiegel.

• The water slides were plentiful and, uh… watery… and slide-like. Really, they're water slides. I'm sure you can picture this without me.

• One slide is worth mentioning: the one with the huge, almost vertical drop. Chicken was completely fearless about all of the water slides, including that one.

• After seventeen hours at the water park, we were ready to go do something else, like spend $100 in the ticket arcade while failing to earn enough tickets to buy the top-end prizes.

 
Look forward to more uninspiring details in a future post! (Do I know how to sell a sequel, or what?)