so. getting screwed out of snowboarding with bigwillyattending (the artist formerly known as vetresident – keep up, dammit, because this is going to be your last reminder!) last month by blowing (literally!) the last of positiverolemodel’s vacation days on the gastroenteritis kind of sucked. we’re consoling ourselves by choosing our vacations for next year. okay, mostly we’re consoling ourselves in the usual fashion, by going to bed early and going to sleep late. but we did also plan out the next year’s worth of vacations:
MAY 2007: i scored tickets to robert earl keen. we’ll stash the children with various relative for the concert, and spend the rest of the weekend at the zoo and the city museum. the city museum is a place that makes children’s eyes light up, and me wonder how the hell nobody has died there yet. it’s sort of like a found-object sculpture in the form of a giant hamster maze, with dodgeball and cotton candy. it’s one of those field trips where you make sure you have at least one adult per child. and pray.
SEPTEMBER 26-28, 2007: okay, stupid me: we’ve lived here 10 months and i just now realized we live only two hours away from THE GREATEST BREWERY ON THE PLANET, new glarus. their beer is awesome, and only available in wisconsin (and, for some reason, a single liquor store chain in our last home in central illinois.) now, the town of new glarus is this totally-cheezy-yet-strangely-authentic swiss town. the food rocks. the street festivals are fun. the downtown park is really cool and the kids love it – they were last there when i was pregnant. which made the brewery tour and beer tasting not so fun for me, though positiverolemodel and bigwillyattending tell me it was awesomeness incarnate. fuckers. anyway, we’ll probably take a daytrip for the polkafest in june, with the kids… unfortunately, this precludes us filling the van with a massive supply of new glarus beer, since it will already be filled with boys.
however, it’s not long til OKTOBERFEST. note that oktoberfest is in september. now THAT’S the kind of drinking i’m talking about: the retarded kind! babysitting grandparents, a couple of vacation days, hotel rooms, all the homies on a roadtrip, and 4+ days of flagon upon flagon of spotted cow and fat squirrel beer. hells yes.
and if i can talk bigwillyattending into spending a couple of vacation days on this trip down memory lane (it would be our third “swiss” vacation together: the first was in the swiss alps when we were in high school, and the second for my sister’s wedding near new glarus), i’m going to get really drunk, and then puke schnitzel all over her shirt. then push her into positiverolemodel. not that they puked on me on our last trip to new glarus, but still. drinking the best beer on the planet in front of a desperately thirsty pregnant woman deserves some sort of righteous smiting.
JULY-SEPT 2008: fly-fishing for trout on the au sable river. 
it’s been too long since our last trip, and some of prm’s family friends have a sweet, sweet cabin near the water. also, we’ll have to meander a bit so that, either on the way up or the way back, we spend a night in ann arbor, MI. grizzly peak brewing co has awesome food and awesomer beer… i have managed to duplicate in my own kitchen their feta-caramelized red onion-pesto pizza, and their spent-brewing-grains bread with whipped chive butter, (in the year that i lived in an apartment two blocks from grizzly peak, i ate there an average of twice a week, so it’d actually be pretty sad if i COULDN’T duplicate damn near anything on their menu) but i still aspire to make beer as good as theirs.
JULY-NOV 2008: fly-fishing in denver. 
more good rivers there than we know what to do with, and even more importantly, several friends who don’t mind us having sex on their couch instead of paying for a hotel room. in addition to bigwillyattending, prm has a cousin in the area, and one of the first friends i made in high school, FlyGuy, now lives there. he doesn’t fly-fish. or snowboard. but he does brew beer, and has four boys, so we understand each other. i’m thinking this needs to be a totally separate vacation from the next one…
NOV 2008-MAY 2009: snowboarding in breckenridge.
this is the one that makes my palms sweat. fate has thrown several pregnancy monkeywrenches and other random catastrophes into the spokes of this particular planned vacation. can’t wait to see what the angry gods of snowboarding think up this time around!
AS SOON AS MYEVILTWIN AND CHRISTMASEVERYDAY AND I CAN COORDINATE SCHEDULES:
field trip to woody’s show club. the menfolk are invited too, of course, but it’s going to be more about the girls. because tits and booze are fun. also? apparently, myeviltwin has been kicked out of strip clubs. plural. and when you stop to think of what an adorable woman would have to do to actually get KICKED OUT of a strip club… you just can’t miss that shit. so technically, this won’t be a “vacation,” per se, unless you count having to take a few days off work for jail/court.
