Calendar Blues

I have vacation envy.

My friend Michelle is going to Ireland this summer. She (the big ol meany) says I won't fit in her suitcase so I can't go with her. It's very sad cause I need a vacation. Badly.

I actually was doing ok on the "no vacation in the forseeable future" until the houseguests arrived. Now I have nowhere to go that I can relax. Their computer is down with ours in the office (which makes sense, they need an Internet connection so they need to be in a wired room), they watch the TV, they spread out in the kitchen, dining room and living room (all of which is imminently reasonable), and in my bedroom is a cowering, terrified puppy who just looks at you with her big brown eyes and telepaths, "Why? Why are there these strange, terrifying people in my house? Why do you do this to me? You know I don't like strangers, so why? Why? Why!?" So I'm trying to give her lots of cuddles but also lots of space cause I don't want her to go off the deep end. I'm thinking the deep end may be where I can finally be alone.

And, well, work...work is just not a relaxing place to be right now since there was another little bout of "Out with the old, in with the new" for no discernable reason other than the capricious desires of the new CEO. So those of us left are just wondering for how much longer we're going to be employed or if we're slated to be replaced with friends of the new management as well sometime soon.

So I spent some time last night looking at my calendar trying to figure out if there was any time in there when both Tim and I would be out of school and able to go somewhere on vacation. There's nothing.

(Ok, that's not 100% true, there's some time in August, when Tim has a major work deadline and will be traveling for customer acceptance testing. But neither of us will be in school at that moment. I just don't think it's really vacationable.)

And that leaves us with looking at possibilities for long weekends away. All in all, this is not a bad solution, but I don't know where I'd want to go. Plus, driving anywhere on a weekend in this area...well you really might as well just camp in your car because everyone and their cousin is driving up and down I-95 and really messing up local abilities to get the heck out of town. (Reference our last weekend away trip wherein we wanted to go to Lancaster, PA - normally about a 2 hour drive - and it took us 8 hours to get there. That's right. 8. Hours.)

So...if you have suggestions of interesting places to go that are within a 4 hour drive of the DC area that would make a fun weekend getaway, I'd be interested!