Living away from your loved ones and having limited communications with them can take a huge toll on you. So can going months with hardly a good night's sleep, ridiculous heat, and speaking a language you aren't comfortable with. So after almost a year abroad I am taking my first vacation back home, about a week and a half. And man oh man has it been a wonderful experience so far.

In addition to just spending basic quality time with my family and girlfriend, I've been eating all the food I've missed (good homemade soup! good breakfasts!), and taken some outings I went to San Francisco comic con with my girlfriend the other day and saw Cary Elwes and Renne O'Conner, and left with a Rapunzel print that I'd like to get on my wall. I enjoyed the convention, though I was really disappointed that so many of the vendors at the event were, lets be blunt here, scalpers. I don't know enough about the Pop Vinyl market to tell you if those prices were reasonable, but I do know that there's no reason whatsoever to be selling LEGO blind bag minifigures for $8.00 a bag. Disgusting.

I'm also catching up on movies! Or trying. Watched Assassin's Creed, Moana, and Wind River, and am hoping to watch Alien: Covenant and Arrival before leaving. And I am going to see the theatrical re-release of Close Encounters of the Third Kind today so that should be fun.

Basically, I'm trying to jam pack my schedule with everything, though I already know I'm not going to succeed. I won't go to all the restaurants I want to go to, I probably won't get to go hiking (we are experiencing a heat wave with temperatures up to 110-111 and no one wants to hike in that), and I won't get to see all the people I want to see. Still, I think I am getting all the possible potential out of this break. I will be coming home again for Christmas, and from a mental standpoint it will help me get through the next few months knowing another vacation is coming up soon and not 11 1/2 months from now.