Anticipation is such a wonderful word! It conveys so much about the excitement of some kind of future. In some ways the anticipation of something can even better than the “something” itself. When you sit down to a delicious dinner I think much of the enjoyment comes from the anticipation of the wonderful tasting meal. Because once you start to eat that meal your enjoyment of it rapidly goes down as your stomach is filled.
Why am I focused on anticipation today? The answer to that is straightforward. Now that Zack and I have completed our spring break vacation and life is returning back to the day-in day-out ordinary activities, it is our anticipation of our next trip and upcoming adventures that is driving me forward. Please don’t get me wrong, I do definitely enjoy the here and now and I love to live in the moment. However, my personality is forever driven by the promise of fun things and good things that are yet to come. By looking at the future with a bright anticipatory view I think I can keep myself younger than I would if I were always looking into the past or just living in the here and now.
What is so wonderful about this very second is that I know there are some great things coming my way in the next few months. A new kitchen with modern appliances, beautiful Brazilian Cherry hardwood floors and a new family room await me in about 8 weeks. I can’t imagine the feeling of walking into those rooms when they have finally been completed. It will be marvelous.
Attached are several architectural drawings depicting the new kitchen. There is a complete CAD/CAM drawing for every aspect of the kitchen. However, I could not scan these documents well as they are much bigger than my little HP scanner. Though not complete these drawing give a feel for what the kitchen is going to look like.
(View from above looking down on the kitchen.)
(View looking toward the outside facing wall. Where the sliding glass door is positioned that is currently a box window seat.)
(Looking from my family room into the kitchen. Sorry the image is a little messed up. It was hard to scan these things. These are only 3 of the drawings I have. In totally the entire project involves almost 15 different images showing the kitchen, family room, butler's counter and center island from almost every angle.)
As my back continues to heal and my legs return to their pre-injury strength I look forward to obtaining the top of the first mountain I climb this spring. I don’t know if will be Mt. Falcon, Russell Ridge or any number of other peaks that I like to climb but it will be one of them! The anticipation of that particular event makes my hands sweat and my muscles shake with anticipation.
There are so many things that this spring and summer will bring! A first kiss with a (new or maybe an old one again - and no not that one!) girlfriend, seeing one of Zack’s report cards that has all A’s, the first time I run a 5K race again – there are just so many things that the near future will hold that I am giddy with the thoughts of them.
My reason for all the thoughts along these lines is the fact that I am really starting to get extremely excited for summer vacation to Iceland! This will be one of the biggest adventures that we have lived to date. I have done some adventurous traveling in the past but this one is definitely unique. My most adventurous trip that I feel I have done to date was the first time I went to Europe. Back then I really didn’t know that much about international traveling. My trip to Europe was for work and I had to add it to the tail end of a trip that I took to India. The adventurous part of the trip was that I arrived in Frankfurt, Germany on a Friday morning after an overnight trip from Bangalore. I had no reservations, no real plan except that I knew I had to be in Krakow, Poland by Monday afternoon for work. When I talked to the people I worked with in Poland they all strenuously objected to what I planned to do as they said it could be really long and I have to go through some areas of high crime. I didn’t care as it was something I really wanted to do. My plan was to make my way across central and eastern Europe by train and arrive on time in Krakow. I didn’t speak the languages, I only had a rudimentary knowledge idea of the trains I would take and I had very few cold weather clothes as I had just been in India for 3 weeks. I was making this trip during the first week of February and I did indeed encounter some cold and snowy weather. The end result of this story is that it was fun as hell, intimidating as hell, enlightening, scenic and all around wonderful.
My thoughts on how to approach our trip to Iceland are much the same. Our goal is to circumvent the entire island on the “Ring Road” that runs around it. I have talked about this “Ring Road’ in prior blog posts so I won’t describe it again. Before we leave I want to understand as many of the interesting sights we can see. Depending upon what I read we may not have any kind of reservations for lodging we might just take whatever we find if we find anything. Given the size of many of the towns we will go through I am sure if there is no lodging available we could knock on someone’s door and ask to sleep in their house or even their garage or barn. Having a travel experience like that is amazing as it teaches you about the people and how they live. Hopefully we will be able to structure our trip so that we can have some of those experiences.
The bigger point for all of what I am writing is that I have come to notice when I have things to look forward to my emotions and state of being are much calmer, happier and content. When all I see in front of me is the day-to-day drudgery of work, more work and yet even more work my mind will be numbed by it all and I will become depressed, anxious and unhappy. Even though we just got back from one vacation, getting the next one planned is very important to me.
Today when Zack went back to school it marked the beginning of his 4th quarter as a seventh grader. Though it seems like the school year just started, in a little over 60 days this school year will be complete. Given Zack’s age, this summer will be interesting as there are fewer and fewer camps that he can go to. This means he will be around the neighborhood much more this summer than in previous years. It will be very interesting to see how the summer plays out. So far the only 100% certain thing on our calendar is our trip to Iceland. I have an opportunity to do Bicycle Tour Colorado (BTC) again this year as my college roommate Allen is coming out here to ride it again. I am not sure that I can do the BCT this year as I don’t want to burn Zack out on biking riding doing the tour. I am thoroughly convinced he could do the ride as he has certainly conquered some substantial mountain passes on his bike before. But I think he would get sick and tired of the 50+ mile per day rides.
We will send several weeks living in our condo in the mountain I am sure and there is a distinct possibility we are going to head back east for several weeks too. I am less certain of that last item as having Zack and me around might drive my family crazy. The good thing about my job is that as long as I have electricity to run my laptop and a cell phone connection to reach the Internet I can work. We are also hoping to have a bunch of visitors over the summer. Nancy’s next door neighbors from her town back in Pennsylvania, Millie and Bob will be coming out to visit with Nancy and see the sights. There is usually nothing I can get Nancy for Christmas, Mother’s Day or her birthday, so bringing Mille and Bob out is the best present I can get her. It has been years since I have seen some close friends from back east, so my hope is to use some frequent flyer miles and fly them out here too. If we can make both of those things happen we will definitely have a fun summer. There will be many other things going on this summer that to which we look forward and anticipate – including what I am going to discuss next.
I am horrible with keeping secrets. One of those other things that I mentioned above will be one of the very first things to happen. This activity is planned to take place 12 days from now. I really want to spell it all out, but I have promised myself that this is something significant to me and hence I can’t share it until it is done. It’s going to take a couple of weeks from the time it starts until it is done, but when I do spell it out here it going to be pretty amazing. (You never know I could just be pandering to all of your interests to keep you checking back here on the blog for the next several weeks! I won’t do that, it is just something very significant to me that I want to share with you all once it is done.) Start looking for the specific details starting on April 14.
That’s about it for this evening. I hope everyone has a great week ahead. And as always thanks so much for reading all this slop that I put out onto the Internet! Without you all reading it, there really won't be much point in doing this.
Thanks and peace to all! ~ J.
1 comment:
The new kitchen layout looks fantastic. Can't wait to see it.....
Guess you and Zack will be eating a lot of take out during the renovation.
Post a Comment