-Earlier this month, I spent a week in Mexico with my parents and sister. The upside to being thirty years old and going on a family vacation is that you don’t have to pay for anything. The downside is that you’re thirty years old and on vacation with your family. Regardless, August is when everyone who can take time off does, and everyone who can’t take off just zones out bitterly in their cubicles anyway. Even if you do have the luxury of taking an exotic trip, it only serves to make the week you return twice as miserable as usual. In essence, we’ll never truly be happy until we can take a permanent vacation. But that doesn’t stop us from packing our bags, leaving our worries behind, and promising ourselves we won’t get sunburned the first day and then just doing it anyway.

-If you are unprepared for the logistics of checking in or going through security at the airport, I will curse you under my breath. But I reserve special vitriol for those who are overprepared at the airport. There’s no reason to be wearing your passport in a transparent case around your neck, you fucking moron.

-Without question, the best part of my vacation was the swim-up bar at the hotel. Is there any greater bliss than drinking before noon, outdoors, shirtless, submerged in water, and on your parents’ room bill? I think not. Plus if you drink a lot and have to take a piss, the bathroom is nearby. And by “nearby,” I mean I was treading in it.

-There must be a lot of pressure among restaurants in the airport to offer breakfast to travelers who are there at all hours. I saw that Papa John’s even has an omelet pizza. I thought that was too gross to have at six in the morning, so I had a pepperoni instead.

-Text messaging needs vacation auto-reply capabilities.

-Why do the travel size versions of my toiletries never seem to smell, feel, taste, or work the same as the regular size ones?

-I noticed that the receipt for the shuttle that took me from the airport to my hotel in Playa del Carmen was addressed to Mr(s). Karo. Why even bother to personalize it with my last name if you are going to leave the Mr./Mrs./Ms. part so vague?

-Truth be told, my family vacation exceeded all expectations. I hate to say it, but we kind of, like… bonded. The sole rough patch came on the second day when my mom woke me as I lay peacefully in a hammock and told me that I needed to curb my drinking. I protested, “Mom, I’m thirty years old!” To which she replied, “I don’t care; a Long Island iced tea does not count as breakfast.”

-Besides the fact that it was free and I got to hang out with my family, I think the main reason this trip was so great was that I did close to nothing. Save for thirty minutes on a WaveRunner and two hours riding an ATV through the jungle (both equally fun, terrifying, and conspicuously lacking the requirement to sign any sort of release form prior to use), I barely left the swim-up bar. My sister and I even had lunch there. Which begs the question – if you’re not supposed to swim until thirty minutes after eating, what happens when you pound three Tecates and down a quesadilla without ever actually leaving the pool in the first place? I’ll tell you what happens: best vacation ever.

-As always, here are some random things I’ve been ruminating about lately…

-The other day I noticed the chick running on the treadmill in front of me was wearing not one but two sports bras. Intrigued, I ran eight minutes longer than usual just so I could be there when she turned around. I literally went the extra mile to see her tits.

-Have you even been looking at something totally random – like the channel guide on your TV or your phone bill online – and noticed a little envelope icon in the corner with the words “You have two unread messages”? Unread messages? I didn’t even know I had an inbox.

-My TV remote sticks frequently and it’s so fucking frustrating. When it won’t fast forward, I hit every button imaginable fifteen times. When the DVR finally unfreezes, it then carries out the function of every single button I pressed, in order, like an instant replay of my insanity.

-If you #FollowFriday @aplusk, you’re doing it wrong. (Don’t worry if you don’t get this; it’s a Twitter joke.)

-If you’re a shitty band playing in a shitty dive bar, please do me a favor and don’t preface your songs by explaining what they’re about. Nobody fucking cares.

-Upon being told that someone has food poisoning, my second question is, “Are you OK?” My first question is, “Where did you eat?”

-Last month, I marked my four-year anniversary of moving from New York to Los Angeles. I celebrated the occasion by gawking at unapproachable, insanely hot girls from a distance and then getting stuck in traffic. You know, the usual.

-Why do sushi places list “special” rolls on their menu without explaining what’s in them? Your Happy Firecracker Roll sounds gourmet but I’d like to know if there’s any shellfish in it so I don’t get food poisoning. In a way, sushi restaurants are the opposite of shitty bands in dive bars: they always give less information than necessary.

-And, finally, I often daydream about taking a real permanent vacation – just retiring, packing up all my shit, and traveling the world. But then I remember that no matter how amazing the trip, I always get sick of being away and want to come home after seven to ten days, max. I just miss my bed and my bathroom way too much. Sometimes I think I like the idea of travel more than the traveling itself. Probably similar to my mom liking the idea of taking me on vacation with her more than actually standing over me disapprovingly as I lay passed out drunk in a hammock on her dime. So does a Long Island iced tea count as breakfast? Probably not. But I still contend it’s better than an omelet pizza. Fuck me.

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