……and, we’re back. Roatan was just wonderful – even better than last year, in many ways. We weren’t able to be online with any ease, so I just put up one giant post on the Roatan blog, with a flickr slideshow. It was great to be there, and kind of awful to be facing work tomorrow. I only have 235 emails, so it could definitely be worse, but I can’t bear to look at them today. Tomorrow will be soon enough.

I did a lot of knitting on vacation, partly because I had a dreadful cold the first couple of days, and there was an amazing storm for a couple of days. I finished the holey socks, and am ~75% finished with the other pair:

side view of the holey socks

holey socks, accompli!

• Pattern:  Holes in my socks! By Nicole Okun
• Yarn:  Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock Multi (Colorway: Beverly 209) – 2 skeins were more than enough

side view of the monkeys

looking down on the monkeys

• Pattern:  Monkey, by Cookie A
• Yarn:  Knit One Crochet Too Ty-Dy Socks (Colorway Meadow 1518)

I’m going to try to knock out the rest of sock #2 and get them both out in the mail to Katie asap, then I need to return all my knitting time to the wedding shawl.

While we were gone, spring seems to have arrived in full force here in Manhattan! It’s sunny and gorgeous outdoors, and people seem refreshed. Today is the post-vacation normalizing for us – piles of laundry, straightening up and putting everything away, getting ready for the week.

One thing that makes it better, coming home from vacation, is that we always start planning the next one. Our current idea is to go to Laos, with a trip to Cambodia to see Angkor Wat and maybe a side journey into Thailand, avoiding Bangkok if at all possible. Or to the degree possible, anyway. The child sex trade there is too horrifying to bear, and I don’t want to give a penny to the country that supports it. Every country supports horrors of one kind or another, and there’s little gradation between things at that far end of the spectrum, but that one in particular is unbearable for me. So we’re focusing on Laos, and trying to figure out how best to get there at a reasonable price. We loved Vietnam so much, and especially enjoyed Hanoi, so we may just make a stop there, too. Fun fun fun, anticipating and planning. It makes the coming home a bit easier.