The Beauty of Jamaica

I have been blessed a million times over. I have met so many wonderful people in my life and seen so many beautiful things and places. Jamaica may have the distinction of being the most beautiful place that I have ever seen and I was fortunate enough to spend 5 days there in celebration of my niece's graduation from college...

This is my second trip to Jamaica and though I would say that Negril is more beautiful than Ocho Rios, being on vacation with my sister, my niece, my nephew, and BJ was an amazing experience and its something that i hope to do again. Although I'm still waiting on the photos from Dunn's River Falls, I wanted to blog about the trip before too much of it left my mind.

We stayed at the Sunset Jamaica Grande Resort in Ocho Rios. The view from the hotel was amazing. The food was great. There was plenty of time for sappiness and laughs. My niece did activity... and it made her hungry. My nephew drank Likkle Biggas while my sister got lost in the jungle. BJ did a bit of cooning... and we ate some more.

In our free time we took a trip up to 9 Mile, the birth and final resting place of Bob Marley. Seeing the World thru the eyes of a young Bob Marley makes his music that much more meaningful. Unfortunately i didn't get the same sense of peace inside of the mausoleum where he is laid to rest.

It was an amazing trip... despite the 5 extra hours spent in Miami and I hope to go back soon.
The rest of the photos can be found here. Hopefully i'll be adding pics from Dunn's River Falls soon. Here are a few more pics til then

10 19 46 51

10: The number of days until I see an old friend again. That's like the official kickoff to my summer of greatness. After I hug her to death I plan to spend the rest of the weekend laffing like a fool and relaxing

19: The number of days until we leave for Jamaica. Man... if ever i needed a vacation... I hope to spend the majority of that trip laying next to someone's beach, sipping some sort of alcoholic beverage and relaxing.

46: The number of days until my trip to the MLB All Star week festivities. Never been to something like this and i'm really looking forward to it. Although I try to hide my baseball enthusiast side, I'm extremely excited to be going to this event. Hopefully i'll get to meet some folks and finally enjoy some perks of the job.

51: That's the number of days until my leave of absence and subsequent cross-country drive. I have like a MILLION things to do before then so I really need to focus. I think that by the end of this week I'm going to do one last budget and then start tying up the loose ends... new tires, dentist appointment, Fishbone's trip to the vet, etc. I have a lot to do and it's about to get real hectic. I need to get on the ball before I find myself completely out of time.

It's nice to be this happy and excited after being so unhappy for so long.

Purging

I have a ton of stuff i need to get rid of.
On my first pass I got rid of people. I shaved approximately 70 people off my buddy lists. I collect people and I need to stop. There are a lot of folks that I talk to just because. Folks that I know don't like me, folks that i don't like. I just talk to them because i feel like it's the "right" thing to do. But it's not. I'm tired of pretending to like people and having them pretend to like me. Not everyone that got the axe off of the buddy list is an "enemy." Some folks I just don't like talking to. Yes, there's a difference between being an enemy and my not enjoying your conversation. Some folks i hadn't spoken to in AGES. Some folks I didn't even know who they were. But yeah... i cut a bunch of folks and really, outside of work, i'm trying to ween myself off of IM anyway. I give far too much access to folks with little to no return.

The next thing i need to purge is fat. I've got wayyyyy too much of that and i need to let a bunch of it go. That's probably gonna be the hardest thing because i'm not really one for exercising.... i'm working on it though (25 days til Jamaica :-\)

I'm also going to have to purge papers. I'm a packrat in training and I need to stop. My mom got a keepsake box from a friend for Mother's Day. I need to get something similar since i like to hang on to ticket stubbs and everything else. But the excess papers need to go. I have NEVER gone back to look at my notes from a class EVER... so why keep them? I'll keep the text books, but the notes? Nope... they gotta go.

The last thing on the current purge list is just all my bad habits. I need to get a lot of my destructive behavior under control because the self sabotoging isn't cute... at. all. I think i'm going to pick one or two to focus on and start moving forward. I'm so tired of being stagnant that it isn't even funny.

Come back to Jamaica....

Remember those commercials?

Well that's what i'm doing, I am going back to Jamaica. I'm REALLY looking forward to this trip. The idea of just relaxing and being away from the stresses of my daily life is making it hard for me to be patient. Although the San Fran trip will also be a vacation, it's going to be different. I don't feel that that's going to be a relaxing trip, so i'm glad to have this "pre-vacation" to gear up for the other trip.

But yeah, Jamaica. I've only been once before and that time it was to Negril. It was beautiful beyond belief there. This time around it'll be Ocho Rios. I plan to take no less than two million pictures because the ones i took last time were AMAZING!

So this weekend is going to be a bit of a blur.

This afternoon I'm helping with an interview for Subsoniq. Monie Love and 9th Wonder will be stopping by to shoot the shit for awhile.

Then tonight I'll be here:



That's always guaranteed to be a good time.


Saturday I'm going to a happy hour in an attempt to be more social and well-liked.
Sunday is, of course Mother's Day. My sister's and i will be cooking brunch for the family and spending the day with mom.


Next weekend is my niece's graduation from college... time is FLYING by. I need to start making my mark on the world ASAP

4 down, 4 to go

I took my last exam of the semester last night. I am officially finished with my second year of Law School. I am now officially half way there (i'm a part time student). As gueling as this process is, it isn't as bad as i expected. Well it kinda is... but I'm not suicidal.

I remember when it all started... i didn't know what in the hell to expect. That seems like so damned long ago. I was thinking back to a surprise party that my friends threw for me to celebrate my nerdy accomplishment... the people that were there... I don't talk to more than half of them now. If someone would have told me on that day to look around the table and pick the 4 people i thought i would be cool with three years later, i'm not sure whether i would have guessed correctly. Throughout my life I've been a bit of a friend collector. I liked having lots of "friends" and knowing people. It kinda made me feel important to be able to go somewhere and always see a "friend." Over the last few years though, I've started to move away from that. It's kinda nice to go somewhere and not recognize folks. There's a certain comfort in anonymity... But yeah, here i am three years later. I am a completely different person, and i like it.

So with year #2 behind me I can officially switch gears to my summer plans... getting to catch up with a friend i haven't seen in over a year, going to Jamaica with someone I love dearly, travelling across country on a 6 week adventure... there's just so much for me to look forward to and quite honestly, I deserve every bit of it.

What in the hell do fat women wear to the beach?

I mean ok.. I get it. I need to lose weight... i need to exercise.

That's all loverly.

But Jamaica is 8 weeks away... and well... yeah there's only so much that can be done between now and then. So i've been looking and there is NOTHING catching my eye. Usually I can at least find something tolerable... no such luck.

Sheesh.