I've got a plan? I had a Spring Break.

I'm totally overdoing it with this Easter candy. I made the mistake of buying a bag of Robin's Eggs (basically Easter Whoppers) and now the bag is less than half full. I lose my self control when it comes to malty candy I suppose.

It's been some time since I've written. I think Spring Break threw me off track. I took a road trip to California with Andrew. It was so many hours in the car, but overall an excellent vacation. I feel like trips always seem much better when you think about them in the past. I don't think I appreciate them enough when they're actually happening.

We started in Austin, made our way to Fort Stockton where we ate at a terrible restaurant. Then we got pulled over by a State Trooper because my license plate light was burned out. Ugh, so lame. Finally we got to El Paso for the night. Next day we drove through New Mexico and Arizona. Encountered problems in Tuscon trying to exit I-10 for lunch. Resulted in a two hour ordeal. Very late that night we finally reached San Diego, our main destination. We stayed with our friend Ashwan in La Jolla near UCSD. The next three days consisted of many beaches, strolling around, eating and sleeping. It was how Spring Break should be. It was too cold for real swimming, but it was good to see a beach again. My dad happened to be in town for a business conference on Monday so I was able to meet him for lunch. I also got to see my roommate from Barcelona a couple of times since she also goes to UCSD.

On Tuesday we left for LA, but only for the day. LA, like the rest of California, was mostly how I imagined it to be. It's somewhere I might like to visit once again when I have some money, but I can't imagine myself ever living somewhere like that. We saw Hollywood Blvd. and Sunset Blvd. with Beverly Hills and Bel-Air. We parked at Santa Monica Pier and walked along the ocean to Venice Beach. We finally found shaved ice. So good! That day ended with us sitting in traffic. We got out of the LA area and ate dinner in another city before finally making our way to Joshua Tree National Park. It was so late when we arrived. We set up a tent and went to bed but it was really cold. We struggled all night to stay warm. It makes sense being a desert though. The next day was warm and I got a horrible sunburn after we hiked around for more than five hours. We saw an old gold mine and scrambled around on large rocks. Joshua Trees are so crazy looking in large quantities.

That day we drove to Phoenix, which was the biggest problem of the whole trip. We got there at 8:30PM and it took us until after 11PM to find a hotel. Apparently the Angels were in town for Spring Training and so all the hotels were full. In the process we drove around the city multiple times and got stuck in a traffic jam. We ate dinner at a Denny's at 2AM because it was the only thing open and witnessed some hooligans who had dined and dashed. I tipped the waitress a lot because I felt so bad for her. Phoenix seemed trashy, but I guess we were in the wrong place. We slept so well, got up the next day and drove to Las Cruces where we camped again. It was late when we arrived and our campsite was basically at the top of a mountain between El Paso and Las Cruces. I was scared the whole time because it was dark and creepy and too windy. We made a fire, grilled kebabs, made s'mores and tried to sleep. The tent almost blew away too many times. We'd wake up in the middle of the night and the slanted roof would practically be touching our heads. We didn't sleep well.

On the last day we drove to El Paso, ate lunch and then prepared to get back to Austin by that night. About 30 minutes outside of El Paso we realized we couldn't stay awake. We had to pull over at a rest stop and get out the sleeping bag. We napped on the side of the road for an hour until we felt awake enough to continue. We drove until after midnight. We were delirious and had resorted to playing 20 Questions. I didn't know George Washington Carver invented peanut butter. This is common knowledge? No one even taught me that. In Austin we crashed until the next afternoon.

My sister was in town when I woke up. I hung out with her. That night we watched her friend, who is a "noise" musician, at this little venue for SXSW. I saw him flailing around to loud SuperNintendo type music. It was hilarious. We ate dinner with him and some other people later that evening and I learned that he is mostly normal. Somehow. Since it was the last night of Spring Break there was some slightly inebriated foolishness out of me. Maybe some playful violence and a crashing need for sleep. The next day we watched the Rockets win their 22nd game and feebly played a game of basketball. It was a fun group of people that day. Sunday seems like a year ago, but Monday seems not long ago at all. Time is messed up.

My sunburn has mostly recovered. I got a parking ticket. I hate when people wear fake hip looking glasses. Though I love when people wear real normal glasses. I think I figured out what I want to do with my life after graduation. I can graduate with two majors in May. I need a job in Austin before I graduate. I think I'm going to live here through this year. After that it could be anything.

My dad is turning 50 in less than two weeks! I'm going home next weekend for his huge party. I'm really excited. My sister and I are going to create a special speech for him based on his weird catch phrases and words of wisdom.

I think I sort of love that I have this scattery plan. I feel like I made my life too planned out for too many years. I realized when I was overseas that life doesn't have to be like that, and that a lot of people don't know exactly what they're doing all the time. I don't think I could let go of things the way people seemed to there, but I can definitely ease it up a little bit. I am fairly confident that I won't let myself fail in life. I'm only a student for less than two more months.