Birthday Vacation 2025

Last week, Heather and I celebrated our birthdays together (though they’re actually a few days apart) by taking the week off and decompressing from the daily drudgery of work and commitments. We planned on heading out to the beach and spend a few days there but the weather was not cooperating, so our vacation became a de facto staycation.

Still, decompression was the plan, so we did. Our first order of business was to head to the Lotte Market, an asian food market that’s about an hour away from where we live. We don’t get down there often, so we used our trip as an excuse to really explore, try a lot of things we wouldn’t normally try, and gorge ourselves in an obscene amount of Korean food; Korean fried chicken, fresh napa kimchi, pickled radish, stewed radish greens, bean sprouts, bulgogi, and some rice.

Normally I love a nice funky fermented cabbage kimchi, but this fresh napa kimchi was so good. I wish I could have it every day.

However, at some point while I was out, I believe I caught some kind of cold. This wouldn’t become a problem until Thursday night when I first started to notice symptoms. Understand that I still mask for COVID, but this time I was feeling lazy and didn’t wear my mask out. Naturally this was when I likely got infected. So the last three days have been pretty miserable.

Today (Monday) is my first day back on the job and I feel about 80%, but this was honestly not my favorite vacation I’ve ever taken. At least this week, Thanksgiving week, is a short one.