Sabbatical Report: Cabin Week

Welcome to Sabbatical Report #5; for explanations, you may want to read Sabbatical Report 1.

As I mentioned last week, we spent this week at  Lake Cachuma, which is a county park north of Santa Barbara.  We went up Sunday night and came back Thursday afternoon.  While there, we stayed in a cabin with a fairly awesome view of the lake, although it was pretty chilly the whole time.

The cabin itself was nothing special: just one long space, divided into thirds.  The back third was a bedroom, the middle third was a bathroom on one side and two bunk beds on the other, the front third was a kitchen, a dining room table, and a couch that folded out into a bed.  Microwave, refrigerator, and stove, but no oven—no toaster, either, which was mildly annoying.  But there was a TV with a DVD player, a satellite dish that worked sometimes, and we set up our phones as mobile hotspots so everyone could use their laptops.  It was sufficient.

Monday we tried to go up to the Nature Center, but it was closed.  Went to the general store and bought some touristy crap.  Mostly we laid around.

Tuesday we went into Solvang, primarily to check out the Solvang Bakery, which everyone says is awesome (it’s pretty decent).  Other than that, it’s mainly a place to go shopping for crap that you didn’t really need anyway.  My eldest bought a hat, as did my youngest (although she had little say in the matter, being yet unable to speak English).  We also went to a nifty little New Agey shop where the Larger Animal bought a tiny little Buddha and I bought a “Lucky Horse” (my Chinese zodiac sign).  And we had some tacos that were decent but not overwhelmingly awesome.

Wednesday we finally did make it up to the Nature Center, where we saw lots of animals (stuffed, like by a taxidermist as opposed to a toymaker), and rocks, and bones, and some baby trout, and various and sundry other stuff.

Thursday we spent two hours trying to kill each other packing the truck, then an hour waiting for AAA to come jumpstart the battery that we’d drained while leaving all the doors open while packing.  The drive back was mostly uneventful.

Friday was recover-from-being-on-vacation day.

In terms of my sabbatical goals (refresh yourself on those by rereading Sabbatical Report 3), I’m behind across the board, but that’s mainly because I spent most of my free time at the cabin reading the latest installment of the Dresden Files.  But I finished that already (500 pages in 2.5 days!), so perhaps I’ll get caught up next week.  I’ve expunged 260 emails (instead of 300), I’ve expunged 5 todo tasks (instead of 15), and I’ve completed 31.5 project hours (instead of 45).  Still reasonable to catch up, I think, on everything except maybe the todo tasks, which is looking a bit bleak.

That’s all for this week.  Next week I’ll be doing more chilling at home, with perhaps a few day trips thrown in (I believe La Brea is on the schedule at some point).