Active Leisure
"Why do Americans work so hard at taking it easy?" That was the question asked by Po Bronson in this week's issue of Time Magazine. (June 26, 2006)
"Anytime you exhaust yourself trying to relax, that's active leisure," he wrote. Half of the fun of our vacations is getting things ready to go, and for us that means an enormous amount of preparation. We've been taking months to get ready for our three week odyssey in California. We've practically planned out each day and pack it to the maximum that the schedule and our children will allow.
Now school is out, and the time to work to get ready to vacation has begun in earnest. For example, we can't just go and take a tour of Hollywood offered by a company from somewhere. We prefer to do things at our own pace, and with a two-year old in tow, we don't think a tourbus is going to be a good idea. Instead, I've spent weeks getting a tour ready of sites that have been used for film and television locations. The website SeeingStars.com has been an tremendous resource for me and was what first made me think such a tour would be worth it. But it wasn't enough for me to just make a list of places to see, no. I had to use Google Earth to see where every place was, and used Yahoo maps to map out the route beforehand. And that's not all! When we're looking at places, I thought it would be fun to be able to compare them to clips from the original shows that were in. That meant that I have had to collect the clips from the library, from Hollywood Video, from taping TVLand and other cable stations, and from the Internet. And I've had to try to keep the titles secret so that Julie can guess what the buildings are as we are visiting them. Now I'll have to spend a lot of time in these remaining days editing the video and burning a DVD we can use. And that's just for our first full day there!
So what else can we cram into our three weeks of time there? Oh, I know, let's keep a blog of our trip there. We can write it when the kids are resting, or when we wake up before they do. It'll be great, and keep the Grandparents informed. Then when we come back we can print out the entries and use them in our scrapbook of the trip.
Yes, we're gluttons for punishment, but when we're on our trip, we live by one motto:
"Anytime you exhaust yourself trying to relax, that's active leisure," he wrote. Half of the fun of our vacations is getting things ready to go, and for us that means an enormous amount of preparation. We've been taking months to get ready for our three week odyssey in California. We've practically planned out each day and pack it to the maximum that the schedule and our children will allow.
Now school is out, and the time to work to get ready to vacation has begun in earnest. For example, we can't just go and take a tour of Hollywood offered by a company from somewhere. We prefer to do things at our own pace, and with a two-year old in tow, we don't think a tourbus is going to be a good idea. Instead, I've spent weeks getting a tour ready of sites that have been used for film and television locations. The website SeeingStars.com has been an tremendous resource for me and was what first made me think such a tour would be worth it. But it wasn't enough for me to just make a list of places to see, no. I had to use Google Earth to see where every place was, and used Yahoo maps to map out the route beforehand. And that's not all! When we're looking at places, I thought it would be fun to be able to compare them to clips from the original shows that were in. That meant that I have had to collect the clips from the library, from Hollywood Video, from taping TVLand and other cable stations, and from the Internet. And I've had to try to keep the titles secret so that Julie can guess what the buildings are as we are visiting them. Now I'll have to spend a lot of time in these remaining days editing the video and burning a DVD we can use. And that's just for our first full day there!
So what else can we cram into our three weeks of time there? Oh, I know, let's keep a blog of our trip there. We can write it when the kids are resting, or when we wake up before they do. It'll be great, and keep the Grandparents informed. Then when we come back we can print out the entries and use them in our scrapbook of the trip.
Yes, we're gluttons for punishment, but when we're on our trip, we live by one motto:
IF IT'S NOT FUN, WE DON'T DO IT.
posted by Scott at
1:20 PM
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