The Sunday Salon: A little staycation and End of the Hols

Good morning fellow readers! Well, today is the last day of my two-week holiday/vacation and it pains me to think that it is a whole year before the next one rolls around. I much preferred my days of graduate school, when I had bigger chunks of holidays in the winter and the summer. Oh well, that stipend I earned then wouldn't be enough to sustain a decent lifestyle, other than to just pay bills, so no complaints. Still, it is going to be hard getting back to work tomorrow, though thankfully, everyone may also be in a similar boat.

The husband and I just just got back last night from our three-day low-key staycation in Northern VA. We visited the Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens in Richmond on our drive there to check out their GardenFest. They had lights set up for the holiday season, mostly decorating the trees at the garden and in places, mocked up in shapes of animals and fairy tale characters. The decorations were very beautiful and colorful, though it was also very cold that night, and that affected our enjoyment a little bit.

We spent most of our time in NoVa shopping but we also spent an evening watching Interstellar at the IMAX theater in the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Museum in Chantilly. We had already watched the movie and were going this time for the 70mm IMAX experience. In my opinion, 70mm is really just an overkill. I much prefer the smaller screens that stay fully within my vision range, than the 70mms that seem to feel as if a portion of the screen is floating up in the clouds. But that's just me. We weren't expecting to see many people there at all, since the movie has been running for two months already but both shows were sold out. It was quite shocking to see so many people sprint up to get tickets and I thought we may not get any seats but luckily we made it in.

For today, we don't have any major plans. I have some office work to finish up before heading in to work tomorrow but the rest of my day is completely free, which is how I like it. I finished my first book of the year, Letters in the Attic by Bonnie Shimko two days ago, and am now looking forward to starting my next read. My library membership had expired sometime during the past month so I need to get that sorted out tomorrow.

How is your Sunday shaping up? Are you upset about the end of the holidays too or do you have some more days before you get back?