What I Did On My Summer Vacation

Our view from the boat as we headed toward the base of the falls

Do you know, I've never had a teacher who assigned the "What I Did On My Summer Vacation" essay to any class I've ever been in. But hey, this was such a good one that I have to share it, even though it's four months later. It even factored heavily into my business when all was said and done, in a roundabout way.

First of all, I got to go on my vacation with my bestie, S.K. Anthony, who has been featured on this blog over and over again and whose books I have the privilege of editing. We've been trying to plan a vacation for over two years—and a complete fluke allowed us the same week available in August. Once we realized it was really going to happen, we began our plans in earnest, trying to figure out where we could go for the most good time, for the least travel, and everything in between. 

Shan and me

We settled on Niagara Falls—the Canadian side, of course, because our passports are current and everybody knows the Canadian side has the best view. We planned the whole thing three months in advance and I kept worrying that something was going to happen to ruin it or cancel it at the last minute, but before I knew it, August 7th was there and I was driving to the Buffalo airport to pick her up. 

You may have heard the saying about not living with or traveling with close friends because you get sick of each other. I'm here to tell you that's not true at all when it comes to the two of us. We did not stop talking for any longer than we had to each day. Sleep was not exactly on the top of our list of things to do. Truthfully, we had a couple things we wanted to see as far as tourism, but we didn't care if we ended up staying in the hotel room talking the entire four days.

Our itinerary:

• Talk
• Laugh
• Plan
• Walk
• Eat

Careening toward certain death

That was about it. We did one "real" thing—the Hornblower tour (the Canadian side of the Maid of the Mist boat ride). Other than that, we walked all over the place, up and down steep hills throughout the town, killing our calves and wandering into every cheesy tourist spot.

One of the cool things about our friendship is that we also plan business stuff together, too. She always has the best ideas and helps me to come up with some of mine, too. It's kind of cool to know an author who has a marketer's brain. I blurt out an idea I've been tossing around, and she asks all the right questions to help me figure out what (if anything) I want to do with it, who I'm aiming it toward, and how to go about things with minimal waste of time and effort. We knew we would each have a little bit of work to do while we were away, but were mostly determined to have fun and sound out genius ideas.

My new space!

Since we were both working on creating home offices this summer, we had a lot of notes to compare. Would you believe we ended up planning to order the same desk, but we both got cold feet about some of the reviews, and then we found another desk we both loved—because by then, we'd already gotten used to the idea that our desks were going to match, so there was no going back. We even ended up with the same office chair, completely by accident. Unlike my office, though, hers is now completely decorated and looks beautiful. Mine has a shelf I love, a new computer, and a whole lot of plans for how to decorate the rest of it and maximize its function. I'm just happy to have a space of my own with a sister-office in New York.

I hope we don't have to wait over two and a half years to see each other again. Maybe we can sneak away next year and plan a kitchen remodel . . .