n i c k y n a x . c o m

Tomorrow morning I am hopping on an airplane and heading off to Orlando for the start of my two week vacation.

Am I excited? Yes.

Though, truth be told, not as excited as I thought I would have been on the eve of this event. I have never ever ever taken a vacation that has been this long before, and it’s completely thrown me for a loop. The idea of being away from work for two weeks is not only thrilling, but also a bit terrifying. I’m obviously getting paid for the time away from work, but for some reason I have a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that this vacation will be the catalyst to my immanent bankruptcy.

Also, how in the hell do you pack for two weeks. Two weeks that include everything from a bathing suit to a three piece suit. I need a week’s worth of casual clothes for the first week where I’ll just be putzing around the theme parks, but for the cruise, it seems like I need an entire wardrobe with me. Bathing suit, casual wear for chillin around the ship and exploring the ports, cruise casual (whatever the hell that means) for some of the dinners, semi-formal for others, formal for one dinner, pirate clothes (yes, you read correctly) for the Pirates In The Caribbean Theme Night, and my Halloween costume for Halloween.

Now, I ask you, how in the hell am I supposed to pack all that shit and still have room for my flatiron? Not possible.

It’s about 9pm the night before I leave and I am only partially packed. It’s just such a daunting task this time that I can’t even bring myself to fully commit to tackling it.

Garrett was just here picking up the keys and getting final instructions on keeping Miss Jackson company and paying my rent for me as I won’t be here for the due date. I’m glad that he’s taking care of her while I’m gone as she really seems to like him as much as he likes her. And the fact that Miss Jackson likes anyone (myself included) is nothing short of a miracle.

Joe is going to be here in a bit. He has decided to come with me for a few days, which is exciting. He hasn’t been down to the parks in several years, so there is a lot of new stuff since his last visit to show him, including one entire theme park he’s yet to experience. I always love visiting the theme parks with someone who will be experiencing certain aspects (if not the entirety) of it for the first time.

I know it’s going to be a shitload of fun, and once the two weeks are over, the thought of coming back home and coming back to work will make me want to slit my wrists. That is, unless I decide it’s as un-freakin-believable as I think it’s going to be, and demand they hire me on the ship and never come home.

I wouldn’t put it past me to do it.

In other words, if you don’t hear from me in two weeks, you’ll know one of three things happened:

1. I either got drunk off my ass (from one Smirnoff Ice, no less) and fell overboard.
2. I chained myself to the ship and refused to leave.
3. I realized after two weeks of not being online that the Internet is lame.

Yeah, that last one is never gonna happen.

I’ll see you in two weeks, guys. You’ve got a lot of pictures and video coming your way.

You lucky bastards.

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Sometimes I think my iPod is psychic.

I like to put it on shuffle and just let it surprise me from time to time, and usually whenever I do that, it somehow seems to tap into my mind and pick the perfect songs that match my current mood or feelings.

Such was the case today.

I put it on shuffle and it found a hidden gem on my iPod that I didn’t even know I had on there. I’ve been listening to it all day, and if you’ll humor me, I’d like to share it with you now.

Somewhere Down the Road by Barry Manilow

We had the right love
At the wrong time.
Guess I always knew inside
I wouldn’t have you for a long time.

Those dreams of yours
Are shining on distant shores,
And if they’re calling you away
I have no right to make you stay.

But somewhere down the road
Our roads are gonna cross again.
It doesn’t really matter when.
But somewhere down the road
I know that heart of yours will come to see
That you belong with me.

Sometimes goodbyes are not forever.
It doesn’t matter if you’re gone.
I still believe in us together.
I understand more than you think I can.
You have to go out on your own
So you can find your way back home.

And somewhere down the road
Our roads are gonna cross again.
It doesn’t really matter when.
But somewhere down the road
I know that heart of yours will come to see
That you belong with me.

Letting go is just another way to say
I’ll always love you so.

We had the right love
At the wrong time.
Maybe we’ve only just begun.
Maybe the best is yet to come.

‘Cause somewhere down the road
Our roads are gonna cross again.
It doesn’t really matter when.
But somewhere down the road
I know that heart of yours will come to see
That you belong with me.

I promise you I’m not turning into a Fanilow.

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Tomorrow night I’m attending the So You Think You Can Dance Live Tour at Nassau Coliseum in Long Island. To say it’s one of my favorite television shows wouldn’t even begin to describe how much I love it. Granted, I didn’t love this past season quite as much as I loved Season 2, but that’s a near impossibility as the second season had so many dancers that I really fell in love with watching each week. And it didn’t hurt that Travis was pretty damned adorable. Nevertheless, it’s still one of my favorite shows on television.

I’m quite excited for the show tomorrow night though. We were able to snag some 11th row center floor seats, which, while not as remarkable as our 3rd row center seats last year, are nothing to turn up your nose at. We were so set on getting the best possible seats this year so as to somewhat live up to last year’s awesome experience that we ended up with a total of fifteen tickets to the show.

Look, when it comes to SYTYCD, we mean business.

I’m going with the same crew as last year, which I believe qualifies it as a bonafide tradition of ours now. After work, we’re all piling into a rental car and road tripping it out to Long Island for the show where we’ll join the thousands of tween girls wearing shirts with their favorite dancer ironed onto them and screaming so shrilly that only dogs could hear us.

Don’t judge.

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I think I was under the (incorrect) assumption that upon starting to blog again, I would suddenly be blessed with a plethora of insightful and provocative topics and ideas about which I could write. This blog would be a catalog of my opinions and emotional responses to events in my life. Long story short, it was going to make the Pulitzer committee weak in the knees with adoration.

Yeah, that didn’t happen.

Which pretty much explains the reason there hasn’t been any entries in awhile. I was waiting for the spark of inspiration for an interesting topic idea that would result in some burst of creativity and manifest itself into a highly introspective entry that all the world (or the far smaller group that actually reads this) would appreciate and, in turn, be inspired to reflect within themselves and have epiphanies of their own.

Delusions of grandeur are not becoming on me.

So, I’m gonna try to take a new route. I said to myself, “Nick, you look kinda cute when you flatiron your hair. And not all of your blog entries have to be the meat and potatoes of life. Every now and then, people just want the pickle that comes on the side.”

So, here’s a pickle.

There’s something coming up in a few weeks that has me quite excited and is making it difficult to focus on much of anything else. You see, being a full-time employee of my job, I’m entitled to some paid vacation days each year. Everyone knows that. It’s pretty standard for most full-time people at any job.

I get two weeks of paid vacation, five sick days, three personal days, and a floating holiday day per year. And on my anniversary date, they all reset.

I was hired at my job on August 13th, 2003. So, for the past four years, I have been using that date as my anniversary date when planning and scheduling all of my days off. But it wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago when I was reminded that for the first three months of my employment I was only a temp, so I didn’t become full-time until November 3rd, 2007.

I quickly did the math in my head and realized that I had a whopping ten days of paid vacation/sick/personal/floating to take before November 3rd of this year or I would completely lose them.

I immediately turned to my boss and said, “I’m going on vacation!”

And that is exactly what I am doing.

Two weeks from today I am hopping on a plane and heading to Orlando to spend a week at Walt Disney World, which will be a nice consolation prize since the weekend trip I was going to take down there for my birthday in August ended up not happening when the flight got canceled.

But that’s not all!

Once my week at Walt Disney World is over, my friend Tyler and I are driving to Port Canaveral and embarking on a seven-night Eastern Caribbean Disney Cruise!

 I’ve been wanting to take a Disney Cruise for YEARS now, and am literally beside myself with excitement about finally setting sail with the mouse. Kevin and I were supposed to go on one in March, but due to incorrect information it wasn’t actually available even though the site said it was, so it didn’t end up happening. I feel a little guilty about taking the cruise without him now, but the timing just worked out too well with Tyler’s vacation and the price was ridiculously lucrative (over 75% discount), so it was an opportunity I just couldn’t pass on.

Plus I get two full weeks off from work, which will be the longest continuous time off I’ve had from any job ever, and will give me plenty of time to recover before the onslaught of the holiday rush at work.

Plus I’ll be on the cruise over Halloween, which is even more exciting as the ship gets decorated and there are special activities planned. Look for me at the Scary-aoke contest. I’ve got a pretty mean Come To My Window and Something To Talk About.

Yeah, I’m a perpetual nine-year-old.

So, that’s the most write-worthy thing going on right now.

A few weeks ago, I attended an outdoor Lesbian Wedding in the Poconos. I guess I probably should have written about that.

But then again, who hasn’t been to an outdoor Lesbian Wedding in the Poconos?

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