Cucumbers Suck

Right now, in Toronto, where I am, it is cloudy and -10°C. Right now, in Honolulu, where Blake is, it is mostly sunny and 24°C.

I saw my friend Julia at the grocery store this morning. She wanted to know what was new, and I told her my husband was in Hawai'i all week. She was outraged on my behalf: "What are you going to get out of this," she wanted to know.

"I get to stay in Toronto and look after my children!"

Blake didn't ask to go to Hawai'i, he didn't pay to go to Hawai'i, he didn't even want to go to Hawai'i. (Julia expressed some scepticism on this last point, but I saw how mopey he was the day he left. He's crazy, but he'd really rather be home.)

That, however, doesn't change the fact that I would really like to be in Hawai'i. (In fact, it kind of makes it worse.) I'd like to be in a hotel in Hawai'i with new neighbourhoods to explore, new food to try, new beaches to walk on, and no horrible freezing weather to endure. I haven't been anywhere new since I was in Las Vegas in 2004, and I haven't been anywhere I really wanted to go since I was in New York in 2003. And I'm so sick of this cold.

I don't know the answer. There's no way for me to go somewhere interesting for free, and it wouldn't be "fair" for me to spend a bunch of money we don't have to go on holiday somewhere just because I would really like to. I'm certainly not owed a holiday.

They did a study on monkeys: you can get monkeys to do tricks if you reward them with bit of cucumber, which they like. However, if they see that you're rewarding other monkeys with grapes, which they love, they'll stop doing tricks. They know it's not fair that the other monkeys are getting grapes, even though their cucumbers are pretty good and were considered fair reward until they noticed the grapes.

Right now this monkey is not too happy with her cucumbers.