Going to Florida, BRB

So we're jaunting down to the Florida Panhandle for a few days tomorrow. I plan to gorge myself silly on seafood and try not to think about whether it was sustainably harvested for once in my life. It's a sickness I have.

I'm also attempting to break my bottled water addiction this week. For the past six years or so, I've been buying cases of bottled water and refusing to drink anything else. Even having a filter installed in our kitchen hasn't made me give it up. I can taste the difference.

But I need to give this stuff up, so I'm going to do it. I've got a cute little travel mug one of my students gave me as an end of year present and I'm trying to make myself fill it up when I get thirsty, instead of cracking up a bottle. I've also stocked up on Crystal Light to add to the water in Florida, since it tastes like a nasty, nasty swamp.

I bought a craaaazy amount of books for the trip too, more than I'll be able to read most likely. Two Jim Butcher novels, since I got hooked on The Dresden Files recently. The Curios Case of the Dog in the Nightime. Some historical trivia book about why the US states have such weird borders. And Micheal Pollan's two books, The Omnivore's Dilemma, and In Defense of Food.

For snacks on the trip down, I've made a chocolate chip banana bread. It's very, very good. I had to substitute Splenda for real sugar though since I ran out the other day. I only keep Splenda in the house for those rare occasions I need to bake some my dad (who is diabetic) will eat. But it still turned out pretty good. That may be because I didn't have any chocolate chips, so I was forced- Forced, I tell you! to chop up some high quality dark chocolate that I happened to have lying around and use that for chips.

I will survive this somehow.