I have so much work backed up now. Monday morning I had two longish meetings and in between them I went to the post office to pick up our mail.

Mistake. I didn’t think it would be that busy at 8:30 - but no. There were, typically, three employees at the windows but there were about 25 people in front of me when I got in line. 30 minutes later, I was on the way out the door with a big plastic bag full of mostly junk mail and I was thinking about the trip again.

While standing in line, I got to hear no fewer than three phone calls by other people - the lady beside me was discussing her daughter’s abusive boyfriend. The lady at the window was loudly telling her caller how long she’d been in line and that she couldn’t talk right now because she had finally gotten to a window.

It occurred to me that although we’d stood in a bunch of lines on vacation, in none of them had we been exposed to long, loud cell phone conversations. Not a one. Only when we got back to the Cancun airport did we see conspicuous usage, and even then it was light.

I really, really liked that.

I don’t have any interest in listening in on other’s private conversations even when they don’t mind sharing them with the world. I really don’t. It was extremely pleasant not to have to do that for a week.

And another thing I noticed today while I was running around trying to be on time to my appointments - when we got to our hotel, I took off my watch and put it in the safe. It stayed there for the better part of a week.

Now I don’t have any desire to move to Mexico or buy a timeshare there, but it sure was nice how incredibly relaxed everything was. Not a lot of pressure to be anywhere or do anything in a big hurry. It was a pleasant and unexpected benefit that perhaps will spill over now that I’m not there anymore. I’m going to keep that in mind.

I did notice that I avoided turning on the computers until midday Sunday. That’s quite unusual in itself…