AN ACTUARY?!!???!!

No thank you, sir. I'm pretty sure that implicit in this blog assignment is that we choose something we'd actually want to do, no? And thanks to my awesomely supportive parents, I've been instilled with the mentality that I have the potential to succeed at whatever I choose, provided it requires neither athletic prowess nor singing talent. So you know what? I'm going with Caribbean resort tester. I mean, it's someone's job, right? I see no reason it couldn't have been mine, had I but taken a different path after college.

Here is the thing: I am very good at relaxing. I don't do it very often, but when I do, I go whole-hog, as they say. A couple of years ago, J and I found a ridiculous off-season deal on a week at an all-inclusive in Mexico, and on the van ride from the airport to the resort, we perused a brochure touting the many activities we could do during our stay. Cave snorkeling, trips to the ruins, swimming with dolphins, horseback riding--the possibilities were endless! We decided, though, that we'd hold off on booking anything immediately, and when we inevitably got bored in a few days we'd start planning some adventures.

Amazingly, though, we never got bored of spending 8 hrs a day drinking banana daiquiris and reading by the pool or on the beach, and it wasn't until day 6 that we did the least commitment-requiring activity possible, a 1-hr snorkel trip from the hotel. On the boat out to the snorkel site, we met another couple who happened to be from Brooklyn. They'd been in Mexico for less than 24 hrs, and already they'd gone parasailing and booked trips to the ruins and cenotes. "We wanted to book stuff right when we got here, so we made sure we actually did things," they said.  "That's funny," J and I responded, "we kind of took the opposite approach!"

In addition to my natural relaxing ability, I'm also very good at liking things that are expensive, a talent that goes largely un-realized when one is a young scientist who's still paying off her undergrad loans. I don't know where this talent came from, as my formative years were quite free of opulence, but I have a special knack for homing in on the one $400 pair of shoes at DSW, or unknowingly ordering a $22 cocktail. I figure there's got to be a way to cash in on this extraordinary gift!