Tag Archives: vacation

On the seventh day of Christmas vacation…

life, , , , , ,

Saw this above screenshot of a tweet being shared and found it funny. Though I immediately wanted to compose my own:

  • Dec 23: Vacation Day
  • Dec 24: Christmas Eve (company holiday)
  • Dec 25: Christmas Day/Saturday
  • Dec 26: Boxing Day/Sunday
  • Dec 27: Christmas Holiday Observance (company holiday)
  • Dec 28 – 30: Combo of vacation days and odd company holidays
  • Dec 31: New Year’s Eve
  • Jan 1: New Year’s Day/Saturday
  • Jan 2: Sunday
  • Jan 3: New Year Holiday Observance (company holidays)
  • Jan 4: Back to Reality

I’m totally on board with the idea that for those of us who take at least a week off for the holidays that time does become a fog and the notion of weekdays and non-weekdays is tenuous at best.

My husband went back to work Tuesday. Which means that I kept thinking it was Monday.

Seattle and the surrounding area is currently under a blanket of snow. The first flurries hit our neighborhood late on Christmas Even, but the real snow didn’t start until very late Christmas. I’ve bee trying to keep the hummingbird feeder thawed out with mixed success. The birds have been extra competitive for food in the cold.

The main roads seem to be drivable, but we can’t get out of our street without dealing with one steep hill or the other, and I have been hearing tires spinning out on the closer of those hills. I may have to head to the grocery store on foot if for no other reason to pick up some prescriptions if the roads don’t improve.

I’d had hopes for today, because the weather report a few days ago said the temperature would get above freezing for a while that day… but now it’s 28° and the forecast is it’s going to stay below 30F.

A slurry of crazy before vacation

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I am now officially on vacation for a few days. Michael and I are going to NorWesCon where we will get to goof off, browse the dealer’s den, hang out with some of our friends, and geek out. This is my 25th year in a row to attend this convention. I almost always have a great time. Though I find I spend less of the con actually going to convention events lately. So we have been discussing the possibility of giving it a pass one year. But not this year.

Because of the change in my work schedule while my boss has been on maternity leave, my last day of work before vacation was also a work-from-home day. Which is nice if for no other reason than not having to spend part of the evening getting home from work. On the other hand, it was a little frustrating because I kept seeing things that I should be packing or cleaning or otherwise dealing with, because we’re leaving tomorrow, but I couldn’t really take the time to do. Michael had taken the day off work, ostensibly to spend some of the day getting ready, but mostly so he could sleep in and get some more mental space away from work before the busy-ness of the convention got in the way.

Problem was, we both woke up feeling very run down. It is a rather high pollen count day, so most of mine could be hay fever, but it’s hard to say. I was feeling so out of it at the beginning of the day, that I thought it would be the least productive day of the year.

But several unexpected things came up, including some good news about some of the problems I’ve been wrestling with on the new content management system. It was a little weird. A bunch of things we had been waiting on (some for a long time), suddenly came in today. Often with things like, “can we meet tomorrow to discuss this?” Except that no, I can’t, because I’m going to be on vacation. I guess it’s an instance of Finagle’s Law. But they were all good developments. And after a few hours of work, some conversation with people, and a few big mugs of coffee, I was feeling much better than I had when I’d started the day.

The weather was awesome, and I had worked a bit over the last couple of days, so I was quite amenable to a longer-than-usual lunch. Michael needed to shower and get the rest of the way awake, first, but then we walked up to a local diner. This particular place we almost never get to because they are only open until 2:30 in the afternoon. They just do breakfast and lunch. Until sometime very recently, they also only took cash—no credit or debit cards. Michael wound up having a big breakfast, while I had a salmon burger and salad. It was nice to walk around out in the sun.

Michael napped the rest of the afternoon, while I finished things up on my work day.

Now I need to pack and otherwise get ready for the con. I’m going to attempt not to stay up all night long getting ready for it. I say that every year. Will it finally happen?