It is official… I am on vacation.
Oh glorious glory, I am on vacation.
Six business days without having to go to work and do business. Ecstasy at its finest.
In less then 48 hours I will be in Florida where it is not 24 degrees out. It is just too amazing to be real. Warmth in January. Pretty please.
When we came home from vacation in… June? May? Early June, I think, we immediately planned another trip for the early fall. We were going to go to San Diego for a few days and then go to Los Angeles for a day or so and then come home. Just a massively huge, yet very short trip. We both booked time off from work and then right afterwards cancelled the whole thing in favor of another Florida trip in January.
We kept the vacation time on the books though. We thought maybe we’d go on a short trip somewhere closer to home. New York or the mountains in New Hampshire or something. Then as we got closer and closer to the start of the vacation time we started thinking about cancelling the time off and just waiting for the next big trip after the new year.
Then my father went into the hospital. Then my father passed away. Then we had the wake and the funeral. Now we’re down to one more work day before the start of the time off and there is no more talk of cancelling, despite having taken time off for my father. No. We’re going to have a staycation. We’re going to spend a week flaking on the living room couch watching Star Wars movies (Jen’s idea, not mine, I swear) and just ignoring civilization for a week.
I speak for myself when I say this, but I know Jen feels the same. I am not taking this time off from work because I want it. I am taking it because I need it. Physically and mentally. I need to shut down for a bit. I need to recharge my battery. I need to recover from the last month or so.
I have one work day left. Tomorrow is Friday. After that? One week’s worth of staycation. I am so ready for it. Give it to me, now.
Just running errands and doing chores today. Keeping busy over all. I really wanted to take the cameras out for a walk this morning, but the weather was awful. The light was the worst ever. So disheartening. Oh well.
After a couple of days of weirdness, my stomach has been a team player today. No issues at all. I’m proud of the little surgically altered guy. It did not wake me up last night, which was nice of it. My legs are another story though. Twice overnight I woke up with bad leg cramps. It’s always something when you’re an old fart like me. All I want is to sleep and my own body is stopping me from doing it. What a jerk I am to myself.
Before I get back to the housework, I think I am going to finally put in a vacation request at work for our staycation in September and our next trip back to Disney World in January. I think it’s time, don’t you? There. I just did it. Hopefully my boss doesn’t have a heart attack when he sees two week long vacation requests at once. They are spread out. It’s okay. I’ll wait a while before I put in for the second planned Disney trip. That’s a full year away.
The Red Sox winning streak ended last night. They played Cincinnati, who are pretty terrible this year, and lost. It made me sad. Here’s hoping for vengeance in today’s game. I want to win by 90, at least.
Okay. Back to work, red head.
I am scheduled for Jury Duty a week from Monday. May 6th, to be exact. I booked time off from work for the day like a good citizen of The Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Good boy.
Today I came as close to hitting the lottery as I’ll ever come. I got a letter from the state. You always get a letter from the state about a week before Jury Duty. It usually says that you need to call the courthouse you were assigned to the business day before you are schedule to appear and they will tell you if you have to show up or not. That’s not what I got this time. This time the letter just said that they don’t need me and I don’t have to go. Sweet! It’s like a get out of jail free card… or just a get out of jury duty free card. Let’s not mix the metaphorical side of the courtroom bar I would have been sitting on… or whatever. You know what I mean, right? Right.
So I have the day off of work on Monday and I don’t have to do anything to earn it! WOOHOO!
That’s when the guilt started hitting me. Stupid guilt. Two days after my scheduled civic duty is my birthday (53 years old, you geriatric fart) and I took a vacation day that day just because. It’s my special day, or some crap like that. So I… I let the guilt take over. I logged into work and canceled my Jury Duty time off request. Ugh. Why did I do that? Because it was the right thing to do? Ugh… you putz. Just take the free day off. No… I’ll work that day. I might even drive into the office.
Idiot.
We are about 200 miles from home. We’ll get there sometime tomorrow, probably in the mid-afternoon, after we drop off the rental car at the airport. We were originally coming home on Monday. I booked time off from work on Monday and Tuesday. Eventually the plans changed and we were booked to come home on Sunday but I never cancelled the Monday and Tuesday time off. Now that we’ll be getting home on Sunday, though not as planned, I want to come up with some projects to work on to have something creative and productive to do on those two days off.
The weather is going to suck on Monday, but be pretty good on Tuesday. I think I will try to pull off an album-in-a-day project on Monday. I’ll start it Sunday evening, I think, and then see if I can get 30 minutes of new music written and recorded by the same time on Monday. It will all count toward the 50 songs in 90 days challenge as well.I have only ever pulled off the album-in-a-day thing once. Maybe I can get it done again.
On Tuesday, if the weather is as good as predicted, I hope to do some photography stuff. Sunrise at the ocean, then a spot or two on top. Maybe this will finally be my morning in Boston? Who knows. After the photo-walk (whatever it ends up being) is done I’ll get back to 50/90 for the rest of the day.
Either that or I’ll just watch Doctor Who for the full two days off. We’ll have to see how it goes.
I am officially on vacation. One full week. It’s a staycation but it doesn’t matter. I am off for a whole week for the first time since February 2020 and I a so very ready for it.
Now that I am on vacation I think I might take a nap.
Saluti
I couldn’t figure out why this week seemed to be so long. This week has been endless, why?
Then I realized, it was the first time in something like four weeks that I didn’t have at least a half day off. A 40 hour week? What the hell is that?
I need to put a big push on music this weekend. I need to write a shit load of lyrics, I need to do a shit load of car music, I need to play a shit load of guitar, and I need to start finishing off songs. This is the way. I have spoken.
It’s going to be a busy day at work. The weekend is Eight hours and 39 minutes away. Let’s get to it!
My CPAP machine pissed me right off last night. I went to bed at 11:00 and then woke up a little before 2:00am with the mask sliding all over my damn face and leaking like a… like a… like a something that leaks a lot, I don’t know. I sat up and screwed around with all of the harness straps and stuff and eventually was able to get back to sleep.
How much does it suck when the thing that is supposed to help you sleep stops you from sleeping? It sucks a lot.
Change of subject…
When the hell am I going to use all of this time off? My company changed the way they dish out time off, including taking a bunch of holidays that we used to have off and turning them into floating holidays and rolling that together with the couple of personal days and the huge pile of vacation days and renaming it all Personal Time Off. We accrue x number of hours each month and there is a cap on how much we can carry before we stop accruing more.
The good news is that we get a shit load of personal time off. The bad news is we actually have to use it if we want to keep getting more. Oh, the webs we weave. I am about a minute below the cap right now so I have to use some time this month… and next month… and every month. That’s a good thing, but it’s also a logistical struggle, you know? Times are tough. Anyway, what I really need to do is take a week off and get the accrual down a bit so I have some breathing room. Good idea! But when? The best time would be a time when kids are here. Bellana won’t be home for months because she’s going to be in Europe for the next semester. Harry will come home on breaks. Good idea! When is the next break? March 7-11! I’ll put in for that week!
I love it when a plan comes together.
I took Friday off this week, not to extend the long weekend but because there was talk of possibly going to VT and I wanted to be free to go. Now we are not going so I am left with a mostly unplanned four day weekend. Such is life, I guess.
The good news is I’ll be able to stay up late Thursday night if game one of the Red Sox/Rays series requires it. Bonus!
I haven’t played my guitar in the month of October yet. That is bad, mental healthily speaking. Friday might get some serious therapy time. We will see.
I’m really tired right now but I feel the need to overshare some personal life shit. Okay, here goes: I trimmed my toe nails today. Really, what other sites give you this much detail? You’re welcome.
Okay, good night everyone.
Inside the Red Head's Head 