I just spent three weeks on vacation. If you haven’t done this recently (as most Americans don’t take “extended” vacations), then I recommend that you do so immediately.
We drove to Montana, the short way (15 north to 90 west), in two days. We then spent nearly three weeks hanging around my father-in-law’s property up there, while my wife’s extended family dropped in for a fairly decent-sized family reunion.
The two kids got to play with their second cousins, and the six that are of an age actually paired up quite well (two bossy alpha males, two quieter contemplative sorts, and the drama queen/king nuts). There were endless squabbles, scraped knees, yucky bugs, dirty feet, and a few cases of outright insubordination. The cherries were late this year, but were pick-able before departure. The adults drank too much beer, stayed up too late, and ate more than was good for us. The dog made friends, chased balls into the lake or across the pasture, and generally enjoyed his time away from the concrete jungle.
Then we spent four days driving from Montana to Portland to Fort Bragg, CA, and then San Luis Obispo and finally home. On the way, we drove through a hole in a tree and romped around the redwood forest in northern CA and helped friends build a chicken coop, did a couple of wine tastings in Paso Robles and picked up some salt flavored with essence of ghost chili.
We took a million pictures, but this one is my current favorite:
Expect contributory posts to come regularly starting this week…
You know what? I think I’m going to let this stand as this week’s recommendation.
Seredipity!
Serendipity is the most beautiful word in the English language.
Followed by Shenandoah.
Over 90% of all human discoveries are the result of serendipity– even Einstein’s E=mc2 bombshell. And the phone and the lightbulb which is probably the greatest invention in the history of the human race. In and of itself it is of course great, but what followed is mind mesmerising. And we owe it all to Edison and his Tungsten filament which has a melting temperature of 6,000+ degrees. And before you know it, the solid-state electronics revolution is on–all by accident–at least by Ohl and his accidental discovery of the P-N barrier which led to solar cells. This was enormously difficult and complex work. Bottom line: no lightbulb no transistor, and no ride to moon. Oh, and no nukes either. Nukes are the only reason we didn’t have a war to the last man with the USSR. Strongly recomend reading those top-secret documents released by Russia in the early 90s–it will absolutely blow your mind, especially the decision by Stalin to massacre 22,000 Poles. He even had the nerve to have Chopin’s Funeral March played for the sole purpose of really rubbing it in.
The vast majority of my jobs have sucked, benefits-wise.
The retail jobs I had in high school had two or three paid days off (Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years… the other days were days that they were open), the restaurant, god bless it, didn’t exactly have awesome vacation policy (I think you had to work there a year before you accrued vacation days), and then, when I got into IT, it was always as a contractor… which, given my background, always struck me as pretty sweet (and, as I gained skills, I was consistently offered better jobs with somewhat better bennies).
I think I had finally graduated to two weeks vacation and 6 holidays a year before I got my first job as a real-life, just like I had always read about, employee.
The problem is that I had pretty much trained myself to never, ever, take long vacations. Use three days before Thanksgiving and get a week off. Beg, barter, and trade with co-workers around Christmas (hey, they had kids, I didn’t) and accrue 3-4 comp days which can be used to turn regular weekends into 3-dayers and 3-dayers into 4-dayers.
Thus can you turn 8 vacation days and 2 sick days into something where you have a long weekend to look forward to pretty much every month!
All that to say: I can’t imagine having 3 weeks off in a row. I’m sure that something in my brain would start screaming “IT’S BECAUSE YOU’RE UNEMPLOYED!” and I’d start looking for a job on the first Tuesday.
Start looking for gigs at universities. The pay is 10-20% less than what you’re used to, and the politics are… interesting… but when there’s no, “We’re losing a million dollars an hour for every hour the main web site is down” the ability to take time off falls back onto politics.
I can’t imagine taking long vacations because I would prefer numerous short ones.
I’ve had pretty good luck with benefit packages, usually with three weeks of total PTO with a nudge-wink on using sick time for vacations if they were separate. Also, nearly every employer I’ve had has been cool with unpaid time off. Of course, I’ve rarely been salary.
When he was re-elected, President Bush talked about flex-time as an option in lieu of overtime pay. I wish he had followed up on that. I’d much rather be able to take the time off than get the extra money. I’m unambitious that way. (my apologies if that’s too political to mention).
Having been comfortably unemployed for rather long stretches, I’ve learned to make peace with having lots of time off. I do wish I used the time more wisely than I did/do, though.
The problem with short vacations is that it’s hard to mentally reset.
For me, in my job, if I’m not away for at least a week, I don’t really stop thinking about work long enough to relax.
That is what booze is for.
AAAAAAAAA, Jaybird. Absolutely laughed my ass of! Best and funniest thing you’re EVER written.
There are so many layers of meaning to, ““I will never be allowed to play with cap guns.”
Please don’t go wobbly–do not capitulate. You know the Politically Correct police on this blog and elsewhere are going to go nuts and hunt you down and put you through a meat grinder. You DO have supporters here–however, most of them cower when even a whiff of confrontation arises. Regardless of what they say, that was a brilliant and funny electrical jolt and dammit, I LOVED it!!
I find the picture abhorrent, shameless, disgusting, and vile. To use an infant to peddle same-sex marriage propaganda and ideology is horribly improper and short-sighted. You (not youJB) folks have gotten pretty cocky with your legislative victories but noticeably silent when the people speak–I think the toll stands at 31-0—that’s 31 states who have voted to have marriage mean the same thing it’s meant for the last 5,000 years: The union of one man and one woman. (does Mother Nature have any say in this?) Do you have any idea of how many votes you’ve lost with this disgusting picture? Wasn’t Serrano’s , “Piss Christ” enough to give your hateful, anti-Catholic troubadours their jollies? Or that obese carcass beating that elderly woman over the head with her Crucifix at that demonstration in San Francisco? And what the hell’s the rush–walking on water took a long, long, time.
Man, it’s a good thing that I didn’t write my blog entry “Why it would be a good thing if Marcus Fenix was gay” here.
Except my boss always gets pissed when he walks by and I’m drinking it.
If I mentally reset, there’s a chance that I won’t wanna go back.
The company I work for does 9-80 scheduling; you work 9-hour days Monday to Thursday, and then Friday alternates between an 8-hour day and an off-day. So every other week is a 3-day weekend.
My favorite schedule, like, ever was 4 tens.
I *ADORED* that.
My favorite was four-on, four-off twelve-hour rotating shifts: Four days, four off, four mids, four off. Honorable mention to the six-on, four-off schedule: Eight-hour shifts of two days, two swings, two mids, four off. All pre-marriage, pre-kids, of course.
We have some people that do the “four tens”, too. (Everyone pretty much figures that you’re there for nine or ten hours anyway so why not just make that be your normal day?)
Exactly. I’ve also had long commutes. So saving 1-3 hours of driving a week would have been a nice net gain. Then again, there have been some jobs where, after 8 hours, I’d die before keeping on keeping on. Those were the jobs where I wasn’t given enough to do, however, or saw what I was doing as rather unimportant.
Fortunately, these days we have smartphones. (with an e-trade app. Noooobahhhhhhhhdeee knoooooooows, the trouble iiiiiiiiii seeeeeeee…)
We just took our first “long” family vacation in which we drove to Tennessee for a family reunion and spent the trip back stopping along the way to visit various family members. The kids and I enjoyed it, but I think if my wife has a choice, next time we’ll fly. Boo!
Car tripping is an acquired taste. You have to take a few before you acclimatize.
My wife and I make relaxed plans every time we move. It never works out that way. We decide that we just want to get there. I’d imagine the same would be true of vacations. Her more than me, though. Give me an audiobook and I can drive for very long periods of time. Particularly if the car is big enough that my knees are pinned and hitting the volume button on the radio.
I find it painful coming back after a week off because of all the emails stuck in my in box. Typically I will have 350+ emails after a week’s vacation. I think I would cry coming back after three weeks and have over 1000.
I get 350 emails a day. You get that many, you learn bulk operations and message filtering or your head explodes right quick.
Thankfully I do not have to go there yet. 350 in a week is more than enough for me. It also does not help that I must open each one… just in case. Sigh.
I get about that many daily and mostly I’ve learned to use the delete key.