Now With More Vacation

Having been with my company for nearly 14 years now I accrue vacation time at the maximum rate possible.  In the past it hasn't been much of a problem to take enough vacation to spend quality time with the family and to feel re-energized for work.  However, work has been busy lately and I've lost a few coworkers that I would call deep in the pool of knowledge capital.  So it's been hard for me to think about taking a long vacation.  But I knew it had to be done and I threw a week on the calendar almost at random.  In truth I looked for a week that seemed like the fewest people would be gone from work.

That was the 1st week of August and without making any truly advanced plans it became a very busy week at home with friends visiting and those long awaited projects.  This week could hardly be called a return to work as severely overlapping summer activities and hockey camps collided and I was called up for backup, under-16, taxi services.  As a result I worked from home Monday and Wednesday after ferrying Sam to his hockey clinic.  Tuesday was a busy day for work and I got called at 3:30am to help with some problems and then again at 7am for more problems.  I ended up working from home that day too.  So finally Thursday came and I made it into the office, on my wedding anniversary no less (love you babe).  Having been home for nearly 2 weeks Bird was plenty fine with seeing me go.

I received something of a shock at work however.  An email from HR pointed out that I was WAY over the maximum number of vacation hours that could be rolled from one year to the next.  Apparently several of my coworkers were in a similar situation.  Doing the math told me that I needed to burn 10+ days of vacation by the end of August or I would lose them.  Um, that's practically the entire remainder of the month.  So I pondered...

There are a few days I simply must go into work for certain commitments and I would die faster under an avalanche of email if I ignored it for that long.  So after due consideration I am now in semi-retirement for the remainder of this month.

I texted Bird while riding the bus home.  I'll mention we agreed to skip gifts (even though I was bringing home flowers from the farmer's market).

I have a small gift for you.
     What?  You better not!
Um well. This isn't something I bought.
I'm in semi-retirement for the rest of August.
I have a lot of vacay to burn or I'll lose it.
     Really?
     Holy crap


It's been 16 years and I'm still not sure how to interpret that.