Where I work, we do exception time reporting. This means that my place of employment will assume I worked a full 40 hours, wasn’t sick and didn’t take any vacation time unless I, or my manager, tells them otherwise. Oftentimes, I’ll forget to submit a timesheet, and my manager always forgets to ask for one so, in the end, the amount of time my company thinks I’ve taken and the amount of time I’ve actually taken are never the same: it’s always an error in my favor. However, I’m an honest Jim, as good says we all should be. Therefore, at the end of each year, I always scurry to determine exactly how much time I have left.
We’re allowed to push half our vacation time into the next year provided we have made arrangements to take the time by June of the next year (i.e. I can push half of my 2002 time into 2003 as long as I’ve decided when I’m going to take those days by June of 2003). However, this year, with the possible strike and everything else that was going on, management is allowing us to take our 2002 time all the way to the end of the year. Additionally, they are allowing us to push all of our 2003 time into 2004.
After much research I have determined that I determined that I have 11 days of 2002 time that needs to be taken before the year ends. Jess and I are planning a trip to Vermont with my family. We leave Christmas day and don’t return until the 4th of January. That’s 4 days, which means I have 7 left over. Christmas day is a company holiday. If you don’t count today, Christmas day, weekends, or the 4 days I’m already taking, you’ll find there are exactly 7 days left in 2003.
So… starting tomorrow… I’m on vacation.
I’m not really sure what I’m going to do with my free time. I know that I am looking forward to having, at least an hour or so of each day as me time. As much as I love Jess and her company, sometimes it’s nice to just be completely alone with myself. Part of me just wants to lounge around and do absolutely nothing. However, I know that, not only would I get bored after a few days but, there are better ways to spend my time. The Good Reverend in me has made a list of vacation day guidelines. It includes important things, needed things, fun things, and relaxing things in a very well balanced formula:
- Jog every morning.
- Finish all my Christmas shopping, especially Jess’ gifts.
- Rearrange the office the way I’ve been meaning to for some time now.
- Spend some time writing personally and without interruptions.
- Hang pictures.
- Sort and organize all of our papers and files.
- Work on Inklog enough that it can at least replace bBlog’s functionality.
- Spend some time taking photographs of places I don’t usually go to during the day.
- Finish reading the book I started so long ago. Maybe even start another one.
- Play guitar and sing as loud as I want.
Of course, the Bad Reverend has a list of his own:
- Download porn. Lots of porn.
- Steal music and movies.
- Masturbate often.
- Eat at least one bucket of popcorn each day.
- Wait until Jess gets home to clean anything, that way I’ll have help.
- More porn.
- Buy a bunch of stuff for me and tell Jess to put it under the tree "from santa".
- Masturbate more.
- Steal more music.
I guess we’ll see whose plans win out.