I'm Out of Here. Pretty Soon.

This is going to be a busy travel month for me. I'm heading off to New Mexico on Thursday, then back the next week, then to Oregon for New Year's.

And since I'm not in the office for the intersession period when school's out, I just realized this means I only have 6 1/2 days of work left this year.

Niiiiiiiiice. I'm trying not to mentally sign out right now.

So long, suckers! Oops, that would be me failing in my attempt not to mentally sign out right now.

Sigh. OK...hi there, suckers! Let's do some work!

And We're Off!

Getting packed up and ready to head to the airport for something exciting!

Not at the airport, no one wants any excitement of any kind at or involving any airport, but the fact that we're going on a trip that will extend beyond the airport, that's exciting.

I'm not used to flights I don't have to get up at the crack of horrible for, because usually I go west inside the United States (it's hard to go very far east inside the United States when you start in Boston), but when you head across the Atlantic you seem to leave in the evening.

The better to try to get some sleep so you can pretend to your brain that it's totally time for morning 6 hours earlier than usual.

I got up kind of early anyway, in the hope that I'll be tired enough to doze off. I well remember, from past experiences jumping several zones, that dazed, faintly nauseated weariness, and the feeling of really wanting to just sit down somewhere and go to sleep, never mind where the deceitful sun is in the lying sky.

Squinting against the mocking sunlight, trying to make out, through a haze of eyelashes and glare, whether or not that stretch of sidewalk is clear, because it looks mighty comfy.

Can't wait!

But jet lag aside, we'll be in Paris, and I hear that's moderately interesting.

So I'm going to be away from the internet for a few days, and I trust it will behave itself in my absence.

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Lose No Time

My default approach to vacation is to figure that if I'm not doing anything special, I might as well just go to work. Save the vacation time for when I go away to visit family or something.

It worked so well that I've accumulated all but 15 minutes of the maximum accruable vacation time at my job. After that, it doesn't stack up anymore. You essentially lose time, since you keep working but no more vacation is earned! This cannot be.

It's not a particularly horrifying problem to have, I suppose. But if there's this time that you're supposed to have, as a benefit of your job, to spend not at your job, you should really take it. Time not working is good for life.

So here I was, not doing anything special today, but I might as well just not go to work.

I'll do something special tomorrow though, don't you worry.

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Yaaaaaaawn

I'm back!

I know everyone missed me terribly. There were no real health, technology or library connections involved in my absence, it was just a housewarming party in another state.

I ate a lot of chocolate. That's healthy, right?

Now I must catch up with sleep. And the internet.

No New Information

I'm just back from a quick jaunt to the moon, in honor of the moon landing. Woohoo!

I mean Salt Lake City.

Either way, I was not checking up on the internet in my absence, so I hope it's been behaving.

Back from the West Texas Town of El Paso

I did not fall in love with a Mexican maid, but I've played a lot of cards, spent a lot of time making and laughing at awesome family jokes (really, really awesome in many cases), cracked and eaten a heroic amount of pecans (they grow on a tree in the back yard), and slept a little. 

The planes took off and landed near enough to on-schedule as not to be worth complaining about, and the trip was uneventful. My main complaint is having lost my water bottle because I forgot I'd filled it after going through Security in El Paso, and then we had to change terminals in LaGuardia and go through again. Note to LaGuardia: connect your terminals like a normal airport, will you? Thanks.

Regardless, it was a good vacation.

Happy new year to all my legions of followers, and I will attempt to get caught up on my blog reading next month.